Identifying factors influencing water planning: Benefits of a capability approach?

Abstract

Adaptive water planning aims to address challenges of societal and natural systems complexity and uncertainty to ensure sustainable outcomes for current and future generations. A main challenge for those responsible for designing and implementing water plans is to address conflicting perspectives in decision making, related to the diversity of visions and interests around water that could also evolve across time, space and governance scales. Navigating uncertainty and complexity in decision making requires institutions and organisations responsible for water planning and management to develop dynamic capabilities (i.e., capacity to purposefully adjust and achieve evolutionary fitness through adapting and/or shaping the external environment) in designing effective and adaptive strategies, so as to be able to achieve desirable objectives and eventually contribute to society’s aspirational outcomes. Drawing on interviews, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain some key capabilities considered critical to enable good planning and management in the Australian decision-making context. We use a capability approach as a conceptual thinking framework to identify capabilities supportive of good planning and management and their conversion factors (i.e., barriers and enablers at individual, organisational and contextual levels). An inductive thematic analysis was applied to the comments of the interviewees to identify conversion factors and capabilities for different protagonists in water planning and management. The main contributions of the research are to provide a mapping of capabilities in water planning and management in Australia and an associated identification of their critical barriers and enablers. Such a mapping is expected to support reflection by researchers and decision-makers about (1) necessary capabilities to support the design and implementation of effective adaptive plans and (2) means to support them. Results presented comprise a mapping of capabilities, contributing abilities from different stakeholders in water planning and management and their respective barriers. Three overarching capabilities were identified: ‘enabling real and meaningful engagement to support fair and deliberative planning processes’, ‘information to ensure the identification of relevant trade-offs and investment priorities supported by all stakeholders, and able to address future challenges’ and ‘enabling environment to support resilient and thriving ecosystems and communities’. Among the main barriers to capabilities are: mindsets to knowledge inclusion and sharing and influential on knowledge creation and absorptive capacity; artificial decision-making processes influential on creativity, agility and resilience capabilities; legislation complexity and issues and leadership issues, influential on setting an enabling environment for expressing dynamic capabilities supporting adaptive planning and management. These were the principal drivers of water planning failures in identifying relevant investment priorities, addressing future challenges, supporting trust and enabling actionable decisions that could ultimately contribute to the achievement of sustainable and fair outcomes. Implications of our findings for dynamic capabilities are discussed, together with limitations of the research and considerations in regard to future capability needs and orientations.