Adaptive Water Management: Strengthening Laws and Institutions to Cope with Uncertainty

Abstract

We live in a complex world full of uncertainty. This is particularly true of hydrological systems and the myriad other factors affecting water management. The nonlinear nature of the hydrologic cycle is well documented (Gleick, 1987; Lewin, 1992; Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 2006; Ruhl, 1997). As the debate on climate change and climate change models illustrates, it can be notoriously difficult to develop models that accurately reflect the hydrologic cycle and the factors that affect it, even when phalanxes of the world’s leading scientists and computer modellers focus their attention on the task (IPCC, 2007a).