Water and Environmental Systems Management Under Uncertainty: From Scenario Construction to Robust Solutions and Adaptation

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses concepts, models, and methods for defining strategies, plans, and actions to achieve the sustainable development of water and environmental systems in a context of uncertainty. The complexity of such systems, including human and natural landscapes and their interactions, is a tremendous challenge with regard to decision-making processes. The future that is now being designed involves a myriad of uncertainties, climate and non-climate related, that request comprehensive decision frameworks involving multiple processes (institutional, political, social, economic, biophysical, etc.) to prevent disagreements and barriers from impeding the achievement of sustainable decisions. When it comes to assessing responses to future scenarios (or different states of the world), the idea of ​​robustness can include introducing the concept of adaptation. New terms such as “multiple plausible futures” and “deep uncertainty” have been emerging. How past frameworks should give rise to new frameworks so that decisions to be taken on water and environmental systems management and infrastructure planning are adapted to uncertain future conditions are the main issues tackled. The limitations on predicting the future and controlling and managing water and environmental systems mean that policy makers and society in general, especially knowledge-producing centres, need to shift from rhetoric to intervention, to tackle the many changing tendencies of today. Deciding now, at the present time, which has already been the future, the future of the next generations is an intricate and demanding task.