@article{6376788ee16941dab337924c4be77991,
title = "Planning in democratizing river basins: The case for a co-productive model of decision making",
abstract = "We reflect on methodologies to support integrated river basin planning for the Ayeyarwady Basin in Myanmar, and the Kamala Basin in Nepal, to which we contributed from 2017 to 2019. The principles of Integrated Water Resources Management have been promoted across states and regions with markedly different biophysical and political economic conditions. IWRM-based river basin planning is complex, resource intensive, and aspirational. It deserves scrutiny to improve process and outcome legitimacy. We focus on the value of co-production and deliberation in IWRM. Among our findings: (i) multi-stakeholder participation can be complicated by competition between actors for resources and legitimacy; (ii) despite such challenges, multi-stakeholder deliberative approaches can empower actors and can be an effective means for co-producing knowledge; (iii) tensions between (rational choice and co-productive) models of decision complicate participatory deliberative planning. Our experience suggests that a commitment to co-productive decision-making fosters socially legitimate IWRM outcomes.",
keywords = "Co-production, Development assistance, Hydrological modelling, Irrigation, IWRM, Rational choice, Scenario analysis, Stakeholder participation, Water governance",
author = "Tira Foran and Penton, {David J.} and Tarek Ketelsen and Barbour, {Emily J.} and Nicola Grigg and Maheswor Shrestha and Louis Lebel and Hemant Ojha and Auro Almeida and Neil Lazarow",
note = "Funding Information: This perspective piece contributes to the South Asia Sustainable Development Investment Portfolio supported by the Australian Aid progam. It was co-funded by CSIRO Land and Water. We thank three anonymous reviewers, Saumitra Neupane, William Young, S.M. Wahid, and Susan Cuddy, for comments provided during the writing process. We acknowledge the Advisory committee for Kamala Basin Initiative, the Australian Water Partnership, eWAter Ltd., Jalsrot Vikas Sanstha, and Policy Entrepreneurs Inc. Funding Information: The Ayeyarwady Basin Exploratory Scoping Study (BESS) was designed to help bridge the gap between the Ayeyarwady State of the Basin (SOBA) assessment, and the World Bank-supported Basin Master Plan project. BESS was sponsored by the Australian Water Partnership, Myanmar Directorate of Water Resources and Improvement of River Systems (DWIR), and the Australian science agency CSIRO. The focal agency, HIC, is a project-based entity affiliated with the National Water Resources Committee (NWRC). NWRC is an inter-agency group formed in 2015 to advise on water-related risks and development. Implementing partners consisted of Chiang Mai University—Unit for Social and Environmental Research (CMU-USER), eWater Ltd., Flow Matters Pty Ltd., International Centre for Environmental Management (ICEM), and CSIRO. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 by the authors.",
year = "2019",
month = dec,
day = "1",
doi = "10.3390/w11122480",
language = "English",
volume = "11",
pages = "1--19",
journal = "Water (Switzerland)",
issn = "2073-4441",
publisher = "Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)",
number = "12",
}