Introduction: Adaptive Urban Transformation in the Pearl River Delta, China.

Deltaic areas are amidst the most favourable territories around the globe. Their strategic location and superior quality of their soils are core factors supporting both human development and the rise of these regions as global economic hubs. At the same time, deltas are extremely vulnerable to multiple threats from both climate change and the...

Governance Experiments in Water Management: From Interests to Building Blocks

The management of water is a topic of great concern. Inadequate management may lead to water scarcity and ecological destruction, but also to an increase of catastrophic floods. With climate change, both water scarcity and the risk of flooding are likely to increase even further in the coming decades. This makes water management currently a...

Implementing participatory water management: Recent advances in theory, practice, and evaluation

Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called “messes” or “wicked problems.” The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods...

Implementing Participatory Water Management: Recent Advances in Theory, Practice, and Evaluation

Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called “messes” or “wicked problems.” The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods...

Corporate participation in regional sustainability initiatives

Regional Sustainability Initiatives (RSIs) may play a significant role in promoting the cooperation of different stakeholders of society towards a more sustainable future. RSIs can often deal with a number of environmental and social problems more effectively and efficiently than international, national or local activities. RSIs are getting more...

Gaming as the method to integrate modeling participatory approaches in interactive water management

At the science - policy interface there are several reasons to combine models with the participatory process to facilitate the complex policy making process but the communication of the two sides is often too hard to generate any meaningful results. In this paper we argue that to close the communication gap the rationale of the Meta – rule of...

The Growing Importance of Social Learning in Water Resources Management and Sustainability Science

Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on Social Learning in Water Resources Management.