Beyond the traditional paradigm of water resources management
Scenario thinking to address deep uncertainty
Wenyan Wu (University of Melbourne)
Leila Eamen (Global Institute for Water Security, University of Waterloo)
Graeme Dandy (University of Adelaide)
Holger R. Maier (University of Adelaide)
Saman Razavi (Global Institute for Water Security)
Jan Kwakkel (TU Delft - Policy Analysis)
Jiajia Huang (University of Melbourne)
George Kuczera (The University of Newcastle, Australia)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Sustainable management of water resources is crucial for humanity. However, traditional methods for achieving this are becoming obsolete. This is because they are underpinned by the assumption that we have a good understanding of how water availability and demand will change in the future. However, based on our current experience with climate change, this is not the case. In fact, rather than having a good understanding of what the future might look like, it is, in fact, deeply uncertain. Consequently, a new paradigm for water resources management is needed; one that accounts for deep uncertainty by embracing scenario thinking. We categorize and summarize different causes of deep uncertainty in water resources management and provide examples of how an emerging paradigm rooted in scenario thinking can deal with these. We hope to stimulate discussion to enable this new paradigm to be developed further and embedded in standard practice.
help_outline