2. Participatory Approaches to Environmental Management: Future Design for Water Resources Management

Participatory approaches that feature the broad inclusion of local stakeholders have become a basic design requirement for future water resources management. However, the actual implementation of an effective management plan currently remains a challenge. In this chapter the authors focus on the concept of “system integration” in integrated water resources management (IWRM) as the root cause of the problem. More than ten years have passed since the publication of Asit K. Biswas’ ultimately critical treatise, wherein he argued that although he could understand the necessity for IWRM, it cannot be reflected in management plans. Nonetheless, this problem continues to be neglected. We argue in this chapter that the problem exists in ways of thinking that are predicated on hard-path water resources management. In the conclusion, we discuss the outlook for the alternative soft-path, adaptive management, using an aborted dam project in Japan as a regional case study.