A procedural approach to strengthening integration and participation in water resource planning

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is emerging as a worldwide agreed alternative to the reductionist and top-down approach that was central to the water resource management in the last century. It has been adopted by the Water Framework Directive, the most ambitious and influential water policy tool of these days, as the guiding principle for the development of River Basin Management Plans (RBMP) that will be the common tool for planning and managing water resource in Europe in the next years. Although the purpose and priorities of the RBMPS are clearly and unambiguously defined, the question of how integration and participation are to be promoted in their implementation has not been adequately addressed. This might be partially attributable to the central role generally assigned to the modelling issues with respect to the decision-making process, which is behind the definition of RBMPS and of which models are an essential – but not the only – element. This paper argues the need for a methodological approach to give a first answer to the question posed above and proposes a Participatory and Integrated Planning (PIP) procedure developed for that purpose. The PIP procedure is a 9 phases procedure that, starting from the identification of the goals of the planning activity, ends with a negotiation process among the stakeholders that produces a set of compromise alternatives to be submitted to the decision maker(s) for the final political decision. The procedure is presented both in its theoretical aspects and as an application to the planning of the Lake Maggiore, a transboundary water system between Italy and Switzerland. This application came out with a solution that will probably close a long-standing controversial between the two countries: it is strongly supported by the stakeholders of both the sides and the international agreement it requires is presently under consideration of the Foreign Offices of the two countries. The role for Multi Objective Decision Support Systems (MODSS) as prime tools to support and operationalize the procedure in practice is finally considered.