The approach developed during the BeWater project to make society an active participant in adapting river basin management to climate change is now available online. A newly published paper describes the participatory approach used to identify and evaluate river basin management options and details the application and evaluation of the approach in four case-study river basins across the Mediterranean.
As part of the approach, a diverse group of stakeholders joined a series of workshops and consultations in four river basins located in Cyprus, Slovenia, Spain and Tunisia. In each river basin, stakeholders expressed their views on challenges in their river basins, as well as options to tackle these challenges. Information on challenges, as well as the factors contributing to these challenges, was used to develop a fuzzy cognitive map for each basin. These were then used to assess the impact of a total of 102 suggested management options for the four river basins. A multi-criteria analysis linked the options and their estimated impacts with to identify the most preferred options. The approach received a positive evaluation by the participating stakeholders and allowed linking of stakeholders’ knowledge and perceptions about their river basin to their preferences for options to adapt the management of their river basins to future conditions.
The full paper, written by a team of authors led by Dr Verkerk (EFI), is available here .
Full reference: Verkerk, P.J.; Sánchez, A.; Libbrecht, S.; Broekman, A.; Bruggeman, A.; Daly-Hassen, H.; Giannakis, E.; Jebari, S.; Kok, K.; Krivograd Klemenčič, A.; Magjar, M.; Martinez de Arano, I.; Robert, N.; Smolar-Žvanut, N.; Varela, E.; Zoumides, C. A Participatory Approach for Adapting River Basins to Climate Change. Water 2017, 9, 958.