The Importance of Social Learning in Restoring the Multifunctionality of Rivers and Floodplains

By C. Pahl‐Wostl. 2006

450 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Those involved in floodplain restoration have to cope with historical conflicts between human and ecosystem needs. The topic is of high importance in Europe due to the European Water Framework Directive that requires restoration and/or maintenance of a "good ecological status of aquatic ecosystems." However, the seeming trade-off between flood protection and floodplain restoration may change due to a shift in the water management paradigm toward more integrated approaches, in contrast to the command and control approach of the past. This shift in paradigm is summarized in the guiding principle for water management in the Netherlands "Living with floods and give room to water" rather than "Fighting against water." The paper discusses the role of social learning in the transition toward the adaptive management of floodplains and rivers that is required to restore and maintain multifunctional riverine landscapes. In addition to the uncertainties resulting from our limited knowledge about the complex spatiotemporal dynamics of floodplains, we have to take into account the ambiguities that arise as a result of the different perceptions of stakeholders.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a424178a3b590afa6c1a160f641005593d75a5d0

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In Global and Planetary Change

In Management Science and Operations Research

Citations in the corpus

Social Learning and Natural Resource Management: The Emergence of Three Research Perspectives (2011, background): “Also in the response of Reed et al. (2010) to Pahl-Wostl (2006), along with ten other articles published in this journal, different perspectives to social learning are identified.”
Understanding process, power, and meaning in adaptive governance: a critical institutional reading (2018, background): “In particular, they claim that this rigid approach to management results in pathological outcomes (Holling and Meffet 1996) and stifles the innovation needed to manage effectively in an unstable operating environment (Glasbergen 1998, Pahl-Wostl 2006, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007).”
Sustainable Human Development and the Capability Approach: Integrating Environment, Responsibility and Collective Agency (2013, background): “In addition, collective agency cannot be imposed; it has to emerge through a learning process based on interactions between people (Pahl-Wostl, 2006).”
Social Learning and Water Resources Management (2007, background): “The key message of “learning together to manage together” also sheds new light on the understanding of the management process (Bouwen and Taillieu 2004, Pahl-Wostl 2002a, 2006, Craps 2003).”
What is social learning (2010, background): “…existing attempts to assess social learning fail to disentangle the effects of an intervention from other mechanisms through which wider learning may have occurred (for example, Pahl-Wostl 2006, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007a,b, Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2008, Kuper et al. 2009).”
Contested environmental policy infrastructure: socio-political acceptance of renewable energy, water, and waste facilities (2010, background): “The institutional framework should encourage the creativity needed for this development, which implies learning among all significant actors (Pahl-Wostl, 2006; Raadgever et al., 2008).”
Water Management in the Camargue Biosphere Reserve: Insights from Comparative Mental Models Analysis (2011, background): “Although application of the concept of mental models is growing, their measurement and analysis remain a challenge (Pahl-Wostl 2006).”