4. Designing ecosystem management strategies

Ecosystem management strategies that establish ground rules for urban water management develop out of:

the needs of receiving water bodies,
the ecological dynamics of catchments, and
the interests of groups who depend on these catchments and water bodies.

Familiar kinds of plan that document ecosystem management strategies include:

catchment management plans,
estuary management plans, and
stormwater management plans (if their scope is wide enough).

Stepping back from stormwater to the urban water cycle, and then from the urban water cycle to the catchment dynamics in which they are embedded, makes sense for urban water managers because the ecological context defines very important performance goals for urban areas.

And because we have a lot to learn about how to manage urban areas so that downstream ecosystems are managed well, in practice ecosystem management strategies can play major roles in legitimising innovation in urban water management

Whenever we want to achieve environmental goals through a water management program, and we want to use our funds efficiently.

If what we want to achieve depends on other organisms - on places - responding to what we do in particular ways, then we need an ecosystem managment strategy. To be clear about what we are doing we need to articulate what we intend to do, what we expect to happen, and why expecting this makes sense.

We generally need 'strategies' in urban water management - not just one project after another - because ecosystems integrate the effects of human action. To get a river system back to health, for example, 'the whole' of what people are doing has to make sense. Developing a strategy:

reduces the risks of groups acting at cross-purposes, and
increases the likelihood that 'least cost' paths will be found.

A design process

An ecosystem management strategy can be developed by:

involving interested parties
roughing out the scope of the management strategy

boundaries,
main issues,
recognised management options, ...

exploring the networks of cause and effect that shape ecosystem dynamics

using systems analysis,
synthesising available science and local experience, ...

exploring management scenarios

being inventive and creative,
testing possible strategies against

what you understand of the systems' dynamics
what you understand of stakeholders' interests, what's equitable, ...

negotiating together about

which management options, which scenario, to pursue
how you will close plan / do / review loops
how uncertainties and surprises will be addressed

formalising an initial agreement and a process for further negotiations to revise the strategy.

Other overviews of design processes:

Catchment and stormwater management planning
- Catchment management overview
- Planning processes

Characteristic weaknesses

There are diverse ways of developing ecosystem management strategies, and strategy documents can take a variety of forms.

Done well, catchment management plans, estuary management plans, and stormwater management plans (if their scope is wide enough) can all be effective ecosystem management strategies.

There are some characteristic weaknesses which need to be avoided, however. These include:

defining a strategy simply by taking a list of issues raised by stakeholders and addressing those:
- when we simply do that, we don't test the issue identification against a scientific understanding of the socio-economic, ecological system we are managing:
  - if that is all we are doing we are not trying to manage a place as an (open) 'system', and
  - we may well miss key opportunities and risks
not closing plan / do / review loops by comparing outcomes with intentions

quite often accountabilities are defined simply in terms of 'whether organisation X was done Y'; to be an ecosystem management strategy a strategy must specify ecological goals (amongst others) and test to see whether in fact they have been achieved.

Design tools

Process	Information on methods
Involving interested parties	Catchment audit: identifying stakeholders Stakeholder analysis Engaging stakeholders Facilitating community decision-making
Scoping the management strategy	Catchment audit: exploring tensions and options Scoping processes Reviewing existing plans
Exploring the networks of cause and effect	Catchment data and resources Researching ecosystems needs Systems analysis and other analytical tools
Exploring management scenarios	Considering the 'interests' of ecological spaces Developing options Existing Plans and Case Studies
Negotiating, and formalising an agreement	Exploring positions and interests Catchment audit: a way of developing a negotiating position Principled negotiation Negotiating alignment amongst agencies

Management system design

An important part of articulating 'ecosystem management strategy' is articulating a 'management system' that can be used by a network of stakeholders to track ecological and socio-economic outcomes and to hold each other accountable to their commitments.

See Designing Ecosystem Management Systems for more details.

Many of the major shifts in water supply, sewerage and stormwater management practice have had ecological impacts as their drivers - in part simply because communities value their local environments, and in part because of socio-economic effects of ecological decline. Examples of this widening of horizons include:

in stormwater management: adding water quality to a flooding focus, and then adding instream ecology within urban areas to the mix;
in water supply: adding maintenance of environmental flows to a focus on water supply security; and
in sewage treatment: adding a focus on using waste water as a resource to a focus on treating waste to protect human health.

Broadly speaking the shift that is occurring is taking chronic and indirect effects of urban water management practices into account, as well as acute and direct effects. In this context articulating ecosystem management strategies makes sense because:

an ecosystem management strategy provides a relatively solid foundation upon which to devise urban water management strategies, and
an ecosystem management strategy is a powerful way of showing that changes to urban water cycle management are legitimate.

Principles

General

What is an ecosystem management approach?

The Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Management (Ecological Society of America)

Defining ecological management units (University of Georgia, US)
This paper comes out of a community forestry contexts, but many of its points apply more broadly.

Systems practice: managing complexity (Open University, UK)

Adaptive management (Urbanwater.info)

Building capacity for resilience in social-ecological systems (PhD)

Putting monitoring first: designing accountable ecosystem restoration and management plans (US)

From Complex Regions to Complex Worlds (paper)
"Panarchy focuses on ecological and social systems that change abruptly. Panarchy is the process by which they grow, adapt, transform, and, in the end, collapse. These stages occur at different scales. The back loop of such changes is a critical time and presents critical opportunities for experiment and learning. It is when uncertainties arise and when resilience is tested and established. We now see changes on a global scale that suggest that we are in such a back loop. This article assesses the possibility of using the ideas that are central to panarchy, developed on a regional scale, to help explain the changes that are being brought about on a global scale by the Internet and by climate, economic, and geopolitical changes."