Explore policy options.
Consider ways forward that are respectful of the diverse interests that are in play … that include more rather than less of the stakeholders’ interests … that create more space for interests that have tended to be marginalised in past practice … basically … ways of carrying forward that seem a ‘better’ or ‘more appropriate’ fit to the situation, taking into account your sense of the whole of what is at stake …
Ways to ease tensions include:
- changing technologies and procedures used in the catchment
- changing objectives for places (e.g. shifts in kind of agriculture, or a planned urban footprint)
- meeting underlying interests in different ways (differentiating interests from positions usually expands the set of relevant possibilities).
Ways to work creatively and laterally include:
- consider case studies where similar difficulties have been addressed
- widen the implicit ‘problem boundaries’, e.g. consider larger scale or longer term socio-economic and ecological processes: in a wider context, does ‘what makes sense’ change?
- check out how a situation ‘feels’: pay attention to any sense of ‘not yet articulated possibilities’, or of ‘a satisfactory resolution hasn’t emerged yet’
- consider using tools like Edward de Bono’s ‘six thinking hats’
- consciously separate ‘exploration of options’ from ‘deciding on which options are best’ to facilitate more creative exploration of what might be possible.
When exploring whether changes in technologies and procedures can ease tensions in this catchment, compare current practice with best practice. For example for drainage line design, the following can be contrasted:
- traditional practice
- design objective: minimise flooding
- dominant technologies: concrete drainage lines
- intermediate practice:
- design objective: deliver water of acceptable quality at ‘end of pipe’, whilst minimising flooding
- dominant technologies: concrete drainage lines, gross pollutant traps, constructed wetlands
- current best practice:
- design objective: an ecologically sympathetic stormwater profile
- dominant technologies: source controls (e.g. tanks), treatment trains, locally sensitive flow management (e.g. maintaining wetting and drying cycles for wetlands).
Using Urbanwater.info, explore
- catchment management best practice
- land use planning best practice
- engineering best practice
- organisational development options
- community education options
- ecological investigation options
comparing them with current practice in your local area.
See also Innovations
- A comprehensive list of creativity techniques
- Free creative thinking tools on the Web
Problems that appear intractable can often be worked on if one shifts to a larger spatial (and often temporal) scale. See:
