The concept of watershed management approach has made its way to the front stage of environmental research very much in conjunction with the concerns about sustainability and sustainable development. Once it has been realized that sustainability is a systems property and that it requires economic concerns to be considered within the framework of ecological options available, and values of the society to be brought in harmony with the carrying capacities of the environment, it started to become clear that the existing administrative and sociogeographic boundaries are not really designed to take into account both the socioeconomic and ecological features of systems. Watersheds seemed to be a reasonable alternative, taking into account the ecological properties of an area as well as the socioeconomic ones.
An important advantage of a watershed approach is that the borders associated with it are objective. Instead of being result of some historical, subjective, oftentimes unfair, voluntaristic or contradictory process, they are totally based on certain geographical characteristics such as relief, which is difficult to change and makes little sense to oppose. In this sense a watershed is a perfect geographic unit around which to build consensus among the multitude of administrative, legal, and public bodies located within. The flow of water is serving just as an indicator of the relief and landscape characteristics, on the one hand, and as an integrator of many of the processes occurring within the watershed, on the other.
Whereas economic and social, administrative divisions take no account of ecological and geographical factors and therefore tend to be unstable and disputable, watersheds seem to be a perfect compromise to build the management on. The watershed approach is not supposed to substitute the existing borders and regions, but rather it offers as a superadministrative viewpoint to exercise consensus across economic, social and administrative bodies. The implied hierarchical structure of superwatersheds and subwatersheds is very useful for upgrading and downgrading, zooming in and out, changing resolution, depending upon the type and scale of the managerial problems to be resolved.
Watershed analysis and management inherits all the main paradigms of ecosystem management. It embodies the greater-ecosystem concept (Grumbine, 1990), which broadens the ecosystem definition beyond its original biological and physical meaning. The fact that ecosystem management is based on the principle of preserving ecosystem integrity while maintaining sustainable benefits for human population (Norton, 1992), implies that the decision making process should be fundamentally restructured in order to take into account all the subsystems in their integrity and all the stake holders with all the diversity of their potentially contradicting interests and concerns. In addition to scientific research and data acquisition by what Slocombe (1993) calls Òsubstantive methodsÓ, there is demand in new Òprocess methodsÓ that refer to working with people, communities, businesses in describing, planning and managing watersheds.
Lackey (1997) identifies five general characteristics for the ecosystem management problems: (1) public and private values and priorities are in dispute, resulting in mutually exclusive decision alternatives; (2) there is political pressure to make rapid and significant changes in public policy; (3) private and public stakes are high with substantial costs and risks (some irreversible) to some groups; (4) the technical ecological and sociological facts are highly uncertain; (5) policy decisions will have effects outside the scope of the problem. He concludes that Òsolving these kinds of problems in a democracy has been likened to asking a pack of four hungry wolves and a sheep to apply democratic principles to deciding what to eat for lunchÓ (p.4). The outcome may seem quite obvious, except that with people there is always less certainty about how problems are resolved and in the long run there is still a chance for the sheep to persuade the wolves to become vegetarians. The success of this endeavour becomes very much dependent on how efficiently the new technology is developed and used. In this context we view technology not as much as a panacea to cure all the problems of environmental degradation and resource depletion, but rather as a means of understanding systems dynamics and resolving conflict.
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I see great potential from using the Internet for discussions such as
these on watershed management issues. It is possible to convene
opintions of diverse people interested in protecting a watershed area:
o Businesses and Chambers of Commerce, interested in economic
development and balancing growth with environmental protection
o non-government organizations interested in environmental protection
o scientific groups offering advice on the best methods to protect the
watershed, and on consequences of various policy actions.
o government officials, especially at the local level, who must live
with the consequences of actions to protect watershed.
I also believe that the Patuxent River Commission can join with the
University in providing leadership to frame key questions for others to respond to.
I agree with Dr. Voinov that the missing link between research findings and the timely application of them is in the dissemination of said information. Research is being funded on many different levels, including higher learning institutions, government labs and corporate research facilities. As a society, we have more information than we know what to do with; and even if we know what to do with it, the political will factors into every decision, it seems.
Using the Internet seems to be a golden opportunity to "take it to the streets," to engage the public in one of the founding principles of democracy - open access to information. With interactive websites, the open discussion of the information is also allowed, bypassing the usual academic overanalysis, corporate censorship and political myopia.
My question pertains to how Dr. Voinov plans to make his modeling conceptual template applicable to other situations. Is it a universal or at least adaptable model? Could it be used to analyze and make decisions, for example on the outcomes of continued chicken waste dumping on the Eastern shore of MD? Could it be used to analyze the benefits of a tax on pollution? How about for investment in a better educational paradigm for DC schools?
This brings to mind the question of how valid the results would be as well, since the results are only as good as the initial inputs AND the efficacy of the modeling system. Should these results be used to make hard and fast decisions, or are they designed more to facilitate discussion and explore possiblities? Could you assign a %validity factor like statisticians routinely do, e.g. with a +/- error points? Do standard quantitative statistical analysis rules apply to this kind of cutting-edge application?
In summary, I applaud this application, despite my probing questions. With today's kids so well adapted to computer use, it's only logical that the staggering power of data analysis and interactive discussion facilitated by the Internet be intermingled into user-friendly apps. to engender intelligent decision-making.
Sincerely,
Jonathon Beeblebrox
beeble@aol.com
Regional management implies a close interaction and linkage between the numerous agents acting in the region. The efficiency of this interaction is a function of the information that is shared among and used by all the stake holders. In many cases it depends not as much on the quality and amount of the information available, what science has been mostly concerned with all this time, but rather on how well the information is disseminated, shared and used. And that is exactly the function that the Internet and the Web, as a substantial part of it, can offer.