In our complex society, specific expertise is inevitable for decision-making in technical projects such as water management projects. For that reason, experts are also called the sixth power. Some of them work in administrative organizations and others are hired by stakeholders that participate in decision-making. For a large part they are employed in the private sector as consultants or are employees of interest groups. As such, they represent the most technocratic dimension of such projects. It often appears that their opinions about technical and financial issues play a dominant role in the outcome of water-related projects. The objective of this paper is to explore the influence of experts, in relation to the stakeholders (including governments and lay people), in participatory decision-making processes regarding water management. An important question here is whether experts and their knowledge advance or determine decision-making. We present two concrete experiments: one where experts were given a leading role, and one where experts were given a position in the backseat. The experiments demonstrate that stronger expert participation negates public participation and the other way around.

Local success stories of sustainable forest management can inspire scientists and decision-makers. This article analyses the traditional 'Adat' institution that plays a role in the management of Grand Forest Park 'Herman Yohannes', in the Western part of Timor where the Adat forest management regulation has been formally restored. The original set of design principles for sustainable management of common pool resources of Elinor Ostrom (1990) has been used in this study as an analytical framework for understanding the role of the Adat institution in respect to the forest. In the park, the local community applies Adat for protection and management of the forest that has been its home for centuries. It appears that Ostrom's design principles can be identified in the current Adat institution and play a role in the sustainable management of the forest. Although many other variables can lead to success or failure of institutions, the original (internal) design principles are still valuable as a practical tool for building institutions that are - under certain conditions - able to sustain common pool resources. The findings confirm the importance of traditional institutions in successful forest management. The study recommends that decision-makers take into account existing traditional management systems that have shown long term functionality.

This article focuses on the incorporation of values in visioning, an early stage of landscape planning from a social learning perspective. After an introduction of social learning in planning and visioning directed at expert knowledge and public values, two visioning cases are evaluated. The authors assess methods of making public values manifest and ways to include them in the visioning process. The cases show that surveys, semi-structured interviews and the emphasis on values during the visioning exercise itself were suitable methods to acquaint civilians with both their own values and those of others. The explicit values made communication more effective and enhanced social learning. In both cases, the civilians proved to be capable of expressing their values and visioning in conjunction with experts. The article concludes with the impact of integrating values in landscape planning, the learning process that emerged between the stakeholders and the implication of the findings for visioning practices elsewhere.

markdownabstract__Introduction__ Water systems such as rivers and lakes have many important values for ecosystems and human societies. Both economical, social-ecological, cultural and political values are met by the water systems, connecting different activities in human society and ecosystems. Water systems with low water quality serve different values than healthy water systems and have huge impact on the society. For example, for drinking water, biodiversity or recreational open space, a healthy water system is crucial. The values of the water systems are interlinked. The interlinking and overlapping values of the water systems at the spatial and temporal scales have determined a connective capacity in the water governance, be it the coordination between the values or the competition between the values and its linked governance approach. The challenge is values of water systems change with the change in the societal development and consequently influence the water governance approach. A reverse process is also evident. Unfortunately, today water systems in many cities have slowly reduced in their total value for society. The revival of the water systems such as river and lakes is thus seem to be urgent in order to enhance the values generated by these systems for the society.

textabstractZowel Vlaanderen als Nederland heeft de afgelopen jaren problemen gehad met overstromingen en wateroverlast, weliswaar in verschillende mate. De aanpak van overstromingen en wateroverlast is in beide regio’s vooral een natuurwetenschappelijke aangelegenheid en dus vooral het terrein van oa. civiele ingenieurs, waterbouwkundige experten en modellenbouwers. De beleidsfilosofie om waterkwantiteitproblemen aan te pakken is om meer ruimte vrij te maken voor de rivier. Dit vraagt om een ruimtelijke herinrichting. Deze beleidsaanpak stuit momenteel op een aantal grenzen: er blijkt niet voldoende ruimte en geld aanwezig te zijn om dit beleid te realiseren en matigende maatregelen zoals de watertoets, aangepast landgebruik en regenwaterputten worden niet naar behoren uitgevoerd. Klaarblijkelijk worstelt men, met name in Vlaanderen, met de vraag ‘hoe verder’. Een parlementaire commissie is op zoek gegaan naar een antwoord. In dit special issue duiden een aantal sociologische en bestuurskundige onderzoekers uit Vlaanderen en Nederland de huidige problematiek van overstromingsbeleid vanuit het maatschappelijk perspectief. De belemmeringen waar men tegen aan loopt zijn niet alleen van technische aard, doch houden onder meer verband met gebrek aan draagvlak, inertie in handelen, waardenconflicten, risicopercepties enz… kortom, aspecten van menselijke aard. Vanuit de wetenschap wordt opgemerkt dat deze aspecten vaak nog te weinig in rekening gebracht worden, en dat een geintegreerde aanpak, die rekening houdt met de water aspecten, de ruimtelijke aspecten, en ook de menselijke aspecten, niet steeds wordt gehanteerd. Het doel van het special issue is om in een min of meer samenhangend verhaal van vijf artikelen (met zowel Vlaamse als Nederlandse cases) het bewustzijn te vergroten en kennis rondom deze maatschappelijke aspecten te verspreiden, alsook handvaten te bieden in de huidige beleidspraktijk om het veiligheidsniveau via deze maatschappelijke aspecten alsnog te vergroten.

In many places in the world the effects of common floods are increased by climate change. In the area around the Indonesian city of Semarang, the number and effects of tidal flooding are becoming more and more severe. We found that the inhabitants used different strategies against the impact of flooding. In both the existing and the predicted flood prone areas, most people appear not to intend to leave the area, even when the floods become everyday routine. People are connected to their dwellings in a way that abandoning is not a realistic scenario. This study provides relevant information about the way people in the affected areas perceive flood risks and adaptation opportunities. Governmental policymakers and urban planners could base their strategies and actions on this information.

Water governance in urban areas is inherently complex and challenging. During recent decades, water management has increasingly been focusing on integration of the different economic demands regarding water resources. Modern water governance takes the whole water system into account in its aim to optimise the different values of the water system, in close interaction with stakeholders. This paper applies the modern, interactive approach to the management of floods in a country considered to be one of the world's most flood-prone and vulnerable: Bangladesh. Are the pillars of modern water governance practiced in its metropolitan capital Dhaka? The current institutional setting of flood management is analysed following the main pillars of the interactive water management framework: integration, river basin approach, sustainability and interaction. Based on the analysis, general recommendations are formulated to bring further innovation to water and flood management in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and other great deltas in the world.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are computer programs that are able to bring large amounts of data of both the physical and the social system together in one comprehensive overview shown digitally. GIS occurred very rapidly on the Dutch policy agenda. In this paper we analyze how the fast introduction process of GIS-based instruments in water management and more specifically in river flood management can be explained. By applying a range of classical models on agenda-setting, we show the important contribution of GIS to the water and flood issue in current spatial planning and policy development in the Netherlands.

textabstractAbstract. One of the ongoing discussions in water resource governance in India is on the revival of the river and lake systems. The new water-system as infrastructures are proving to be the connectors in the current societal (urban) development as they did in the times of traditional water management and old settlement pattern. Rivers and lakes have different social, ecological and economical demands made on them at different periods of societal development and that made them vulnerable to change. One of the core challenges documented in the governance of rivers and lakes in India is addressing the rapid changes in these value systems. Effectively addressing the change (or priority) in the values of water systems and urban systems linked to the governance can be a major step towards sustainability of these systems. There is still limited understanding of how the values of water resource systems are progressively linked to changing urban systems and how upward and downward causation linkages occur within the systems as well as across diverse sectors and scales of governance. The PhD research on ‘Sustainability of urban lake systems in India’ is an attempt to look at the interactions and outcomes of the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban systems and lake systems especially the values that sustain the institutional and ecological memory. The paper highlights the relationship and the role of values between urban lakes systems (ecological systems) and governance (social systems) and identifies that sustainability of both the systems is the key towards sustainable cities. The multitier framework for analyzing the social-ecological systems is used as the foundation to elaborate the link of the values with urban lake systems and governance in the context of Ahmedabad city. Then Vastrapur lake development in Ahmedabad is studied to elaborate the role of values