Learning Systems for Adaptive Water Management:

Given the unprecedented global changes where “business-as-usual” is no longer an option in water management, teaching water management can also no longer be business-as-usual. In recent years the concept of adaptive water management (AWM) has been developed, giving managers guidance on how to respond adaptively to increasing risks of droughts and flooding. The most important implications of climate change for the water manager are learning to deal with uncertainty, measuring vulnerability, managing participative processes involving stakeholders, and linking water management to societal and social learning processes. AWM ultimately provides a framework in which individuals and organizations can perpetuate learning systems that enhance the capacity of society to deal with increasing risks and uncertainties in the water sector.

While today’s water managers are already facing the challenge of addressing these issues, changes in university curricula need to be made in order to equip the next generation of water managers. Ideally, a teaching programme for AWM addresses the three aspects of learning: knowledge, skills and attitude. Effective teaching of AWM to tap these three aspects incorporates the use of a diversity of working forms, including new educational approaches like role-playing and participatory modelling. For this purpose, opencourseware ¹ for adaptive water management has been created within the framework of the EU-funded NeWater research project, and a complementary international 48training-of-trainers programme has been developed and implemented. Tracking the subsequent developments in the curricula used by course participants in their home institutions is being undertaken.

This chapter explains and reviews the approach adopted in the NeWater project to develop an online AWM curriculum and to supplement this with face-to-face, training-of-trainers courses to create a multiplier effect in the dissemination of AWM teaching throughout university curricula within developing and developed countries. It also outlines the advances in individual, organizational and societal learning required if adaptive water management is to be realized.