The Management and Transition Framework

An analysis of the characteristics and performance of water resource governance and of the processes of change towards more adaptive and sustainable water governance requires a framework of intermediate complexity. Such a framework, the Management and Transition Framework (MTF) has been developed supporting the analysis of water systems and management regimes to improve the scientific understanding of water governance and management regimes and to give practical guidance for the implementation of transition processes towards more adaptive regimes. The framework integrates a range of concepts to develop a more coherent understanding of the complexity of water management regimes. Specific emphasis is given to adaptive capacity and learning processes. However, the MTF is not linked to one specific theory but provides a flexible language that can be tailored to specific research questions.

The MTF is unique in the scope of conceptual integration and thus also the potential for integrated analysis of water systems and parts thereof. It is unique as framework to capture the complexity of resource governance regimes and their dynamics. The MTF can be applied to analyse the influence of structural characteristics of a governance regime, such as degree of centralisation or the presence of informal networks on a regime’s adaptive capacity and learning.
UML (Unified Modeling Language) was chosen for the formal representation of the framework components. This facilitates the development of simulation models and a direct comparison between models and empirical data. Simulation models can contribute important insights and provide tools for exploration in particular when systems are complex. However, it is a major challenge to develop meaningful simulation models for an application domain where no established conceptual and theoretical foundations exist and empirical data are yet weak and fragmented (Holtz et al, 2008; Holtz, 2010). This is one reason why more emphasis has to the development of a conceptual and methodological framework and the development of simulation models has been postponed to a phase when sounder empirical foundations are available.

The MTF provides an ontology and formalised representations of structural elements of a water system and policy and learning processes. Such a formalised approach is a requirement for comparative analyses over a wider range of case studies. Figure 2 depicts important elements – the classes which define the variables of interest and their relations represented in UML (a) processes in multi-level regimes (b).

(a)	(b)
Figure 1: Important elements of the Management and Transition Framework. (a) Class diagram in UML - attributes not included. (b) Schematic representation of processes.

The overarching boundaries are given by the 'Water System', which comprises all environmental and human components. The 'Ecological System' class comprises abiotic and biotic components of the water system. 'Environmental Services' capture the role of an ecological system to provide different kinds of services for human activities. 'Environmental Hazards' are the threats posed by an ecological system. The 'Societal System' is the social system in which an ‘action arena’ is embedded.

An 'Action Arena' is an issue-specific political arena focused on a 'societal function' such as flood protection or water supply and characterised by 'strategic management goals', 'actors' and a number of 'action situations'. A process is depicted as a sequence of action situations (black and grey circles in Figure 1b). A distinction is made between policy and learning processes. An 'Action Situation' (AS) is a structured social interaction context that leads to specific outcomes. Results can be for example institutions or knowledge, which affect social interactions in other actions situations or direct physical interventions in the system such as implementation of infrastructure or distribution of water to different uses. 'AS' is the regime element where ‘actors’ take certain 'roles' and perform certain 'actions'. Also, 'knowledge' is part of 'AS'. An AS is assumed to be located at a phase, which refers to different pre-defined phases in policy (e.g. policy formulation) or learning (e.g. building capacity and broadening stakeholder support) processes and a level, which refers to different administrative units, which could be based on the traditional boundaries of administrations (e.g. nation, province) or those defined by the hydrological principle (e.g. transboundary or national basin, sub-basin). According to the IAD framework an AS can be classified as constitutional, collective choice and operational. As a coarse distinction one can state that constitutional and collective choice AS represent governance and operational AS management activities.
The MTF has a number of further classes (e.g. Institution, Actor, Knowledge, Role) Furthermore each class is characterised by certain attributes such as excludability or subtractability for the ecosystem service class.

A special issue on the MTF (concept and applications) has been published in Environmental Science and Policy:

• Pahl-Wostl, C. and Kranz, N. (eds.) 2010. Special issue: Water governance in times of change. Environmental Science & Policy 13 (7). [online] URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/publication?issn=14629011&volume=13&issue=7