Water Governance in the Face of Global Change: From Understanding to Transforming

The sustainable management of global water resources is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century. Many problems and barriers towards improvement can be attributed to governance failures rather than the resource base itself. At the same time our understanding of complex water governance systems is quite limited and fragmented. The stay at STIAS will be devoted to writing a book on water governance building the foundations for a profound understanding of what factors that determine success and failure of water governance systems and translate such understanding to action and transformation. The book will develop and apply a conceptual and analytical framework which captures the complexity of real water governance systems. Specific emphasis will be given to governance reform, adaptive and transformative capacity and multi-level societal learning. Water governance in South Africa will be an important case study.