AquaPedia:Policies/Criteria for Case Study Inclusion

To decide if a water conflict or problem meets the guidelines for developing a new AquaPedia case study ask:

• Does this case study involve a contentious water management problem between parties including 2 or more sovereign or federated states or other established territories?

Examples: Two nations who share a river basin may have issues about water storage and allocations. A federated state or province within a nation may have different priorities for water resources they share. Regional governments may disagree with their federal government over how shared water sources are managed.

• Does this case study involve a problem that requires addressing rival water uses across multiple purposes or sectors?

Examples: Stakeholders could include representatives of agriculture and industry with competing needs. Stakeholders could include smallholder farms and large holder agribusiness with competing groundwater withdrawals.

• Does this case study involve a problem that includes significant uncertainty that cannot be quantified or otherwise satisfactorily addressed with standard risk management tools?

Example: Stakeholders perceive significant uncertainty regarding future climate, future water availability, estimated water needs, or economic situations.

• Does this case study involve a problem that cannot be satisfactorily solved via an agreed upon regulatory, funding, or technological mechanism?

Example: addressing the problem through a regulatory change, providing funding, or building additional infrastructure does not solve the problem in the eyes of the stakeholders and each opportunity to apply these tools requires addressing additional problems or complications from one or more viewpoints.

• Do stakeholders in this conflict have differing viewpoints on what the problem is and what issues are central to the case?

Example: Some stakeholders feel that allocation of water rights are central to the problem, another stakeholder may consider allocation for a specific use to be the most important issue, and other stakeholders may be more concerned with environmental costs of a policy or intervention.

If you can’t answer “yes” to at least three of these questions, your topic of interest probably isn’t a case.