An opinion on adaptive governance and management in water resources restoration projects

Resumo

There is a lack of studies and knowledge about governance and management in water resource restoration projects. It turns out that this task is complex because specialists need to work together. This joint work includes local actors, residents, traders, government agents, representatives of diverse associations, and, ultimately, tourists, all active in the ecosystem’s degradation and recovery. In summary, a project’s success is directly related toincluding local actors in project activities, especially by using their tacit knowledge and solving conflicts of interest.
For example, in a mangrove cleaning action in which the authors of this article participated, the participants’ roles and tasks had to be reordered based on information from local fishermen about tidal movements and mangrove animals. Consequently,
a change of leadership was necessary. We propose that the governance and management of recovery projects must be guided by adaptability, both in the governance mechanisms and the management strategy of actions.
We present arguments and evidence supporting the above statement and offer a matrix describing specific governance and management variables for restoration projects. The matrix can be a starting point for studies and plans for managing people and tasks.
Our proposal significantly impacts some assumptions of administration sciences and network management. Firstly, we promote the concept of adaptive governance, which is not the standard in this field. It involves continuously reconstructing the mechanisms that regulate and guide collective actions while always considering the inclusion of local actors.
Secondly, we challenge the traditional concept of leadership.
Generally, researchers and managers state that established, legitimized, and perennial leadership is essential for forming and developing networks. In the matrix presented here, the mechanisms that define leaders and leadership are variable, depending
on the task and available human resources.
Including local actors in a project’s actions is a valuable contribution to the theme of responsible, transparent, inclusive citizen science. The increasing academic discourse involves making applied science available to the affected population
This opinion article opens up a discussion about water resource recovery projects. Our analysis, examples, and scope of coverage are restricted to this field of action, with no intention of generalization. We hope the proposal will result in more discussion
on the organization and operation of ecosystem recovery projects, which is an absent point in articles, reports, and presentations that focus more on technical aspects.