Socially Robust River Management: Role of Perspective Dependent Acceptability Thresholds

Abstract

Different river management strategies have different impacts on the water system. Depending on how the future unfolds (e.g., in terms of climate change) impacts on navigation, flood damage, and nature are shaped. Impacts will be evaluated differently by people with different perspectives on river management, and what is considered acceptable now may become unacceptable in the future. The challenge is thus to identify a river management strategy that remains acceptable in different climate change scenarios and under different societal perspectives. Such a strategy is what the authors define as a socially robust river management strategy. This article presents a method—based on cultural theory and an integrated assessment metamodel (IAMM)—to explore the (changing) acceptability of river management measures while taking uncertain developments in climate into account. The result is an overview of different gradations of robustness per measure, indicating the prospected tenability of a measure and its vulnerability for changes in climate and perspective.