Ecuadorian water funds' use of scale-sensitive strategies to stay on course in forest and landscape restoration governance.

Water funds are task-specific organisations that conserve and restore watersheds. The funds provide sustained finance and a collaborative space for actors at different levels to improve the water regulation functions of upstream ecosystems, safeguard water quality, and establish ecological connectivity with the aim of ensuring downstream water quantity and quality. However, while implementing conservation and restoration efforts at local level, water funds encounter scale challenges, consisting of mismatches between the ecological and the governance scale and misalignment between governance levels. This study's aim is to identify and unravel both the scale challenges with which two Ecuadorian water funds (FONAG and FORAGUA) were confronted and the scale-sensitive governance strategies that they planned and deployed to overcome them. We collected data through a document review, 48 semi-structured interviews, and participatory observation, and used content analysis methods to analyse the interview transcripts. Consequently, at both funds, we identified a blind spot towards rural livelihood realities, a temporal mismatch between short-term election cycles and long-term restoration timelines, and a spatial mismatch between the reach of restoration efforts and degradation processes. At FORAGUA, we also identified heterogeneity across levels regarding the purpose of restoration, with different spatial implications. We identified a total of 12 tailored strategies that the two water funds deployed or aim to deploy in reaction to these challenges in an attempt to re-create fit with ecological processes and alignment with other governance levels. Some of these strategies caused new scale challenges to emerge. By observing and acting on emerging scale challenges, water funds try to stay on course to achieve restoration objectives. We conclude that the water funds, which are governance arrangements designed to create spatial and temporal fit with ecological processes, have to continuously adapt their governance strategies to maintain cross-scale fit and cross-level alignment.

Web-based environmental simulation: bridging the gap between scientific modeling and decision-making.

Data availability in environmental sciences is growing rapidly. Conventional monitoring systems are collecting data at increasing spatial and temporal resolutions; satellites provide a constant stream of global observations, and citizen scientist generate local data with electronic gadgets and cheap devices. There is a need to process this stream of heterogeneous data into useful information, both for science and for decision-making. Advances in networking and computer technologies increasingly enable accessing, combining, processing, and visualizing these data. This Feature reflects upon the role of environmental models in this process. We consider models as the primary tool for data processing, pattern identification, and scenario analysis. As such, they are an essential element of science-based decision-making. The new technologies analyzed here have the potential to turn the typical top-down flow of information from scientists to users into a much more direct, interactive approach. This may accelerate the dissemination of environmental information to a larger community of users. It may also facilitate harvesting feedback, and evaluating simulations and predictions from different perspectives. However, the evolution poses challenges, not only to model development but also to the communication of model results and their assumptions, shortcomings, and errors.

Making framing of uncertainty in water management practice explicit by using a participant-structured approach.

By now, the need for addressing uncertainty in the management of water resources is widely recognized, yet there is little expertise and experience how to effectively deal with uncertainty in practice. Uncertainties in water management practice so far are mostly dealt with intuitively or based on experience. That way decisions can be quickly taken but analytic processes of deliberate reasoning are bypassed. To meet the desire of practitioners for better guidance and tools how to deal with uncertainty more practice-oriented systematic approaches are needed. For that purpose we consider it important to understand how practitioners frame uncertainties. In this paper we present an approach where water managers developed criteria of relevance to understand and address uncertainties. The empirical research took place in the Doñana region of the Guadalquivir estuary in southern Spain making use of the method of card sorting. Through the card sorting exercise a broad range of criteria to make sense of and describe uncertainties was produced by different subgroups, which were then merged into a shared list of criteria. That way framing differences were made explicit and communication on uncertainty and on framing differences was enhanced. In that, the present approach constitutes a first step to enabling reframing and overcoming framing differences, which are important features on the way to robust decision-making. Moreover, the elaborated criteria build a basis for the development of more structured approaches to deal with uncertainties in water management practice.