Final Report Summary - TWIN2GO (Coordinating Twinning partnerships towards more adaptive Governance in river basins)
Project executive summary:
The management of water resources has become an important scientific and political issue. In particular, the impacts of global and climate change have received increasing attention in recent years. The failure of governance systems has been identified as being one of the most important reasons for increased vulnerability to water-related threats. Despite the overall importance of water governance, our understanding of multi-level water governance systems is quite limited. Therefore, the mission of the Twin2Go project was to gain insights into adaptive water governance in the light of climate change. The project ran from 2009 to 2011 and was supported as a Coordination Action by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme.
Over the past years, the EU has funded several projects that undertook research on specific Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) issues in case studies carried out on twinned river basins from Europe and from developing countries or emerging economies. Twin2Go focused its activities on the thematic priority ‘adaptive water governance in the context of climate change’ and clustered past and on-going twinning projects along the target regions Latin America, Africa, Russia/NIS, as well as South and South East Asia.
Twin2Go’s aim was to review, assess, synthesise and consolidate the outcomes of these projects in order to make them transferable and applicable to other basins, and to disseminate the project results effectively to relevant authorities, stakeholders and end-users. In order to achieve this aim, Twin2Go elaborated a methodology that allows for a comparative analysis and synthesis of the outcomes of the diverse twinning projects. The methodological framework allowed context-sensitive analyses of water governance across a number of cases with a special focus on the capacity to respond to climate change. Through its comparative analyses, Twin2Go added empirical evidence to the current debate about how to make water governance regimes more adaptive. Moreover, Twin2Go studied experiences that were made during the application of practices and tools for water governance in various river basins. The consolidated outcomes fed into best practices guidelines for the adoption and implementation of sustainable water resources management. During its activities, Twin2Go involved stakeholders from the twinning projects and river basins including all relevant levels of target groups and high-level decision makers in water policy. The project results are expected to contribute to a more adaptive and sustainable governance of water resources in river basins.
Twin2Go’s main results are the identification of basic design principles for adaptive water governance regimes as well as the formulation of recommendations for better water governance practices. Furthermore, it has initiated dialogues between researchers, water managers and stakeholders and has strengthened partnerships for adaptive water governance. The project formulated guidelines and policy briefs, thereby disseminating major project outcomes and promoting the implementation of adaptive water governance. The Twin2Go project established a dialogue with policy makers to facilitate the integration of insights into existing water policies.
The management of water resources has become an important scientific and political issue. In particular, the impacts of global and climate change have received increasing attention in recent years. The failure of governance systems has been identified as being one of the most important reasons for increased vulnerability to water-related threats. Despite the overall importance of water governance, our understanding of multi-level water governance systems is quite limited. Therefore, the mission of the Twin2Go project was to gain insights into adaptive water governance in the light of climate change. The project ran from 2009 to 2011 and was supported as a Coordination Action by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme.
Over the past years, the EU has funded several projects that undertook research on specific Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) issues in case studies carried out on twinned river basins from Europe and from developing countries or emerging economies. Twin2Go focused its activities on the thematic priority ‘adaptive water governance in the context of climate change’ and clustered past and on-going twinning projects along the target regions Latin America, Africa, Russia/NIS, as well as South and South East Asia.
Twin2Go’s aim was to review, assess, synthesise and consolidate the outcomes of these projects in order to make them transferable and applicable to other basins, and to disseminate the project results effectively to relevant authorities, stakeholders and end-users. In order to achieve this aim, Twin2Go elaborated a methodology that allows for a comparative analysis and synthesis of the outcomes of the diverse twinning projects. The methodological framework allowed context-sensitive analyses of water governance across a number of cases with a special focus on the capacity to respond to climate change. Through its comparative analyses, Twin2Go added empirical evidence to the current debate about how to make water governance regimes more adaptive. Moreover, Twin2Go studied experiences that were made during the application of practices and tools for water governance in various river basins. The consolidated outcomes fed into best practices guidelines for the adoption and implementation of sustainable water resources management. During its activities, Twin2Go involved stakeholders from the twinning projects and river basins including all relevant levels of target groups and high-level decision makers in water policy. The project results are expected to contribute to a more adaptive and sustainable governance of water resources in river basins.
Twin2Go’s main results are the identification of basic design principles for adaptive water governance regimes as well as the formulation of recommendations for better water governance practices. Furthermore, it has initiated dialogues between researchers, water managers and stakeholders and has strengthened partnerships for adaptive water governance. The project formulated guidelines and policy briefs, thereby disseminating major project outcomes and promoting the implementation of adaptive water governance. The Twin2Go project established a dialogue with policy makers to facilitate the integration of insights into existing water policies.
