Original paper
Integrated Management in Large River Basins: 12 Lessons from the Mekong and Murray-Darling Rivers
Campbell, Ian; Hart, Barry; Barlow, Chris
River Systems Volume 20 Issue 3-4 (2013), p. 231 - 247
published: Apr 1, 2013
DOI: 10.1127/1868-5749/2013/0067
ArtNo. ESP342002003008, Price: 29.00 €
Abstract
Although every large river basin is unique, we identify 12 broadly applicable lessons related to integrated management which river basin managers should bear in mind. These are: the size of a river basin has an important influence on the complexities of management; decision makers tend to give priority to stakeholders seeking to gain short term personal benefit; river basin managers often fail to learn from the experience of others, or even from past mistakes in their own river basin; preventing river basin degradation is far cheaper than repairing damage; a basin plan does not replace a basin planning process; basin plans and their implementation must strike an appropriate balance between stakeholders; sound knowledge is essential in evidence-based decision making, but decisions are ultimately political and involve value judgments; technical work must be peer reviewed to ensure quality; the emphasis on the fishery in basin planning is often unrelated to the importance of the fish to human subsistence; asset-based management approaches are very complex in large river basins; large scale developments attract a lot of planning attention, but basins are often degraded through numerous small scale impacts.
Keywords
large rivers • river management • mekong • murray-darling