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Water is vital for humankind and ecosystems alike. However, population growth, agricultural inten-sification, urbanization, and climate change embody potential hazards and pressures for water re-sources without existing long-term solutions. For two decades now, policy and governance literature has increasingly emphasised the role of learning in finding solutions to environmental policy prob-lems and effectively steering governance practices. Participation of non-state actors in decision mak-ing is widely considered to deliver learning products that support effective outcomes for environ-mental problems. Besides, the institutionalisation of participation through legislation opens up the necessity for (administrative) organizers to learn about participation as a governance mode in order to steer its effective working. Apart from participation, management approaches specifically aiming at driving learning, such as adaptive management (AM), are increasingly endorsed in water govern-ance. Despite the current prominence of learning in the environmental governance literature, evi-dence is lacking on which learning approaches function effectively regarding outcomes, whether participation aids learning, and how learning about successful governance arrangements is most effectively promoted.
This doctoral dissertation aims to contribute to clarification of the potential of learning for water governance. The goal is to trace and understand the environmental impacts of learning through par-ticipation (research aim 1) and adaptive management (research aim 2), and the effect of learning on participation as a governance mode (research aim 3).
For this goal, I engage in a predominantly qualitative research design following the case study method. For every specific research aim cases are selected and analysed qualitatively according to conceptual categories and mechanisms which are defined beforehand. Quantitative studies are used to corroborate the results for research aim 1 and 2 in a mixed-method approach to enhance the valid-ity of results. The empirical research context is European water governance, the implementation of the EU Water Framework and EU Floods Directive (WFD, FD) specifically. Eight cases of participa-tory decision-making across three European countries and five cases of AM in Northern Germany for WFD implementation are examined to identify whether learning in these processes enhanced envi-ronmental outcomes. To detect whether governance learning by public officials occurred, the design of participatory processes for FD implementation in ten German federal states is assessed.
The findings of research aim 1, understanding learning through participation and its effects on water governance, reveal that participatory planning led to learning through improved understandings at an individual and group level. Learning did, however, hardly shape effective outcomes. In the AM cases (research aim 2) managers and participants of implementing networks improved their knowledge as well as capacities, and spread the results. Nonetheless, environmental improvement was not necessarily linked to ecological learning. Regarding learning about participation as a govern-ance mode (research aim 3) all interviewed public officials in German federal states reported some degree of governance learning, which emerged not systematically but primarily drawing on own experiences and intuition.
These findings are condensed into three overarching lessons for learning in water governance: (1) Interactive communication seems to form the overall frame for participant and group learning. Framing of learning experiences turned out to play an important and potentially distorting role, for which professional facilitation and structured knowledge aggregation methods might be an im-portant counterbalance. (2) Learning did not automatically enhance environmental outcomes. It may thus not be an explanatory variable for policy outcomes, but a conditioning or intervening vari-able related to collective action, motivation for participation, and situating the issue at hand at wider societal levels. (3) The concepts of puzzling and powering might help understand learning as a source for effectiveness in the long-term when complemented with interest-based debates for creat-ing sufficient political agency of policy issues. Learning seen as puzzling processes might instruct acceptance and legitimization for new powering efforts. The perpetuation of learning in systematic ways and structures appears to characterize an alternative to this reflexive and strategic interplay, for which the water-related EU directives provide the basis.
These insights are of practical and policy relevance, particularly for policy makers and practitioners in the pursuit of learning. They may further contribute to the academic understanding of learning in water governance and its potential contribution to transforming and adapting water governance re-gimes, as envisioned in the European water-related directives.