Water Resour Manage DOI 10.1007/s11269-008-9345-6 Knowledge and Perceptions in Participatory Policy Processes: Lessons from the Delta-Region in the Netherlands

© The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Water resources management issues tend to affect a variety of uses and users. Therefore, they often exhibit complex and unstructured problems. The com-plex, unstructured nature of these problems originates from uncertain knowledge and from the existence of divergent perceptions among various actors. Consequently, dealing with these problems is not just a knowledge problem; it is a problem of ambiguity too. This paper focuses on a complex, unstructured water resources man-agement issue, the sustainable development—for ecology, economy and society—of the Delta-region of the Netherlands. In several areas in this region the ecological quality decreased due to hydraulic constructions for storm water safety, the Delta Works. To improve the ecological quality, the Dutch government regards the re-establishment of estuarine dynamics in the area as the most important solution. However, re-establishment of estuarine dynamics will affect other uses and other users. Among the affected users are farmers in the surrounding areas, who use freshwater from a lake for agricultural purposes. This problem has been addressed in a participatory decision-making process, which is used as a case study in this paper. We investigate how the dynamics in actors ’ perceptions and the knowledge base con-tribute to the development of agreed upon and valid knowledge about the problem– solution combination, using our conceptual framework for problem structuring. We found that different knowledge sources—expert and practical knowledge—shoul