The role of public participation in sustainable river basin development : environmental planning in southern Spain

Sustainable development depends on the degree to which economic, ecological and social aspects of a problem, such as the use of a water resource, are balanced. This balance may be achieved by integrating planning decisions across all relevant actors, disciplines, organizations and values. Public participation has often been argued to improve integration, and thereby promote sustainable development. This is based on the assumption that in participative debates, different stakeholders from various backgrounds will negotiate and trade off their positions, and thereby come to a common conclusion, in which all of these positions are integrated. The extent and limits of the integrative potential of public participation, however, have rarely been studied in detail. In this research, a qualitative case study approach is used to identify the main concepts which play a role in the relationship between public participation, integrated decision-making and sustainable development. The ALTAGUAX project in the Andarax river basin in Andalucía, Spain provided and interesting case for the investigation of the relationship between public participation, sustainable development and integrated decisions, since the recent inclusion of previously unrecognized stakeholders into participative planning, coupled with the extreme water scarcity of the region and its strong economic dependence on water-intensive agriculture has lead to fierce competition within and between different stakeholder groups. In the first part of this research, the influence of the Andarax waterscape in determining the degree to which participative processes can lead to integrated decisions is demonstrated. The second part of this research elucidates, how in a participative process, inequalities in power, differences in problems and objectives between stakeholders, and non-participation may interact with each other and impact the degree to which a participative project can actually reach an integrated decision and promote sustainable development. Thus, the success of participative projects can be enhanced by taking these factors into account and adapting the process to the local waterscape and its power relationships and problems