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Ecological flows are exclusionary, technocratic and top-down practices ... (but could be empowering)

Water policies Water politics Aquatic ecosystems

Jeroen Vos

Sunday, 15 March 2020

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Posted by Jeroen Vos and Rutgerd Boelens

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Following a century in which dominating nature by damming and canalizing rivers was a symbol of human civilization, environmentalist victories managed to mainstream the "ecological flows" notion. Ecological (or Environmental) flow regimes attempt to describe the quantity, timing, and quality of water flows required to sustain riverine ecosystems and the human livelihoods dependent on these ecosystems. For example, the European Water Framework Directive makes concretizing ecological flows a central benchmark for water bodies' ecological status.

Ecological flow regimes are determined by experts based on scientific studies. International environmental elites might see this as a great advance in nature conservation and restoration of aquatic ecosystems. However, the current technocratic way of establishing "e-flow regimes" is top-down and negates local river use and locally held nature values. It results in exclusion of local communities and organizations that - though they should not be romanticized and certainly harbour their own inequities – cannot simply be dismissed. They deserve a fair chance, and often hold specific knowledge and values regarding the river, its uses, its ecosystems and the way these are managed.

This top-down establishing of e-flows is exclusionary as it ignores local stakeholders and other organisations, because they are not recognised as sufficiently knowledgeable. The parameters considered by so-called experts are environmental standards and thresholds for a handful of key species, and cost-benefit analysis. The methodologies applied for calculating and modelling the flow regime and establishing the minimum required e-flow are diverse. However, all use standardised technological packages that use, for example, percentages of average annual discharges, status of key species, various environmental thresholds, and economic analysis. However, what are considered "key species", what are "costs", and what are "benefits" depend on the specific position and values of each stakeholder. The modeler cannot be taken as "neutral".

The e-flow regime is imposed on the river by means of infrastructure that regulates the river's discharge (dams) or establish maximum water abstractions. The state water authority that controls this infrastructure and abstractions forms part of the national hydrocracy that rarely allows for any voice of the local stakeholders. In this way the process of establishing of ecological flows is technocratic and top-down.

We argue that contrary to the current practices, ecological flow regimes should be critically discussed, politically negotiated, and socially effectuated through stakeholder engagement, while being based on locally grounded resource uses, rights, practices, knowledge and values regarding river's socionatures. In this process, the local stakeholders, with help of others, would determine key species, allowed and prioritized uses, environmental thresholds, minimal discharges, maximum abstractions and ways of monitoring and enforcement. In this way the ecological flow would be based on an analysis of local context, history and water culture, and not simply follow imposed national or international standards. In this way ecological flows could be a way to empower local stakeholders.

Posted by Jeroen Vos and Rutgerd Boelens, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

(Photo credit: Martin Grau)

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Guest - Jacqueline King on Wednesday, 25 March 2020 10:14

Environmental flows to Integrated flow management

Jackie King and Cate Brown

Thank you J Vos and R Boelens for initiating this discourse. We agree completely with your statement that “ecological flow regimes should be critically discussed, politically negotiated, and socially effectuated through stakeholder engagement, while being based on locally grounded resource uses, rights, practices, knowledge and values regarding river's socionatures”. Achieving this has been the main goal of much of our careers.

Working in developing countries in Africa and Asia, the links between people, livelihoods and ecosystem health have always been at the forefront of our work. In the mid-1990s we moved away from approaches that prescribe E-Flows and began to create an eco-social model, DRIFT, which today produces scenarios (options) of possible futures under different management/development regimes. DRIFT captures ecological understanding of how aquatic ecosystems function, and resource-economic and social understanding of the links between these ecosystems and their dependent people. We use this to predict how the ecosystem would change in response to changes in its drivers (flow/inundation regime, water quality, sediment transport and the movement of biota); how these changes could alter the ecosystem services provided; and thus how dependent social structures are likely to be affected.

Our goal was then, and is today, to provide detailed information on ecosystem integrity and linked social equity at the same level (or better) than the engineering and economic information traditionally used to make decisions on water resource development and management. DRIFT takes its place alongside hydrological, hydraulic, engineering and economic models as a vital pre-decision planning tool. Set up for each basin we have worked in, it becomes an ongoing asset for the basin as the country/ies continue to explore water management options.

We work with stakeholders such as transboundary countries, basin authorities, dam builders, conservation authorities and local river-dependent communities. Increasingly, the information provided by our and similar models has become part of the full suite of information required by funders and considered by governments and their stakeholders. Recent projects with international funding are starting to reflect this. An existing EU project for the Okavango Basin in southern Africa, for instance, requires looking beyond the traditional economic model to include indirect benefits, existence value of the whole river system and comparisons of the value of water for different uses.

A distinction needs to be made between scientists, like us, who provide the technical information, and those who make decisions using it. Despite the claim of Vos and Boelens, we feel we are neutral, capturing knowledge and concerns, and providing predictions in a transparent and accessible form. We have long understood that we cannot be both technical advisors and a lobby group, and have tried to work carefully and responsibly. Our predictions of change spell out the implications for a range of stakeholders from international treaties to local households and cultures, and for a range of ecosystem and social attributes. We strive to ensure these outputs are aired widely through the relevant countries and river basins, so that as many people as possible are aware of what could happen to their river and livelihoods, and what benefits and costs may arise from different forms of development and management.

The second group of people are those who use our outputs, and this is where strong stakeholder representation is vital. We provide information that, before the advent of these sorts of E-Flows assessments, was not available to stakeholders, decision makers and governments. If social equity is to take its rightful place, then society in its many forms has to mobilise to use it, as well as the engineering and economic information, negotiating with governments for the future that is wished for.

In the end the onus is on governments to balance all of these aspirations and make a decision, hopefully in a fair and transparent way, and on stakeholders to hold them accountable. Then the far more challenging phase begins – implementation, monitoring and adaptive management. The scientists who did the E-Flows assessment can help with the technical aspects of this, but the rest is down to political and social will.

Jackie King and Cate Brown

Thank you J Vos and R Boelens for initiating this discourse. We agree completely with your statement that “ecological flow regimes should be critically discussed, politically negotiated, and socially effectuated through stakeholder engagement, while being based on locally grounded resource uses, rights, practices, knowledge and values regarding river's socionatures”.  Achieving this has been the main goal of much of our careers.

Working in developing countries in Africa and Asia, the links between people, livelihoods and ecosystem health have always been at the forefront of our work. In the mid-1990s we moved away from approaches that prescribe E-Flows and began to create an eco-social model, DRIFT, which today produces scenarios (options) of possible futures under different management/development regimes. DRIFT captures ecological understanding of how aquatic ecosystems function, and resource-economic and social understanding of the links between these ecosystems and their dependent people. We use this to predict how the ecosystem would change in response to changes in its drivers (flow/inundation regime, water quality, sediment transport and the movement of biota); how these changes could alter the ecosystem services provided; and thus how dependent social structures are likely to be affected.

Our goal was then, and is today, to provide detailed information on ecosystem integrity and linked social equity at the same level (or better) than the engineering and economic information traditionally used to make decisions on water resource development and management. DRIFT takes its place alongside hydrological, hydraulic, engineering and economic models as a vital pre-decision planning tool. Set up for each basin we have worked in, it becomes an ongoing asset for the basin as the country/ies continue to explore water management options.

We work with stakeholders such as transboundary countries, basin authorities, dam builders, conservation authorities and local river-dependent communities. Increasingly, the information provided by our and similar models has become part of the full suite of information required by funders and considered by governments and their stakeholders. Recent projects with international funding are starting to reflect this. An existing EU project for the Okavango Basin in southern Africa, for instance, requires looking beyond the traditional economic model to include indirect benefits, existence value of the whole river system and comparisons of the value of water for different uses.

A distinction needs to be made between scientists, like us, who provide the technical information, and those who make decisions using it. Despite the claim of Vos and Boelens, we feel we are neutral, capturing knowledge and concerns, and providing predictions in a transparent and accessible form. We have long understood that we cannot be both technical advisors and a lobby group, and have tried to work carefully and responsibly. Our predictions of change spell out the implications for a range of stakeholders from international treaties to local households and cultures, and for a range of ecosystem and social attributes. We strive to ensure these outputs are aired widely through the relevant countries and river basins, so that as many people as possible are aware of what could happen to their river and livelihoods, and what benefits and costs may arise from different forms of development and management.

The second group of people are those who use our outputs, and this is where strong stakeholder representation is vital. We provide information that, before the advent of these sorts of E-Flows assessments, was not available to stakeholders, decision makers and governments. If social equity is to take its rightful place, then society in its many forms has to mobilise to use it, as well as the engineering and economic information, negotiating with governments for the future that is wished for.

In the end the onus is on governments to balance all of these aspirations and make a decision, hopefully in a fair and transparent way, and on stakeholders to hold them accountable. Then the far more challenging phase begins – implementation, monitoring and adaptive management. The scientists who did the E-Flows assessment can help with the technical aspects of this, but the rest is down to political and social will.

Jackie King and Cate Brown Thank you J Vos and R Boelens for initiating this discourse. We agree completely with your statement that “ecological flow regimes should be critically discussed, politically negotiated, and socially effectuated through stakeholder engagement, while being based on locally grounded resource uses, rights, practices, knowledge and values regarding river's socionatures”. Achieving this has been the main goal of much of our careers. Working in developing countries in Africa and Asia, the links between people, livelihoods and ecosystem health have always been at the forefront of our work. In the mid-1990s we moved away from approaches that prescribe E-Flows and began to create an eco-social model, DRIFT, which today produces scenarios (options) of possible futures under different management/development regimes. DRIFT captures ecological understanding of how aquatic ecosystems function, and resource-economic and social understanding of the links between these ecosystems and their dependent people. We use this to predict how the ecosystem would change in response to changes in its drivers (flow/inundation regime, water quality, sediment transport and the movement of biota); how these changes could alter the ecosystem services provided; and thus how dependent social structures are likely to be affected. Our goal was then, and is today, to provide detailed information on ecosystem integrity and linked social equity at the same level (or better) than the engineering and economic information traditionally used to make decisions on water resource development and management. DRIFT takes its place alongside hydrological, hydraulic, engineering and economic models as a vital pre-decision planning tool. Set up for each basin we have worked in, it becomes an ongoing asset for the basin as the country/ies continue to explore water management options. We work with stakeholders such as transboundary countries, basin authorities, dam builders, conservation authorities and local river-dependent communities. Increasingly, the information provided by our and similar models has become part of the full suite of information required by funders and considered by governments and their stakeholders. Recent projects with international funding are starting to reflect this. An existing EU project for the Okavango Basin in southern Africa, for instance, requires looking beyond the traditional economic model to include indirect benefits, existence value of the whole river system and comparisons of the value of water for different uses. A distinction needs to be made between scientists, like us, who provide the technical information, and those who make decisions using it. Despite the claim of Vos and Boelens, we feel we are neutral, capturing knowledge and concerns, and providing predictions in a transparent and accessible form. We have long understood that we cannot be both technical advisors and a lobby group, and have tried to work carefully and responsibly. Our predictions of change spell out the implications for a range of stakeholders from international treaties to local households and cultures, and for a range of ecosystem and social attributes. We strive to ensure these outputs are aired widely through the relevant countries and river basins, so that as many people as possible are aware of what could happen to their river and livelihoods, and what benefits and costs may arise from different forms of development and management. The second group of people are those who use our outputs, and this is where strong stakeholder representation is vital. We provide information that, before the advent of these sorts of E-Flows assessments, was not available to stakeholders, decision makers and governments. If social equity is to take its rightful place, then society in its many forms has to mobilise to use it, as well as the engineering and economic information, negotiating with governments for the future that is wished for. In the end the onus is on governments to balance all of these aspirations and make a decision, hopefully in a fair and transparent way, and on stakeholders to hold them accountable. Then the far more challenging phase begins – implementation, monitoring and adaptive management. The scientists who did the E-Flows assessment can help with the technical aspects of this, but the rest is down to political and social will.

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Guest - Rutgerd Boelens on Wednesday, 25 March 2020 15:02

Experts, epistemologies and how to organize protest against our sustainability metrics and e-flow proposals?

Great to see these well-thought comments and rightful critiques. The ‘how to do it’ question is on the table. For that, I’d like to add some very modest, additional thoughts. When we discuss ‘dissensus’ in the field of environmental flow programs, I would argue that ‘setting participation upside down’ (see also Michael Mclain’s fine reaction) also asks for questioning other (often-taken-for-granted) key notions. There are many. Obviously there is the issue of ‘equality’ in environmental flow programs (which may constitute another implicit trap, since it is necessarily a referential notion: equal to what? equal to whom? Critical scrutiny of water science and development would quickly point at the whiteness, masculinity, and class biases of our water models and mirrors). Others would prefer to talk about ‘equity’ (which, being the context-particular, cultural-political construct of ‘fairness’ or ‘acceptability’ asks for making explicit ‘whose notions of equity’ in environmental flow projects prevail, how and why).

But next to many other mainstays that ask for healthy dissensus and critical scrutiny in environmental flow debates, maybe 2 key issues deserve extra attention when it comes to thinking about and acting upon the (anti-hegemonic) ‘how’ question. First, the notion of ‘expert’ and ‘expert knowledge’ : how can we break open this notion, not reserving it upfront for water scientists and practitioners? What would it imply in practice when riverine families, women, indigenous water users, or activist movements, equally would be recognized as potential experts from the start, and not only as ‘stakeholders’ when scientists have done their research and present the different options and scenarios to stakeholder platforms or policy-makers. This raises issues of the equal footing of alternative or counter-epistemologies in riverine development. The debate of legitimate expertise, therefore, is crucial to any environmental flow project, and needs to go far beyond the restricted circles of academia, water development institutes and governments.

Related is the fundamental need to discuss the metrics of environmental sustainability. In whose terms, according to which standards, ontologies and epistemologies, the ‘eflow problems and solutions’ are discussed and operationalized? How can the environmental flow debates (in particular, in times of proclaimed Water Crisis, and SDGs that promote urgent, universal solutions) avoid the danger of imposing one common metric, that is, commensurating dominant knowledge frames? What if certain notions of ‘environment’, ‘river’, ‘water’ and ‘ ‘development’ are incommensurable, and multi-criteria analysis tools can only silence the divergences to the benefit of scientific expert or government schemes?

These issues, therefore, I think are basic to the practical questions of ‘ how to do it’ : depending on contexts, cultures and histories, how can academics and practitioners horizontally engage with water user collectives and local forms of environmental governance (maybe even grassroots movements, or activist networks), or other forms of commons and (incipient) ‘commoning’ processes, to work on the mutual co-creation of river knowledge and environmental flow practices.

Fundamentally, more than just platforms for shared decision-making, I’d argue that this involves creating spaces where forms of mutual, open and harsh critique towards each other can flourish, to be able to build honest knowledge and horizontal action partnerships. How can we (researchers and practitioners) make sure that local water knowledge co-creation partners are (physically, economically and politically) able/enabled to protest against what we say about them, about their river environments, and about our metrics and proposals for improvement. And vice versa, how can we horizontally discuss and challenge their notions and practices. This asks for abandoning pre-determined sustainability metrics, questioning ‘best practices’ rationalities, and thinking through creative knowledge co-creation and interactive environmental flow designs. These obviously depend on local contexts’ impediments and opportunities. In response to Michael McClain and Doug Merrey, it would be highly interesting to gather counter-hegemonic environmental flow knowledge and action experiences. Maybe :

• User-to-user based environmental governance capacity-strengthening experiments?
• River-movement based (or protest-driven) environmental flow initiatives?
• Federative riverine-communities’ led proposals in which engaged academics and practitioners join rather than lead? (user-directed rive investigation and action).
• Transdisciplinary river enlivening programs that explicitly invert the position and role of ‘experts’, reformulate what it means to have ‘legitimate environmental expertise’ and question the established ‘multi-criteria analyses’ ? In the same line: E-flow assessment initiatives that take rivers-as-experienced as the starting point for critical engagement?
• Environmental flow programs that explicitly start from antagonisms, dissensus and contradictions rather than from ‘mutually agreed’ SDGs and the need for overall agreement? (See the many environmental justice -based riverine initiatives that challenge “win-win” and ask for radical change in terms of socio-economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political participation in river development)
• Or even Rights-of-Nature action proposals (ecological justice rather than environmental justice) that involve not just humans but also rivers as legal and moral subjects of rights?

But next to many other mainstays that ask for healthy dissensus and critical scrutiny in environmental flow debates, maybe 2 key issues deserve extra attention when it comes to thinking about and acting upon the (anti-hegemonic) ‘how’ question. First, the notion of ‘expert’ and ‘expert knowledge’ : how can we break open this notion, not reserving it upfront for water scientists and practitioners? What would it imply in practice when riverine families, women, indigenous water users, or activist movements, equally would be recognized as potential experts [i]from the start[/i], and not only as ‘stakeholders’ when scientists have done their research and present the different options and scenarios to stakeholder platforms or policy-makers. This raises issues of the equal footing of alternative or counter-epistemologies in riverine development. The debate of [i]legitimate expertise[/i], therefore, is crucial to any environmental flow project, and needs to go far beyond the restricted circles of academia, water development institutes and governments.

Related is the fundamental need to discuss the metrics of environmental sustainability. In whose terms, according to which standards, ontologies and epistemologies, the ‘eflow problems and solutions’ are discussed and operationalized? How can the environmental flow debates (in particular, in times of proclaimed Water Crisis, and SDGs that promote urgent, universal solutions) avoid the danger of imposing one common metric, that is,  commensurating dominant knowledge frames? What if certain notions of ‘environment’, ‘river’, ‘water’ and ‘ ‘development’ are incommensurable, and multi-criteria analysis tools can only silence the divergences to the benefit of scientific expert or government schemes?

These issues, therefore, I think are basic to the practical questions of ‘ how to do it’ : depending on contexts, cultures and histories, how can academics and practitioners horizontally engage with water user collectives and local forms of environmental governance (maybe even grassroots movements, or activist networks), or other forms of commons and (incipient) ‘commoning’ processes, to work on the mutual co-creation of river knowledge and environmental flow practices.

Fundamentally, more than just platforms for shared decision-making, I’d argue that this involves [i]creating spaces where forms of mutual, open and harsh critique towards each other can flourish[/i], to be able to build honest knowledge and horizontal action partnerships. How can we (researchers and practitioners) make sure that local water knowledge co-creation partners are (physically, economically and politically) [i]able/enabled to protest against what we say about them[/i], about their river environments, and about our metrics and proposals for improvement. And vice versa, how can we horizontally discuss and challenge their notions and practices. This asks for abandoning pre-determined sustainability metrics, questioning ‘best practices’ rationalities, and thinking through creative knowledge co-creation and interactive environmental flow designs. These obviously depend on local contexts’ impediments and opportunities. In response to Michael McClain and Doug Merrey, it would be highly interesting to gather counter-hegemonic environmental flow knowledge and action experiences. Maybe :

•	User-to-user based environmental governance capacity-strengthening experiments? 
•	River-movement based (or protest-driven) environmental flow initiatives? 
•	Federative riverine-communities’ led proposals in which engaged academics and practitioners join rather than lead? (user-directed rive investigation and action).
•	Transdisciplinary river enlivening programs that explicitly invert the position and role of ‘experts’, reformulate what it means to have ‘legitimate environmental expertise’ and question the established ‘multi-criteria analyses’ ? In the same line: E-flow assessment initiatives that take rivers-as-experienced as the starting point for critical engagement? 
•	Environmental flow programs that explicitly start from antagonisms, dissensus and contradictions rather than from ‘mutually agreed’ SDGs and the need for overall agreement? (See the many environmental justice -based riverine initiatives that challenge “win-win” and ask for radical change in terms of socio-economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political participation in river development)
•	Or even Rights-of-Nature action proposals (ecological justice rather than environmental justice) that involve not just humans but also rivers as legal and moral subjects of rights?

Great to see these well-thought comments and rightful critiques. The ‘how to do it’ question is on the table. For that, I’d like to add some very modest, additional thoughts. When we discuss ‘dissensus’ in the field of environmental flow programs, I would argue that ‘setting participation upside down’ (see also Michael Mclain’s fine reaction) also asks for questioning other (often-taken-for-granted) key notions. There are many. Obviously there is the issue of ‘equality’ in environmental flow programs (which may constitute another implicit trap, since it is necessarily a [i]referential[/i] notion: equal to what? equal to whom? Critical scrutiny of water science and development would quickly point at the whiteness, masculinity, and class biases of our water models and mirrors). Others would prefer to talk about ‘equity’ (which, being the context-particular, cultural-political construct of ‘fairness’ or ‘acceptability’ asks for making explicit ‘whose notions of equity’ in environmental flow projects prevail, how and why). But next to many other mainstays that ask for healthy dissensus and critical scrutiny in environmental flow debates, maybe 2 key issues deserve extra attention when it comes to thinking about and acting upon the (anti-hegemonic) ‘how’ question. First, the notion of ‘expert’ and ‘expert knowledge’ : how can we break open this notion, not reserving it upfront for water scientists and practitioners? What would it imply in practice when riverine families, women, indigenous water users, or activist movements, equally would be recognized as potential experts [i]from the start[/i], and not only as ‘stakeholders’ when scientists have done their research and present the different options and scenarios to stakeholder platforms or policy-makers. This raises issues of the equal footing of alternative or counter-epistemologies in riverine development. The debate of [i]legitimate expertise[/i], therefore, is crucial to any environmental flow project, and needs to go far beyond the restricted circles of academia, water development institutes and governments. Related is the fundamental need to discuss the metrics of environmental sustainability. In whose terms, according to which standards, ontologies and epistemologies, the ‘eflow problems and solutions’ are discussed and operationalized? How can the environmental flow debates (in particular, in times of proclaimed Water Crisis, and SDGs that promote urgent, universal solutions) avoid the danger of imposing one common metric, that is, commensurating dominant knowledge frames? What if certain notions of ‘environment’, ‘river’, ‘water’ and ‘ ‘development’ are incommensurable, and multi-criteria analysis tools can only silence the divergences to the benefit of scientific expert or government schemes? These issues, therefore, I think are basic to the practical questions of ‘ how to do it’ : depending on contexts, cultures and histories, how can academics and practitioners horizontally engage with water user collectives and local forms of environmental governance (maybe even grassroots movements, or activist networks), or other forms of commons and (incipient) ‘commoning’ processes, to work on the mutual co-creation of river knowledge and environmental flow practices. Fundamentally, more than just platforms for shared decision-making, I’d argue that this involves [i]creating spaces where forms of mutual, open and harsh critique towards each other can flourish[/i], to be able to build honest knowledge and horizontal action partnerships. How can we (researchers and practitioners) make sure that local water knowledge co-creation partners are (physically, economically and politically) [i]able/enabled to protest against what we say about them[/i], about their river environments, and about our metrics and proposals for improvement. And vice versa, how can we horizontally discuss and challenge their notions and practices. This asks for abandoning pre-determined sustainability metrics, questioning ‘best practices’ rationalities, and thinking through creative knowledge co-creation and interactive environmental flow designs. These obviously depend on local contexts’ impediments and opportunities. In response to Michael McClain and Doug Merrey, it would be highly interesting to gather counter-hegemonic environmental flow knowledge and action experiences. Maybe : • User-to-user based environmental governance capacity-strengthening experiments? • River-movement based (or protest-driven) environmental flow initiatives? • Federative riverine-communities’ led proposals in which engaged academics and practitioners join rather than lead? (user-directed rive investigation and action). • Transdisciplinary river enlivening programs that explicitly invert the position and role of ‘experts’, reformulate what it means to have ‘legitimate environmental expertise’ and question the established ‘multi-criteria analyses’ ? In the same line: E-flow assessment initiatives that take rivers-as-experienced as the starting point for critical engagement? • Environmental flow programs that explicitly start from antagonisms, dissensus and contradictions rather than from ‘mutually agreed’ SDGs and the need for overall agreement? (See the many environmental justice -based riverine initiatives that challenge “win-win” and ask for radical change in terms of socio-economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political participation in river development) • Or even Rights-of-Nature action proposals (ecological justice rather than environmental justice) that involve not just humans but also rivers as legal and moral subjects of rights?

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Jeroen Vos on Thursday, 26 March 2020 14:07

Examples of bottom-up struggles for e-flows

As has also become clear from the many valuable posts to this discussion, I think there is not one unique method for establishing e-flows in a bottom-up way. Each river basin, each country, each water-related problematic, and each power constellation of stakeholders is different. However, some examples might help to clarify the sort of processes that could lead to more inclusive establishment of e-flows. I do not claim these examples show perfect bottom-up practices, nor that these examples should - or can - be copied without adaptation to other cases. They serve to illustrate the type of actions possible for bottom-up claimed e-flows over a wide range of very different conditions. Below some illustrations from Thailand, Spain and The Netherlands.

Thailand: several dams in the Mun River – a tributary of the Mekong River - obstruct the temporary migration of fish. The main purpose of the Pak Mun Dam, finished in 1994, and the Rasi Salai Dam, finished in 1998, is the generation of hydropower. Local fisher communities were deprived from their livelihoods because of declining fish stocks in the river. They protested for many years against the dams and demanded the opening of the gates to allow the fish to migrate. With the help of national and international NGOs they organized protest marches in the capital Bangkok, and at the dam site. In 2000 some three thousand fishers occupied the dam site with support of the national NGO Assembly of the Poor and backed by a study of the World Commission on Dams. In 2002, after years of protests, the government decided to open the gates of the dams: in 2002-2003 for one year, and after that each year for several months during the rainy season. Scientific research has shown the subsequent recovery of the fish stocks, although the e-flow is under threat (see: Kiguchi, 2016 and Baird et al., 2020).

Spain: In Southern Spain the government planned to build a dam in the Rio Grande near Malaga (Guadalhorce river basin). The purpose was to divert water to the coast, mainly for the tourist sector. Local farmer and environmental organizations protested against the plans for the dam. In 2003, this grassroots alliance created the Cerro Blanco Anti-Dam Platform, which got support from the local ecological activists’ organization, the Jara Association. This NGO that had studied and educated on local ecology for many years, together with the irrigator communities that were mainly concerned with losing their livelihood sources, successfully protested against the dam. However, the government later revived the project quietly. In 2006, the Cerro Blanco project was approved by the Ministry of Environment by conveniently re-naming it as “an azud” (the local Arab name for a small dam) while planning pipelines to divert most of the water from the Río Grande to the city. This time, the Jara Association provided the leadership and organized large social mobilization against the plan. It included many actors such as local school teachers, local businesses, NGOs, and local politicians, and together they formed the network Coordinator in Defence of the Rio Grande River. The platform organized a multitude of creative activities, and mobilized the valley’s communities to protest on the streets of Malaga. The success of this movement lied in making several local, national and global alliances during its development. The Coordinator created links to the supportive networks at increasingly broader scales. First, it networked with many local foundations and initiatives, for example, the Andalusian branch of the Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua (FNCA, New Water Culture), and later also with Greenpeace. The platform also strategically used the contents and representatives of the European Framework Directive to defend the cause of living rivers and ecological flows. At the same time, JARA had to navigate carefully among the activist organizations because involving foundations that were seen as “too radical” by the local villagers or “too environmentalist” by the farmers could weaken the local platform’s coherence and force. Confronted with the large multi-actor and multi-scalar opposition network, the government had to withdraw the plans, and instead it made an alternative design taking the water from a downstream weir– this would leave the river untouched. Meanwhile, the Coordinator continued to enlarge its alliance also with local, national and international academic partners to carry out social and ecological studies that may defend (and “scientifically express”) the importance of the Rio Grande living flow regime for the conservation of valley’s ecological environment and social communities. In the following years, these academic and societal network partners, in a multi-scalar alliance, proved to be extremely important whenever (as in 2009 and 2017) the government revived the construction plans of the dam on the Rio Grande river. The challenge is not yet over. (text based on Shah et al., 2019 . See also: Poma and Gravante, 2015 and Duarte-Abadía et al., 2019 )

The Netherlands. The Netherlands shows an annual surplus in precipitation, nevertheless rivers are regulated to: store water to mitigate periodic drought, enable rivers’ navigation, allocate water flow to preferred water bodies, prevent saltwater intrusion, and control flooding. Large pumping stations are installed to drain polders that have water levels below sea level. The dams, sluices, storm surges, many small barriers in tributaries, and pumping stations prevent the free flowing of rivers. These barriers and pumping stations severally hinder fish migration. Surface water is also contaminated by point sources (mainly from industry) and disperse contamination (mainly from agriculture). National water governance and the regional water authorities (water boards) are in charge to elaborate 15-year plans and implement them to increase water quality according to the EU Water Framework Directive. The water quality has indeed improved, but N and P concentrations are still too high, and industries continue to discharge large amounts of chemicals into the rivers. Several local initiatives exist that fight against contamination by industries and remove barriers in tributaries to allow for fish migration. An example of a grassroots organizations is the local environmental citizens organization Stichting Het Wantij that has fought for over a decade to protect the river and landscape of Het Wantij (part of the Natural Park Biesbosch) against new infrastructure (bridges, roads), water pollution by large chemical industries and felling of trees, and promoting ecological friendly management of the riverbanks. The NGO has successfully filed court cases against the local government to make them comply with environmental legislation (http://www.hetwantij.com). Another initiative to draw attention to the pollution of rivers in the Netherlands is that of the “Drinkable Rivers” by Li An Phoa (https://drinkablerivers.org/). An example on e-flow restoration is the struggle of local individuals and organisations to open the Haringvliet sluices. From 1970 onwards, these sluices have been closed to prevent saltwater intrusion. However, the closed sluices inhibit fish migration. After long years of putting pressure by individuals and organisations the sluices are now opened periodically to allow for fish migration (see: Buitenhuis and Dieperink, 2019)

On the same note: in Europe almost 5000 barriers in rivers have been removed as result of pressure by grassroots organisations. The website of Dam Removal Europe has an overview map of the barriers (or dams as they call them) that have been removed, see: https://damremoval.eu/

These are some examples of grassroots actions to restore or maintain e-flows. The examples show the diversity of conditions and coalitions. In some cases, the government policies were opposed, in others they were mobilized. The questions raised in Rutgerd Boelens’ post on power relations, the question of “who is the expert”, and “who sets the goals for e-flows”, are very relevant when scrutinising the above examples. We can learn from them and see how they differ from policy-induced e-flows.

[b]Thailand[/b]: several dams in the Mun River – a tributary of the Mekong River - obstruct the temporary migration of fish. The main purpose of the Pak Mun Dam, finished in 1994, and the Rasi Salai Dam, finished in 1998, is the generation of hydropower. Local fisher communities were deprived from their livelihoods because of declining fish stocks in the river. They protested for many years against the dams and demanded the opening of the gates to allow the fish to migrate. With the help of national and international NGOs they organized protest marches in the capital Bangkok, and at the dam site. In 2000 some three thousand fishers occupied the dam site with support of the national NGO Assembly of the Poor and backed by a study of the World Commission on Dams. In 2002, after years of protests, the government decided to open the gates of the dams: in 2002-2003 for one year, and after that each year for several months during the rainy season. Scientific research has shown the subsequent recovery of the fish stocks, although the e-flow is under threat (see: [url=http://www.mekongwatch.org/PDF/MekongDam_20160223_report.pdf]Kiguchi, 2016[/url] and [url=http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol13/v13issue1/568-a13-1-7/file]Baird et al., 2020[/url]).

[b]Spain[/b]: In Southern Spain the government planned to build a dam in the Rio Grande near Malaga (Guadalhorce river basin). The purpose was to divert water to the coast, mainly for the tourist sector. Local farmer and environmental organizations protested against the plans for the dam. In 2003, this grassroots alliance created the Cerro Blanco Anti-Dam Platform, which got support from the local ecological activists’ organization, the Jara Association. This NGO that had studied and educated on local ecology for many years, together with the irrigator communities that were mainly concerned with losing their livelihood sources, successfully protested against the dam. However, the government later revived the project quietly. In 2006, the Cerro Blanco project was approved by the Ministry of Environment by conveniently re-naming it as “an [i]azud[/i]” (the local Arab name for a small dam) while planning pipelines to divert most of the water from the Río Grande to the city. This time, the Jara Association provided the leadership and organized large social mobilization against the plan. It included many actors such as local school teachers, local businesses, NGOs, and local politicians, and together they formed the network Coordinator in Defence of the Rio Grande River. The platform organized a multitude of creative activities, and mobilized the valley’s communities to protest on the streets of Malaga. The success of this movement lied in making several local, national and global alliances during its development. The Coordinator created links to the supportive networks at increasingly broader scales. First, it networked with many local foundations and initiatives, for example, the Andalusian branch of the [i]Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua[/i] (FNCA, New Water Culture), and later also with Greenpeace. The platform also strategically used the contents and representatives of the European Framework Directive to defend the cause of living rivers and ecological flows. At the same time, JARA had to navigate carefully among the activist organizations because involving foundations that were seen as “too radical” by the local villagers or “too environmentalist” by the farmers could weaken the local platform’s coherence and force. Confronted with the large multi-actor and multi-scalar opposition network, the government had to withdraw the plans, and instead it made an alternative design taking the water from a downstream weir– this would leave the river untouched. Meanwhile, the Coordinator continued to enlarge its alliance also with local, national and international academic partners to carry out social and ecological studies that may defend (and “scientifically express”) the importance of the Rio Grande living flow regime for the conservation of valley’s ecological environment and social communities. In the following years, these academic and societal network partners, in a multi-scalar alliance, proved to be extremely important whenever (as in 2009 and 2017) the government revived the construction plans of the dam on the Rio Grande river. The challenge is not yet over. (text based on [url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2019.1669566?af=R]Shah et al., 2019[/url] . See also: [url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2014.995688?casa_token=oALqkCl-paEAAAAA:yTAHaU_W-fGiN2GhubcyYDvG3Xp3olnxr5W8Uvp8YN5AaRI9lPdTl0e0eYuHt72OZAQjH1vBGAPU]Poma and Gravante, 2015[/url]  and [url=https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/11/3/410]Duarte-Abadía et al., 2019[/url] )

[b]The Netherlands[/b]. The Netherlands shows an annual surplus in precipitation, nevertheless rivers are regulated to: store water to mitigate periodic drought, enable rivers’ navigation, allocate water flow to preferred water bodies, prevent saltwater intrusion, and control flooding. Large pumping stations are installed to drain polders that have water levels below sea level. The dams, sluices, storm surges, many small barriers in tributaries, and pumping stations prevent the free flowing of rivers. These barriers and pumping stations severally hinder fish migration. Surface water is also contaminated by point sources (mainly from industry) and disperse contamination (mainly from agriculture). National water governance and the regional water authorities (water boards) are in charge to elaborate 15-year plans and implement them to increase water quality according to the EU Water Framework Directive. The water quality has indeed improved, but N and P concentrations are still too high, and industries continue to discharge large amounts of chemicals into the rivers. Several local initiatives exist that fight against contamination by industries and remove barriers in tributaries to allow for fish migration. An example of a grassroots organizations is the local environmental citizens organization Stichting Het Wantij that has fought for over a decade to protect the river and landscape of Het Wantij (part of the Natural Park Biesbosch) against new infrastructure (bridges, roads), water pollution by large chemical industries and felling of trees, and promoting ecological friendly management of the riverbanks. The NGO has successfully filed court cases against the local government to make them comply with environmental legislation (www.hetwantij.com). Another initiative to draw attention to the pollution of rivers in the Netherlands is that of the “Drinkable Rivers” by Li An Phoa ([url=https://drinkablerivers.org/]https://drinkablerivers.org/[/url]). An example on e-flow restoration is the struggle of local individuals and organisations to open the Haringvliet sluices. From 1970 onwards, these sluices have been closed to prevent saltwater intrusion. However, the closed sluices inhibit fish migration. After long years of putting pressure by individuals and organisations the sluices are now opened periodically to allow for fish migration (see: [url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09640568.2018.1529556?af=R]Buitenhuis and Dieperink, 2019[/url])

On the same note: in Europe almost 5000 barriers in rivers have been removed as result of pressure by grassroots organisations. The website of Dam Removal Europe has an overview map of the barriers (or dams as they call them) that have been removed, see: [url=https://damremoval.eu/]https://damremoval.eu/[/url]

These are some examples of grassroots actions to restore or maintain e-flows. The examples show the diversity of conditions and coalitions. In some cases, the government policies were opposed, in others they were mobilized. The questions raised in Rutgerd Boelens’ post on power relations, the question of “who is the expert”, and “who sets the goals for e-flows”, are very relevant when scrutinising the above examples. We can learn from them and see how they differ from policy-induced e-flows.

As has also become clear from the many valuable posts to this discussion, I think there is not one unique method for establishing e-flows in a bottom-up way. Each river basin, each country, each water-related problematic, and each power constellation of stakeholders is different. However, some examples might help to clarify the sort of processes that could lead to more inclusive establishment of e-flows. I do not claim these examples show perfect bottom-up practices, nor that these examples should - or can - be copied without adaptation to other cases. They serve to illustrate the type of actions possible for bottom-up claimed e-flows over a wide range of very different conditions. Below some illustrations from Thailand, Spain and The Netherlands. [b]Thailand[/b]: several dams in the Mun River – a tributary of the Mekong River - obstruct the temporary migration of fish. The main purpose of the Pak Mun Dam, finished in 1994, and the Rasi Salai Dam, finished in 1998, is the generation of hydropower. Local fisher communities were deprived from their livelihoods because of declining fish stocks in the river. They protested for many years against the dams and demanded the opening of the gates to allow the fish to migrate. With the help of national and international NGOs they organized protest marches in the capital Bangkok, and at the dam site. In 2000 some three thousand fishers occupied the dam site with support of the national NGO Assembly of the Poor and backed by a study of the World Commission on Dams. In 2002, after years of protests, the government decided to open the gates of the dams: in 2002-2003 for one year, and after that each year for several months during the rainy season. Scientific research has shown the subsequent recovery of the fish stocks, although the e-flow is under threat (see: [url=http://www.mekongwatch.org/PDF/MekongDam_20160223_report.pdf]Kiguchi, 2016[/url] and [url=http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol13/v13issue1/568-a13-1-7/file]Baird et al., 2020[/url]). [b]Spain[/b]: In Southern Spain the government planned to build a dam in the Rio Grande near Malaga (Guadalhorce river basin). The purpose was to divert water to the coast, mainly for the tourist sector. Local farmer and environmental organizations protested against the plans for the dam. In 2003, this grassroots alliance created the Cerro Blanco Anti-Dam Platform, which got support from the local ecological activists’ organization, the Jara Association. This NGO that had studied and educated on local ecology for many years, together with the irrigator communities that were mainly concerned with losing their livelihood sources, successfully protested against the dam. However, the government later revived the project quietly. In 2006, the Cerro Blanco project was approved by the Ministry of Environment by conveniently re-naming it as “an [i]azud[/i]” (the local Arab name for a small dam) while planning pipelines to divert most of the water from the Río Grande to the city. This time, the Jara Association provided the leadership and organized large social mobilization against the plan. It included many actors such as local school teachers, local businesses, NGOs, and local politicians, and together they formed the network Coordinator in Defence of the Rio Grande River. The platform organized a multitude of creative activities, and mobilized the valley’s communities to protest on the streets of Malaga. The success of this movement lied in making several local, national and global alliances during its development. The Coordinator created links to the supportive networks at increasingly broader scales. First, it networked with many local foundations and initiatives, for example, the Andalusian branch of the [i]Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua[/i] (FNCA, New Water Culture), and later also with Greenpeace. The platform also strategically used the contents and representatives of the European Framework Directive to defend the cause of living rivers and ecological flows. At the same time, JARA had to navigate carefully among the activist organizations because involving foundations that were seen as “too radical” by the local villagers or “too environmentalist” by the farmers could weaken the local platform’s coherence and force. Confronted with the large multi-actor and multi-scalar opposition network, the government had to withdraw the plans, and instead it made an alternative design taking the water from a downstream weir– this would leave the river untouched. Meanwhile, the Coordinator continued to enlarge its alliance also with local, national and international academic partners to carry out social and ecological studies that may defend (and “scientifically express”) the importance of the Rio Grande living flow regime for the conservation of valley’s ecological environment and social communities. In the following years, these academic and societal network partners, in a multi-scalar alliance, proved to be extremely important whenever (as in 2009 and 2017) the government revived the construction plans of the dam on the Rio Grande river. The challenge is not yet over. (text based on [url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2019.1669566?af=R]Shah et al., 2019[/url] . See also: [url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2014.995688?casa_token=oALqkCl-paEAAAAA:yTAHaU_W-fGiN2GhubcyYDvG3Xp3olnxr5W8Uvp8YN5AaRI9lPdTl0e0eYuHt72OZAQjH1vBGAPU]Poma and Gravante, 2015[/url] and [url=https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/11/3/410]Duarte-Abadía et al., 2019[/url] ) [b]The Netherlands[/b]. The Netherlands shows an annual surplus in precipitation, nevertheless rivers are regulated to: store water to mitigate periodic drought, enable rivers’ navigation, allocate water flow to preferred water bodies, prevent saltwater intrusion, and control flooding. Large pumping stations are installed to drain polders that have water levels below sea level. The dams, sluices, storm surges, many small barriers in tributaries, and pumping stations prevent the free flowing of rivers. These barriers and pumping stations severally hinder fish migration. Surface water is also contaminated by point sources (mainly from industry) and disperse contamination (mainly from agriculture). National water governance and the regional water authorities (water boards) are in charge to elaborate 15-year plans and implement them to increase water quality according to the EU Water Framework Directive. The water quality has indeed improved, but N and P concentrations are still too high, and industries continue to discharge large amounts of chemicals into the rivers. Several local initiatives exist that fight against contamination by industries and remove barriers in tributaries to allow for fish migration. An example of a grassroots organizations is the local environmental citizens organization Stichting Het Wantij that has fought for over a decade to protect the river and landscape of Het Wantij (part of the Natural Park Biesbosch) against new infrastructure (bridges, roads), water pollution by large chemical industries and felling of trees, and promoting ecological friendly management of the riverbanks. The NGO has successfully filed court cases against the local government to make them comply with environmental legislation (www.hetwantij.com). Another initiative to draw attention to the pollution of rivers in the Netherlands is that of the “Drinkable Rivers” by Li An Phoa ([url=https://drinkablerivers.org/]https://drinkablerivers.org/[/url]). An example on e-flow restoration is the struggle of local individuals and organisations to open the Haringvliet sluices. From 1970 onwards, these sluices have been closed to prevent saltwater intrusion. However, the closed sluices inhibit fish migration. After long years of putting pressure by individuals and organisations the sluices are now opened periodically to allow for fish migration (see: [url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09640568.2018.1529556?af=R]Buitenhuis and Dieperink, 2019[/url]) On the same note: in Europe almost 5000 barriers in rivers have been removed as result of pressure by grassroots organisations. The website of Dam Removal Europe has an overview map of the barriers (or dams as they call them) that have been removed, see: [url=https://damremoval.eu/]https://damremoval.eu/[/url] These are some examples of grassroots actions to restore or maintain e-flows. The examples show the diversity of conditions and coalitions. In some cases, the government policies were opposed, in others they were mobilized. The questions raised in Rutgerd Boelens’ post on power relations, the question of “who is the expert”, and “who sets the goals for e-flows”, are very relevant when scrutinising the above examples. We can learn from them and see how they differ from policy-induced e-flows.

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Guest - Dipak Gyawali on Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:23

eFlow, sFlow and nFlow: ramparts of complex ongoing battle

Thanks to Jeroen and Rutgerd for a great post.
I am beginning to look at this politically and to veer towards advocating nFlows as the solution (at least for the Ganga between Nepal, India and Bangladesh) to both eFlow and sFlow. Let me explain.
eFlows wake up all the 9 passions (anger, disgust, despair etc.) in us environmentalists. However, the reality is that eFlow has absolutely NO political traction around here, since neither our numerical voting strength nor our collective moral angst counts for much in this basin of half a billion mostly poor eking out subsistence living in primarily an informal economy. Good politicians pat our backs politely but do nothing, indeed often do just the opposite; bad politicians calls us terrible names, "anti-developmental" being the politically most damaging and marginalizing in the Global South.
sFlows (spiritual flows) are a different matter. Ganga and its tributaries (much like the Mekong which I learnt is a variant of Ma Ganga -Mae Khongkha- or Mother Ganga in ancient Khmer) are "civilizational" rivers that hold deep spiritual meaning. So much so that the Indian government is forced to quietly release water from the Tehri storage dam during the massive Kumbh Mela to allow enough water at Allahabad for a hundred million people to bathe at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna. They would hardly think of doing that to maintain eFlow!! Despite this political traction of sFlow, we in South Asia call our rivers "mother" but treat her not just as a nappy changer but verily nappy itself! See a good book explaining this perplexing irony:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dirty-sacred-rivers-9780199845019?cc=np&lang=en&
Now nFlows are a different matter (nFlows = navigation flows) from these two. India government has passed an act requiring 111 rivers in India to be navigable, Ganga and Brahmaputra being #1 and #2 on the list. The problem is that Ganga has a large flow only in the average with the difference between flood season versus dry season flows differing by twenty or more times. Shallow depth and sandbars make it impossible for barges to move during the almost eight dry months of the year. It is also in this season that there is the highest demand for irrigation waters. Moreover, South Asian hydrocracies (India's being the most "hydrocratic" godfather of them all!) are unfortunately dominated by irrigation and civil engineering construction interests where the de facto policy is "not a drop to be wasted to the sea!" And it goes completely counter to nFlow requirements.
The saving grace here is good old economics: riverine transport of bulk goods is many, many times cheaper than by road or rail. And if India hopes to become an economic super power competing with China, she has to develop riverine transport much as Europe and North America have done. In this, the real fight over the pathway of river water development shifts away from transboundary issues between Nepal and Bangladesh to within India itself: the fight between its irrigation versus commercial interests. I have discussed this in my regular, alternative fortnightly, deliberately "nasty" column:
https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2016/08/31/will-inland-navigation-shift-south-asias-water-discourse-positively/
If nFlows should take the driver's seat in policy formulation, they would subsume under them eFlows as the volume of nFlows is far greater than the token 3-10% or whatever legislated (but more violated in practice than followed) eFlows might be. And sFlows would benefit too, because if you want bargemen plying their boats in the river, Ganga or the Yamuna cannot be mere sewerage back-flows that they currently are but have to see only treated water flowing in to the river.
We can only hope: there is a generational fight up in the years ahead if an alliance of environmentalists and commercial interests (i.e. corporate social responsibility) can be cobbled up and made effective.

Thanks to Jeroen and Rutgerd for a great post.
I am beginning to look at this politically and to veer towards advocating nFlows as the solution (at least for the Ganga between Nepal, India and Bangladesh) to both eFlow and sFlow. Let me explain.
eFlows wake up all the 9 passions (anger, disgust, despair etc.) in us environmentalists. However, the reality is that eFlow has absolutely NO political traction around here, since neither our numerical voting strength nor our collective moral angst counts for much in this basin of half a billion mostly poor eking out subsistence living in primarily an informal economy. Good politicians pat our backs politely but do nothing, indeed often do just the opposite; bad politicians calls us terrible names, "anti-developmental" being the politically most damaging and marginalizing in the Global South.
sFlows (spiritual flows) are a different matter. Ganga and its tributaries (much like the Mekong which I learnt is a variant of Ma Ganga -Mae Khongkha-  or Mother Ganga in ancient Khmer) are "civilizational" rivers that hold deep spiritual meaning. So much so that the Indian government is forced to quietly release water from the Tehri storage dam during the massive Kumbh Mela to allow enough water at Allahabad for a hundred million people to bathe at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna. They would hardly think of doing that to maintain eFlow!! Despite this political traction of sFlow, we in South Asia call our rivers "mother" but treat her not just as a nappy changer but verily nappy itself! See a good book explaining this perplexing irony:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dirty-sacred-rivers-9780199845019?cc=np&lang=en&
Now nFlows are a different matter (nFlows = navigation flows) from these two. India government has passed an act requiring 111 rivers in India to be navigable, Ganga and Brahmaputra being #1 and #2 on the list. The problem is that Ganga has a large flow only in the average with the difference between flood season versus dry season flows differing by twenty or more times. Shallow depth and sandbars make it impossible for barges to move during the almost eight dry months of the year. It is also in this season that there is the highest demand for irrigation waters. Moreover,  South Asian hydrocracies (India's being the most "hydrocratic" godfather of them all!) are unfortunately dominated by irrigation and civil engineering construction interests where the de facto policy is "not a drop to be wasted to the sea!" And it goes completely counter to nFlow requirements.
The saving grace here is good old economics: riverine transport of bulk goods is many, many times cheaper than by road or rail. And if India hopes to become an economic super power competing with China, she has to develop riverine transport much as Europe and North America have done. In this, the real fight over the pathway of river water development shifts away from transboundary issues between Nepal and Bangladesh to within India itself: the fight between its irrigation versus commercial interests. I have discussed this in my regular, alternative fortnightly, deliberately "nasty" column:
https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2016/08/31/will-inland-navigation-shift-south-asias-water-discourse-positively/
If nFlows should take the driver's seat in policy formulation, they would subsume under them eFlows as the volume of nFlows is far greater than the token 3-10% or whatever legislated (but more violated in practice than followed) eFlows might be. And sFlows would benefit too, because if you want bargemen plying their boats in the river, Ganga or the Yamuna cannot be mere sewerage back-flows that they currently are but have to see only treated water flowing in to the river.
We can only hope: there is a generational fight up in the years ahead if an alliance of environmentalists and commercial interests (i.e. corporate social responsibility) can be cobbled up and made effective.

Thanks to Jeroen and Rutgerd for a great post. I am beginning to look at this politically and to veer towards advocating nFlows as the solution (at least for the Ganga between Nepal, India and Bangladesh) to both eFlow and sFlow. Let me explain. eFlows wake up all the 9 passions (anger, disgust, despair etc.) in us environmentalists. However, the reality is that eFlow has absolutely NO political traction around here, since neither our numerical voting strength nor our collective moral angst counts for much in this basin of half a billion mostly poor eking out subsistence living in primarily an informal economy. Good politicians pat our backs politely but do nothing, indeed often do just the opposite; bad politicians calls us terrible names, "anti-developmental" being the politically most damaging and marginalizing in the Global South. sFlows (spiritual flows) are a different matter. Ganga and its tributaries (much like the Mekong which I learnt is a variant of Ma Ganga -Mae Khongkha- or Mother Ganga in ancient Khmer) are "civilizational" rivers that hold deep spiritual meaning. So much so that the Indian government is forced to quietly release water from the Tehri storage dam during the massive Kumbh Mela to allow enough water at Allahabad for a hundred million people to bathe at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna. They would hardly think of doing that to maintain eFlow!! Despite this political traction of sFlow, we in South Asia call our rivers "mother" but treat her not just as a nappy changer but verily nappy itself! See a good book explaining this perplexing irony: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dirty-sacred-rivers-9780199845019?cc=np&lang=en& Now nFlows are a different matter (nFlows = navigation flows) from these two. India government has passed an act requiring 111 rivers in India to be navigable, Ganga and Brahmaputra being #1 and #2 on the list. The problem is that Ganga has a large flow only in the average with the difference between flood season versus dry season flows differing by twenty or more times. Shallow depth and sandbars make it impossible for barges to move during the almost eight dry months of the year. It is also in this season that there is the highest demand for irrigation waters. Moreover, South Asian hydrocracies (India's being the most "hydrocratic" godfather of them all!) are unfortunately dominated by irrigation and civil engineering construction interests where the de facto policy is "not a drop to be wasted to the sea!" And it goes completely counter to nFlow requirements. The saving grace here is good old economics: riverine transport of bulk goods is many, many times cheaper than by road or rail. And if India hopes to become an economic super power competing with China, she has to develop riverine transport much as Europe and North America have done. In this, the real fight over the pathway of river water development shifts away from transboundary issues between Nepal and Bangladesh to within India itself: the fight between its irrigation versus commercial interests. I have discussed this in my regular, alternative fortnightly, deliberately "nasty" column: https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2016/08/31/will-inland-navigation-shift-south-asias-water-discourse-positively/ If nFlows should take the driver's seat in policy formulation, they would subsume under them eFlows as the volume of nFlows is far greater than the token 3-10% or whatever legislated (but more violated in practice than followed) eFlows might be. And sFlows would benefit too, because if you want bargemen plying their boats in the river, Ganga or the Yamuna cannot be mere sewerage back-flows that they currently are but have to see only treated water flowing in to the river. We can only hope: there is a generational fight up in the years ahead if an alliance of environmentalists and commercial interests (i.e. corporate social responsibility) can be cobbled up and made effective.

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Guest - David JH Blake on Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:49

Maybe I could contribute a few words to the discussion, questioning the totality of the original contention that E-Flows are necessarily "exclusionary, technocratic and top-down practices" while adding some nuance to the comments above by Jeroen on the case of Thailand. Let me deal with that first. The example given of the Mun River is not a good one and actually, the process was extremely top-down, exclusionary and technocratic in the way it was designed and implemented. Plus it lasted only a couple of years, and the regime and period of opening and closing the dam gates was decided far away in Bangkok, with minimal local buy in or influence over.

A better example for Thailand would have been the Nam Songkhram River in the upper Northeast region and another tributary of the Mekong. I worked there for several years on an IUCN wetlands conservation project from 2004-07 (Mekong Wetlands Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Programme) and have studied it on and off ever since. The project implemented an E-Flows sub-project in 2006-07 that was consciously and deliberately bottom-up, non-exclusionary, inter-disciplinary and only semi-technocratic in approach. It brought on board voices and knowledge from local resource users via the Tai Baan Research Network which had already been established by the MWBP and Thai civil society groups, and mixed these with a diverse group of mostly Thai "experts" (state and non-state) with one internationally-recognised foreign E-Flows "expert" involved (who tended towards the technocratic approach). There were a number of tensions between the diverse actors involved, but it did kind of work up to a point, although had very little influence with the Thai state hydrocracies, namely the Royal Irrigation Dept and the Dept of Water Resources, who were both looking to dam, regulate and generally hydraulically control the river to the utmost degree they could, and since the demise of the project, effectively have. The river has now been dammed and damned, like much of the Mekong system. Like the Tonle Sap river in Cambodia, the flow situation was greatly complicated by reverse seasonal flows in the lower reaches and a complex floodplain ecosystem which few "experts", from whatever discipline, could quite get their heads around in a comprehensive and holistic manner. The process of conducting the E-Flows process together in the field, often alongside local villagers, helped the single disciplinarians to understand a bit more about the other disciplines and the wider ecosystem values of the floodplain system more generally. This feature was deliberately designed into the process by myself and colleagues, against some resistance from outside, I should add.

The process and lessons learned can be found in the project document below on the Stockholm Environment Institute website.

https://www.sei.org/publications/e-flows/

The wider lessons of this particular E-Flows project on the Nam Songkhram can be compared to others implemented in the Mekong region around the same time, which were far more technocratic, top-down, state-directed and exclusionary of local voices, in a chapter of an edited book volume, as noted below. Indeed, our project was in no small part a reaction to the top-down approach taken by the Mekong River Commission's IBFM project, that cost a small fortune to implement, but was never published or even released, due to the internal politics of the MRC and concerns by the member country's that it might compromise their individual sovereign and combined plans to pursue a vigorous "hydraulic mission".

Lazarus, K., Blake, D.J.H., Dore, J., Sukraroek, W., and Hall, D.S. 2012. Negotiating Flows in the Mekong. In: Ojendal, J., Hansson, S., and Hellberg, S. (Eds) Politics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed: The Case of the Lower Mekong Basin. Springer, London.

Hope this has put some context about an E-Flows approach that was an exception to the norm from over a decade ago, but had little hope of succeeding or having greater influence, due to the wider socio-political context of Thailand and the Mekong Basin nations in general. Hence, one has to critically consider to what extent E-Flows, like IWRM, IMT, PIM and other "nirvana concepts dreamed up in the meeting rooms and studies of Western universities and research agencies, are just normative visions that rarely stand the test of real politik when applied to the river basins of Asia and elsewhere?

And if anyone is wondering, the Tai Baan Research Network likewise didn't survive the withdrawal of donor support, following on from the demise of the MWBP, when the Netherlands govt and GEF pulled the plug on funding 2 years into a 5 years project, as apparently "biodiversity conservation" was less appealing to the donors than a "climate change" couched project. There were, of course, a host of other regional and national political reasons why the project was axed early.

A better example for Thailand would have been the Nam Songkhram River in the upper Northeast region and another tributary of the Mekong. I worked there for several years on an IUCN wetlands conservation project from 2004-07 (Mekong Wetlands Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Programme) and have studied it on and off ever since. The project implemented an E-Flows sub-project in 2006-07 that was consciously and deliberately bottom-up, non-exclusionary, inter-disciplinary and only semi-technocratic in approach. It brought on board voices and knowledge from local resource users via the Tai Baan Research Network which had already been established by the MWBP and Thai civil society groups, and mixed these with a diverse group of mostly Thai "experts" (state and non-state) with one internationally-recognised foreign E-Flows "expert" involved (who tended towards the technocratic approach). There were a number of tensions between the diverse actors involved, but it did kind of work up to a point, although had very little influence with the Thai state hydrocracies, namely the Royal Irrigation Dept and the Dept of Water Resources, who were both looking to dam, regulate and generally hydraulically control the river to the utmost degree they could, and since the demise of the project, effectively have. The river has now been dammed and damned, like much of the Mekong system. Like the Tonle Sap river in Cambodia, the flow situation was greatly complicated by reverse seasonal flows in the lower reaches and a complex floodplain ecosystem which few "experts", from whatever discipline, could quite get their heads around in a comprehensive and holistic manner. The process of conducting the E-Flows process together in the field, often alongside local villagers, helped the single disciplinarians to understand a bit more about the other disciplines and the wider ecosystem values of the floodplain system more generally. This feature was deliberately designed into the process by myself and colleagues, against some resistance from outside, I should add.

The process and lessons learned can be found in the project document below on the Stockholm Environment Institute website.

https://www.sei.org/publications/e-flows/

The wider lessons of this particular E-Flows project on the Nam Songkhram can be compared to others implemented in the Mekong region around the same time, which were far more technocratic, top-down, state-directed and exclusionary of local voices, in a chapter of an edited book volume, as noted below. Indeed, our project was in no small part a reaction to the top-down approach taken by the Mekong River Commission's IBFM project, that cost a small fortune to implement, but was never published or even released, due to the internal politics of the MRC and concerns by the member country's that it might compromise their individual sovereign and combined plans to pursue a vigorous "hydraulic mission".

Lazarus, K., Blake, D.J.H., Dore, J., Sukraroek, W., and Hall, D.S. 2012. Negotiating Flows in the Mekong. In: Ojendal, J., Hansson, S., and Hellberg, S. (Eds) Politics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed: The Case of the Lower Mekong Basin.  Springer, London.

Hope this has put some context about an E-Flows approach that was an exception to the norm from over a decade ago, but had little hope of succeeding or having greater influence, due to the wider socio-political context of Thailand and the Mekong Basin nations in general. Hence, one has to critically consider to what extent E-Flows, like IWRM, IMT, PIM and other "nirvana concepts dreamed up in the meeting rooms and studies of Western universities and research agencies, are just normative visions that rarely stand the test of [i]real politik[/i] when applied to the river basins of Asia and elsewhere?

And if anyone is wondering, the Tai Baan Research Network likewise didn't survive the withdrawal of donor support, following on from the demise of the MWBP, when the Netherlands govt and GEF pulled the plug on funding 2 years into a 5 years project, as apparently "biodiversity conservation" was less appealing to the donors than a "climate change" couched project. There were, of course, a host of other regional and national political reasons why the project was axed early.

Maybe I could contribute a few words to the discussion, questioning the totality of the original contention that E-Flows are necessarily "exclusionary, technocratic and top-down practices" while adding some nuance to the comments above by Jeroen on the case of Thailand. Let me deal with that first. The example given of the Mun River is not a good one and actually, the process was extremely top-down, exclusionary and technocratic in the way it was designed and implemented. Plus it lasted only a couple of years, and the regime and period of opening and closing the dam gates was decided far away in Bangkok, with minimal local buy in or influence over. A better example for Thailand would have been the Nam Songkhram River in the upper Northeast region and another tributary of the Mekong. I worked there for several years on an IUCN wetlands conservation project from 2004-07 (Mekong Wetlands Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Programme) and have studied it on and off ever since. The project implemented an E-Flows sub-project in 2006-07 that was consciously and deliberately bottom-up, non-exclusionary, inter-disciplinary and only semi-technocratic in approach. It brought on board voices and knowledge from local resource users via the Tai Baan Research Network which had already been established by the MWBP and Thai civil society groups, and mixed these with a diverse group of mostly Thai "experts" (state and non-state) with one internationally-recognised foreign E-Flows "expert" involved (who tended towards the technocratic approach). There were a number of tensions between the diverse actors involved, but it did kind of work up to a point, although had very little influence with the Thai state hydrocracies, namely the Royal Irrigation Dept and the Dept of Water Resources, who were both looking to dam, regulate and generally hydraulically control the river to the utmost degree they could, and since the demise of the project, effectively have. The river has now been dammed and damned, like much of the Mekong system. Like the Tonle Sap river in Cambodia, the flow situation was greatly complicated by reverse seasonal flows in the lower reaches and a complex floodplain ecosystem which few "experts", from whatever discipline, could quite get their heads around in a comprehensive and holistic manner. The process of conducting the E-Flows process together in the field, often alongside local villagers, helped the single disciplinarians to understand a bit more about the other disciplines and the wider ecosystem values of the floodplain system more generally. This feature was deliberately designed into the process by myself and colleagues, against some resistance from outside, I should add. The process and lessons learned can be found in the project document below on the Stockholm Environment Institute website. https://www.sei.org/publications/e-flows/ The wider lessons of this particular E-Flows project on the Nam Songkhram can be compared to others implemented in the Mekong region around the same time, which were far more technocratic, top-down, state-directed and exclusionary of local voices, in a chapter of an edited book volume, as noted below. Indeed, our project was in no small part a reaction to the top-down approach taken by the Mekong River Commission's IBFM project, that cost a small fortune to implement, but was never published or even released, due to the internal politics of the MRC and concerns by the member country's that it might compromise their individual sovereign and combined plans to pursue a vigorous "hydraulic mission". Lazarus, K., Blake, D.J.H., Dore, J., Sukraroek, W., and Hall, D.S. 2012. Negotiating Flows in the Mekong. In: Ojendal, J., Hansson, S., and Hellberg, S. (Eds) Politics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed: The Case of the Lower Mekong Basin. Springer, London. Hope this has put some context about an E-Flows approach that was an exception to the norm from over a decade ago, but had little hope of succeeding or having greater influence, due to the wider socio-political context of Thailand and the Mekong Basin nations in general. Hence, one has to critically consider to what extent E-Flows, like IWRM, IMT, PIM and other "nirvana concepts dreamed up in the meeting rooms and studies of Western universities and research agencies, are just normative visions that rarely stand the test of [i]real politik[/i] when applied to the river basins of Asia and elsewhere? And if anyone is wondering, the Tai Baan Research Network likewise didn't survive the withdrawal of donor support, following on from the demise of the MWBP, when the Netherlands govt and GEF pulled the plug on funding 2 years into a 5 years project, as apparently "biodiversity conservation" was less appealing to the donors than a "climate change" couched project. There were, of course, a host of other regional and national political reasons why the project was axed early.

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Guest - Fernando Magdaleno on Sunday, 29 March 2020 20:41

Eflows approach in Spain: key advances and main challenges

Dear all,

After reading this very interesting exchange about some of the main constraints for the succesful implementation of eflows worldwide, I would like to incorporate some further insights from the Spanish experience in the subject.

As most of you already know, Spain is one of the most largely river-regulated countries in the global sphere, due to different physical, historical and socio-economic reasons. During the last two decades, harsh discussions have arisen between water authorities, water end-users and conservationists about the best manners to update the design and release of eflows in all types of water courses: perennial, temporary and ephemeral rivers, lakes and wetlands, and transitional waters.

The challenge was really huge considering some key aspects: i. a common and homogeneous -but still flexible- eflow approach was required for the entire river network, if better results were to be reached; ii. there was no sound understanding of flow-ecology-society relationships in almost all kind of water bodies; iii. previous experiences in the issue were merely based on fixed thresholds, which provided no actual info for the new eflow regimes; iv. the question of how making stakeholders part of the new approach was difficult to address, since old inertial ideas on water planning and management were still rooted in many water sectors.

With that aim, and after a thorny debate, new legal procedures were legally passed in 2007 and 2008, setting the scene for an ameliorated focus on eflows. The main changes were:
i. eflow regimes had to be defined by RBMPs in all water bodies of the country,
ii. in at least 10% of water bodies the definition of eflows had to be based on a combined application of detailed hydrological and habitat simulation methods
iii. eflow implementation had to contribute to the good ecological status of natural WBs, or to the GEP of HMWBs, and their effect had to be monitored
iv. procedures were approved for the above types of water bodies (perennial, ephemeral, stagnant, transitional)
v. eflow regimes had to include four different components: variable minimum flows, variable maximum flows, maximum rates of change d/s of HEPPs, and controlled floods; thus, application of fixed thresholds was legally banned from that time on

And which was the actual effect of those legal changes? Significant but still insufficient achievements have been fulfilled following the early inception of the aforementioned procedure in the 2009 RBMPs. The third RBMPs (2021-2027) will already define eflows for the vast majority of the Spanish water bodies, but the detailed assessments will still only reach that 10% of the entire range of WB (i.e., over 400 from a total amount of over 4,000). Methodologies used for the assessment still involve a wide number of uncertainties (which you already know, both concerning the statistical analysis of flow series and the 1D or 2D modelling of flow suitability for aquatic species). Habitat simulation is still strictly based on fish species; with that aim, suitability functions were constructed for almost the entire set of native river fishes, but those functions should incorporate a wider number of empirical observations. According to water decrees, also the water needs of riparian plant stands had to be considered during the biological simulation, but we have only been able to analyse the requirements of a limited number of plant communities and guilds up to this date, and they have not yet been included in the eflow analyses. Also methodological limitations remain for other less-known water bodies. But maybe the main controversial aspect is the way in which the legal eflow procedures have been applied because, in many cases, the flexibility of the method have been used, during the concertation phase with water-users, to define very low eflow values. And this fact have limited, by far, the positive effect of the released flow regimes. As I previously mentioned, the reaction of water end-users to a potential increment of eflows was extremely hard, and frequently conducted through judicial processes, which have hampered the release of efficient eflows. In many rivers, water rights reach a timespan of 75 years, which have created an atmosphere of utmost control of river flows by certain economic sectors.

In brief, from my perspective, we have the present achievements and failures regarding eflow implementation:

Main achievements
i. despite strong resistance, most water users have accepted that eflow patterns must include some temporal variability, and this is bit by bit incorporated to eflow regimes. Variability is on many occasions too weak, but it was finally considered, after hard fight
ii. requirements of native fishes (and slowly, of riparian plants) have been introduced in eflow design. They must be better analysed, but are already inside the calculations
iii. monitoring have began to be implemented. If COVID-19 do not entirely alter our budgets (let´s see what happens!), this year a multi-annual monitoring of eflow effects will be initiated in tens of water bodies, which will include many different biological, physico-chemical and hydromorphological indicators. This would give us clues to better understand and integer the entire range of requirements of the river system
iv. release of controlled floods from dams have now began. Already 6 different pilot experiences have been fulfilled up to this moment. They are aimed at regenerating regulated riverbeds, improving sediment transport, avoiding excessive plant colonization of riverbeds, and improving habitat quality. Some of these experiences have been discussed in the following paper:
Magdaleno, F. "Experimental floods: A new era for Spanish and Mediterranean rivers?." Environmental Science & Policy 75 (2017): 10-18.
v. one of this recent experiences of controlled floods has, and this is quite relevant, been combined with the reintroduction of sediments, in a combined maneuver from one large dam in Catalonia. This opens the gate to the so-much dreamed link of eflows and sediment dynamics, as discussed in:
De Jalón, Diego García, Martina Bussettini, Massimo Rinaldi, Gordon Grant, Nikolai Friberg, Ian G. Cowx, Fernando Magdaleno, and Tom Buijse. "Linking environmental flows to sediment dynamics." Water Policy 19, no. 2 (2017): 358-375.

Main limitations and failures
i. we are far from releasing eflows which are really functional flows. Methodological limitations, but more particularly, constraints imposed by stakeholders have deeply lowered eflow values. This makes the effect of eflows quite uncertain, and in many cases, very shallow
ii. we need sound advances on eflow procedures regarding temporary rivers, wetlands and transitional waters
iii. lack of monitoring during the last decades makes eflow design weaker, and the own eflows of difficult "sale" to end-users, politicians and judges
iv. society is far from knowing about eflows, and how much they could mean for environmental functions and for ecosystem services. We, scientist and managers, have a big task with explaining eflows to people, and making them aware of their relevance. Cultural flows are still far from reaching RBMPs, but we need them now!:
Magdaleno, F. (2018). Flows, ecology and people: is there room for cultural demands in the assessment of environmental flows?. Water Science and Technology, 77(7), 1777-1781.
v. and of course, as many of you already said, the role of stakeholders should much be better addressed to make them part of the solution, and not only part of the problem

I will be happy to go on reading your very informative contributions. I hope to have offered some new insights about the way we are managing things in Spain, with all its many lights and shadows.

Have a nice week, despite the difficult confinement we are living!

Dear all,

After reading this very interesting exchange about some of the main constraints for the succesful implementation of eflows worldwide, I would like to incorporate some further insights from the Spanish experience in the subject.

As most of you already know, Spain is one of the most largely river-regulated countries in the global sphere, due to different physical, historical and socio-economic reasons. During the last two decades, harsh discussions have arisen between water authorities, water end-users and conservationists about the best manners to update the design and release of eflows in all types of water courses: perennial, temporary and ephemeral rivers, lakes and wetlands, and transitional waters.

The challenge was really huge considering some key aspects: i. a common and homogeneous -but still flexible- eflow approach was required for the entire river network, if better results were to be reached; ii. there was no sound understanding of flow-ecology-society relationships in almost all kind of water bodies; iii. previous experiences in the issue were merely based on fixed thresholds, which provided no actual info for the new eflow regimes; iv. the question of how making stakeholders part of the new approach was difficult to address, since old inertial ideas on water planning and management were still rooted in many water sectors.

With that aim, and after a thorny debate, new legal procedures were legally passed in 2007 and 2008, setting the scene for an ameliorated focus on eflows. The main changes were:
i. eflow regimes had to be defined by RBMPs in all water bodies of the country, 
ii. in at least 10% of water bodies the definition of eflows had to be based on a combined application of detailed hydrological and habitat simulation methods
iii. eflow implementation had to contribute to the good ecological status of natural WBs, or to the GEP of HMWBs, and their effect had to be monitored
iv. procedures were approved for the above types of water bodies (perennial, ephemeral, stagnant, transitional)
v. eflow regimes had to include four different components: variable minimum flows, variable maximum flows, maximum rates of change d/s of HEPPs, and controlled floods; thus, application of fixed thresholds was legally banned from that time on

And which was the actual effect of those legal changes? Significant but still insufficient achievements have been fulfilled following the early inception of the aforementioned procedure in the 2009 RBMPs. The third RBMPs (2021-2027) will already define eflows for the vast majority of the Spanish water bodies, but the detailed assessments will still only reach that 10% of the entire range of WB (i.e., over 400 from a total amount of over 4,000). Methodologies used for the assessment still involve a wide number of uncertainties (which you already know, both concerning the statistical analysis of flow series and the 1D or 2D modelling of flow suitability for aquatic species). Habitat simulation is still strictly based on fish species; with that aim, suitability functions were constructed for almost the entire set of native river fishes, but those functions should incorporate a wider number of empirical observations. According to water decrees, also the water needs of riparian plant stands had to be considered during the biological simulation, but we have only been able to analyse the requirements of a limited number of plant communities and guilds up to this date, and they have not yet been included in the eflow analyses. Also methodological limitations remain for other less-known water bodies. But maybe the main controversial aspect is the way in which the legal eflow procedures have been applied because, in many cases, the flexibility of the method have been used, during the concertation phase with water-users, to define very low eflow values. And this fact have limited, by far, the positive effect of the released flow regimes. As I previously mentioned, the reaction of water end-users to a potential increment of eflows was extremely hard, and frequently conducted through judicial processes, which have hampered the release of efficient eflows. In many rivers, water rights reach a timespan of 75 years, which have created an atmosphere of utmost control of river flows by certain economic sectors.

In brief, from my perspective, we have the present achievements and failures regarding eflow implementation:

Main achievements
i. despite strong resistance, most water users have accepted that eflow patterns must include some temporal variability, and this is bit by bit incorporated to eflow regimes. Variability is on many occasions too weak, but it was finally considered, after hard fight
ii. requirements of native fishes (and slowly, of riparian plants) have been introduced in eflow design. They must be better analysed, but are already inside the calculations
iii. monitoring have began to be implemented. If COVID-19 do not entirely alter our budgets (let´s see what happens!), this year a multi-annual monitoring of eflow effects will be initiated in tens of water bodies, which will include many different biological, physico-chemical and hydromorphological indicators. This would give us clues to better understand and integer the entire range of requirements of the river system
iv. release of controlled floods from dams have now began. Already 6 different pilot experiences have been fulfilled up to this moment. They are aimed at regenerating regulated riverbeds, improving sediment transport, avoiding excessive plant colonization of riverbeds, and improving habitat quality. Some of these experiences have been discussed in the following paper:
Magdaleno, F. "Experimental floods: A new era for Spanish and Mediterranean rivers?." Environmental Science & Policy 75 (2017): 10-18.
v. one of this recent experiences of controlled floods has, and this is quite relevant, been combined with the reintroduction of sediments, in a combined maneuver from one large dam in Catalonia. This opens the gate to the so-much dreamed link of eflows and sediment dynamics, as discussed in:
De Jalón, Diego García, Martina Bussettini, Massimo Rinaldi, Gordon Grant, Nikolai Friberg, Ian G. Cowx, Fernando Magdaleno, and Tom Buijse. "Linking environmental flows to sediment dynamics." Water Policy 19, no. 2 (2017): 358-375.

Main limitations and failures
i. we are far from releasing eflows which are really functional flows. Methodological limitations, but more particularly, constraints imposed by stakeholders have deeply lowered eflow values. This makes the effect of eflows quite uncertain, and in many cases, very shallow
ii. we need sound advances on eflow procedures regarding temporary rivers, wetlands and transitional waters
iii. lack of monitoring during the last decades makes eflow design weaker, and the own eflows of difficult "sale" to end-users, politicians and judges
iv. society is far from knowing about eflows, and how much they could mean for environmental functions and for ecosystem services. We, scientist and managers, have a big task with explaining eflows to people, and making them aware of their relevance. Cultural flows are still far from reaching RBMPs, but we need them now!:
Magdaleno, F. (2018). Flows, ecology and people: is there room for cultural demands in the assessment of environmental flows?. Water Science and Technology, 77(7), 1777-1781.
v. and of course, as many of you already said, the role of stakeholders should much be better addressed to make them part of the solution, and not only part of the problem

I will be happy to go on reading your very informative contributions. I hope to have offered some new insights about the way we are managing things in Spain, with all its many lights and shadows.

Have a nice week, despite the difficult confinement we are living!

Dear all, After reading this very interesting exchange about some of the main constraints for the succesful implementation of eflows worldwide, I would like to incorporate some further insights from the Spanish experience in the subject. As most of you already know, Spain is one of the most largely river-regulated countries in the global sphere, due to different physical, historical and socio-economic reasons. During the last two decades, harsh discussions have arisen between water authorities, water end-users and conservationists about the best manners to update the design and release of eflows in all types of water courses: perennial, temporary and ephemeral rivers, lakes and wetlands, and transitional waters. The challenge was really huge considering some key aspects: i. a common and homogeneous -but still flexible- eflow approach was required for the entire river network, if better results were to be reached; ii. there was no sound understanding of flow-ecology-society relationships in almost all kind of water bodies; iii. previous experiences in the issue were merely based on fixed thresholds, which provided no actual info for the new eflow regimes; iv. the question of how making stakeholders part of the new approach was difficult to address, since old inertial ideas on water planning and management were still rooted in many water sectors. With that aim, and after a thorny debate, new legal procedures were legally passed in 2007 and 2008, setting the scene for an ameliorated focus on eflows. The main changes were: i. eflow regimes had to be defined by RBMPs in all water bodies of the country, ii. in at least 10% of water bodies the definition of eflows had to be based on a combined application of detailed hydrological and habitat simulation methods iii. eflow implementation had to contribute to the good ecological status of natural WBs, or to the GEP of HMWBs, and their effect had to be monitored iv. procedures were approved for the above types of water bodies (perennial, ephemeral, stagnant, transitional) v. eflow regimes had to include four different components: variable minimum flows, variable maximum flows, maximum rates of change d/s of HEPPs, and controlled floods; thus, application of fixed thresholds was legally banned from that time on And which was the actual effect of those legal changes? Significant but still insufficient achievements have been fulfilled following the early inception of the aforementioned procedure in the 2009 RBMPs. The third RBMPs (2021-2027) will already define eflows for the vast majority of the Spanish water bodies, but the detailed assessments will still only reach that 10% of the entire range of WB (i.e., over 400 from a total amount of over 4,000). Methodologies used for the assessment still involve a wide number of uncertainties (which you already know, both concerning the statistical analysis of flow series and the 1D or 2D modelling of flow suitability for aquatic species). Habitat simulation is still strictly based on fish species; with that aim, suitability functions were constructed for almost the entire set of native river fishes, but those functions should incorporate a wider number of empirical observations. According to water decrees, also the water needs of riparian plant stands had to be considered during the biological simulation, but we have only been able to analyse the requirements of a limited number of plant communities and guilds up to this date, and they have not yet been included in the eflow analyses. Also methodological limitations remain for other less-known water bodies. But maybe the main controversial aspect is the way in which the legal eflow procedures have been applied because, in many cases, the flexibility of the method have been used, during the concertation phase with water-users, to define very low eflow values. And this fact have limited, by far, the positive effect of the released flow regimes. As I previously mentioned, the reaction of water end-users to a potential increment of eflows was extremely hard, and frequently conducted through judicial processes, which have hampered the release of efficient eflows. In many rivers, water rights reach a timespan of 75 years, which have created an atmosphere of utmost control of river flows by certain economic sectors. In brief, from my perspective, we have the present achievements and failures regarding eflow implementation: Main achievements i. despite strong resistance, most water users have accepted that eflow patterns must include some temporal variability, and this is bit by bit incorporated to eflow regimes. Variability is on many occasions too weak, but it was finally considered, after hard fight ii. requirements of native fishes (and slowly, of riparian plants) have been introduced in eflow design. They must be better analysed, but are already inside the calculations iii. monitoring have began to be implemented. If COVID-19 do not entirely alter our budgets (let´s see what happens!), this year a multi-annual monitoring of eflow effects will be initiated in tens of water bodies, which will include many different biological, physico-chemical and hydromorphological indicators. This would give us clues to better understand and integer the entire range of requirements of the river system iv. release of controlled floods from dams have now began. Already 6 different pilot experiences have been fulfilled up to this moment. They are aimed at regenerating regulated riverbeds, improving sediment transport, avoiding excessive plant colonization of riverbeds, and improving habitat quality. Some of these experiences have been discussed in the following paper: Magdaleno, F. "Experimental floods: A new era for Spanish and Mediterranean rivers?." Environmental Science & Policy 75 (2017): 10-18. v. one of this recent experiences of controlled floods has, and this is quite relevant, been combined with the reintroduction of sediments, in a combined maneuver from one large dam in Catalonia. This opens the gate to the so-much dreamed link of eflows and sediment dynamics, as discussed in: De Jalón, Diego García, Martina Bussettini, Massimo Rinaldi, Gordon Grant, Nikolai Friberg, Ian G. Cowx, Fernando Magdaleno, and Tom Buijse. "Linking environmental flows to sediment dynamics." Water Policy 19, no. 2 (2017): 358-375. Main limitations and failures i. we are far from releasing eflows which are really functional flows. Methodological limitations, but more particularly, constraints imposed by stakeholders have deeply lowered eflow values. This makes the effect of eflows quite uncertain, and in many cases, very shallow ii. we need sound advances on eflow procedures regarding temporary rivers, wetlands and transitional waters iii. lack of monitoring during the last decades makes eflow design weaker, and the own eflows of difficult "sale" to end-users, politicians and judges iv. society is far from knowing about eflows, and how much they could mean for environmental functions and for ecosystem services. We, scientist and managers, have a big task with explaining eflows to people, and making them aware of their relevance. Cultural flows are still far from reaching RBMPs, but we need them now!: Magdaleno, F. (2018). Flows, ecology and people: is there room for cultural demands in the assessment of environmental flows?. Water Science and Technology, 77(7), 1777-1781. v. and of course, as many of you already said, the role of stakeholders should much be better addressed to make them part of the solution, and not only part of the problem I will be happy to go on reading your very informative contributions. I hope to have offered some new insights about the way we are managing things in Spain, with all its many lights and shadows. Have a nice week, despite the difficult confinement we are living!

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Guest - Madeline Kiser on Tuesday, 31 March 2020 16:28

Training, empowering and connecting Water Champions

Thank you to the editors of this exchange and to all who have participated. I hope this note finds you and your families well, in this unprecedented moment.

We write as laypeople who have roots in both the Colorado River Basin, and in the Terraba Basin, in the south of Costa Rica, where we now live. Almost twenty years ago, our beloved parents, along with community members, frustrated by rivers that were drying--almost dry, now--due in part to a subsidiary of Del Monte pineapple taking unquestioned amounts of water, asked, Why is it possible to dry rivers entirely, with no thought to future generations? Surrounded by data, in their quest to understand their lives next to a river they love, they simply wanted to ask this question and try to tell a story. Together with them, we (because we have a computer) helped carried this question to water experts inside of Costa Rica, and environmental NGOs. But given that pineapple was then and now is even more central to the economy, it was understandably hard for people within the country to participate in this inquiry openly and without funding, without the very real possibility of coming under pressure. Relative silence during a few years led us to read about e-flows and water policy, and reading led us to experts outside the country, as well, including Brian Richter and Jackie King.

The short of this story is that for twenty years, they, and others--including, now, experts in Costa Rica--have somehow taken time to educate, empower and connect not only us, but many other water champions around the world who came to fall in love with and feel at home in the increasingly holistic, poetic, capacious science of e-flows. They somehow take time from full lives to answer letters and return calls. (For six years, moved in particular by the time Jackie invested in so many laypeople, a group nominated her for last year's Stockholm Water Prize--challenging to even help write, outside the realm of expertise!)

I'm sharing this story in part from the shelter of the coronavirus's mandated home-seclusion, because all of you no doubt are also every day nurturing and involving laypeople in your e-flows work. Investing time informally in people who reach out to you is far more profound than may at first seem.

That the science is also in part thankfully evolving, through the concept of Development Space, to help society at the basin-level prepare triple bottom-line scenarios resultant altering ecosystems, matters deeply in the necessary quest to transcend data. Often, as you know, data can obscure the simple, timely, often controversial questions that need to be asked and stories that need to be told. (At the end of this letter, I'll try to share materials about Development Space, as well as about some of the amazing e-flows work Anny Chavez and colleagues through UNESCO are pioneering in Central America.) The "simple" question laypeople here in the Terraba basin are trying to ask is, How viable, in a time of rapid climate change and rivers run dry, is the current export economy, with emphasis on pineapple? Laypeople are trying to raise the profile of Development Space, in a non-violent process of inquiry including shining light on how a culture of de-watered rivers, pineapple, cattle and sugarcane, is translating into youth wanting fast cash--and joining the cartels. The cost of addiction, depression, crime and incarceration, therefore, should be included in e-flows analyses of de-watered rivers, contaminated aquifers, and the increasingly large security and mental health industry around the world invited to the table!

Last, thinking through concrete next steps about creating parity in e-flows science, would be very powerful to learn from the amazing example of the Green New Deal, bolstered and proposed by a young woman in the US, AOC, who two years ago was working as a waitress. She was educated, empowered and connected to other young leaders through a few agencies (Justice Democrats; Sunrise Movement; others) looking to shift the political landscape in the US. It's been an amazing process to witness. This model could be applied to water champions?

Un fuerte abrazo, e-flows community, and with warmest regards,
Madeline Kiser and Oscar Beita
Living Rivers Movement, Costa Rica

Thank you to the editors of this exchange and to all who have participated.  I hope this note finds you and your families well, in this unprecedented moment.

We write as laypeople who have roots in both the Colorado River Basin, and in the Terraba Basin, in the south of Costa Rica, where we now live.  Almost twenty years ago, our beloved parents, along with community members, frustrated by rivers that were drying--almost dry, now--due in part to a subsidiary of Del Monte pineapple taking unquestioned amounts of water, asked, Why is it possible to dry rivers entirely, with no thought to future generations?  Surrounded by data, in their quest to understand their lives next to a river they love, they simply wanted to ask this question and try to tell a story.  Together with them, we (because we have a computer) helped carried this question to water experts inside of Costa Rica, and environmental NGOs.  But given that pineapple was then and now is even more central to the economy, it was understandably hard for people within the country to participate in this inquiry openly and without funding, without the very real possibility of coming under pressure.  Relative silence during a few years led us to read about e-flows and water policy, and reading led us to experts outside the country, as well, including Brian Richter and Jackie King.

The short of this story is that for twenty years, they, and others--including, now, experts in Costa Rica--have somehow taken time to educate, empower and connect not only us, but many other water champions around the world who came to fall in love with and feel at home in the increasingly holistic, poetic, capacious science of e-flows.  They somehow take time from full lives to answer letters and return calls. (For six years, moved in particular by the time Jackie invested in so many laypeople, a group nominated her for last year's Stockholm Water Prize--challenging to even help write, outside the realm of expertise!)

I'm sharing this story in part from the shelter of the coronavirus's mandated home-seclusion, because all of you no doubt are also every day nurturing and involving laypeople in your e-flows work.   Investing time informally in people who reach out to you is far more profound than may at first seem.

That the science is also in part thankfully evolving, through the concept of Development Space, to help society at the basin-level prepare triple bottom-line scenarios resultant altering ecosystems, matters deeply in the necessary quest to transcend data.  Often, as you know, data can obscure the simple, timely, often controversial questions that need to be asked and stories that need to be told.  (At the end of this letter, I'll try to share materials about Development Space, as well as about some of the amazing e-flows work Anny Chavez and colleagues through UNESCO are pioneering in Central America.)  The "simple" question laypeople here in the Terraba basin are trying to ask is, How viable, in a time of rapid climate change and rivers run dry, is the current export economy, with emphasis on pineapple?  Laypeople are trying to raise the profile of Development Space, in a non-violent process of inquiry including shining light on how a culture of de-watered rivers, pineapple, cattle and sugarcane, is translating into youth wanting fast cash--and joining the cartels.  The cost of addiction, depression, crime and incarceration, therefore, should be included in e-flows analyses of de-watered rivers, contaminated aquifers, and the increasingly large security and mental health industry around the world invited to the table!

Last, thinking through concrete next steps about creating parity in e-flows science, would be very powerful to learn from the amazing example of the Green New Deal, bolstered and proposed by a young woman in the US, AOC, who two years ago was working as a waitress.   She was educated, empowered and connected to other young leaders through a few agencies (Justice Democrats; Sunrise Movement; others) looking to shift the political landscape in the US.   It's been an amazing process to witness.  This model could be applied to water champions?

Un fuerte abrazo, e-flows community, and with warmest regards,
Madeline Kiser and Oscar Beita
Living Rivers Movement, Costa Rica

Thank you to the editors of this exchange and to all who have participated. I hope this note finds you and your families well, in this unprecedented moment. We write as laypeople who have roots in both the Colorado River Basin, and in the Terraba Basin, in the south of Costa Rica, where we now live. Almost twenty years ago, our beloved parents, along with community members, frustrated by rivers that were drying--almost dry, now--due in part to a subsidiary of Del Monte pineapple taking unquestioned amounts of water, asked, Why is it possible to dry rivers entirely, with no thought to future generations? Surrounded by data, in their quest to understand their lives next to a river they love, they simply wanted to ask this question and try to tell a story. Together with them, we (because we have a computer) helped carried this question to water experts inside of Costa Rica, and environmental NGOs. But given that pineapple was then and now is even more central to the economy, it was understandably hard for people within the country to participate in this inquiry openly and without funding, without the very real possibility of coming under pressure. Relative silence during a few years led us to read about e-flows and water policy, and reading led us to experts outside the country, as well, including Brian Richter and Jackie King. The short of this story is that for twenty years, they, and others--including, now, experts in Costa Rica--have somehow taken time to educate, empower and connect not only us, but many other water champions around the world who came to fall in love with and feel at home in the increasingly holistic, poetic, capacious science of e-flows. They somehow take time from full lives to answer letters and return calls. (For six years, moved in particular by the time Jackie invested in so many laypeople, a group nominated her for last year's Stockholm Water Prize--challenging to even help write, outside the realm of expertise!) I'm sharing this story in part from the shelter of the coronavirus's mandated home-seclusion, because all of you no doubt are also every day nurturing and involving laypeople in your e-flows work. Investing time informally in people who reach out to you is far more profound than may at first seem. That the science is also in part thankfully evolving, through the concept of Development Space, to help society at the basin-level prepare triple bottom-line scenarios resultant altering ecosystems, matters deeply in the necessary quest to transcend data. Often, as you know, data can obscure the simple, timely, often controversial questions that need to be asked and stories that need to be told. (At the end of this letter, I'll try to share materials about Development Space, as well as about some of the amazing e-flows work Anny Chavez and colleagues through UNESCO are pioneering in Central America.) The "simple" question laypeople here in the Terraba basin are trying to ask is, How viable, in a time of rapid climate change and rivers run dry, is the current export economy, with emphasis on pineapple? Laypeople are trying to raise the profile of Development Space, in a non-violent process of inquiry including shining light on how a culture of de-watered rivers, pineapple, cattle and sugarcane, is translating into youth wanting fast cash--and joining the cartels. The cost of addiction, depression, crime and incarceration, therefore, should be included in e-flows analyses of de-watered rivers, contaminated aquifers, and the increasingly large security and mental health industry around the world invited to the table! Last, thinking through concrete next steps about creating parity in e-flows science, would be very powerful to learn from the amazing example of the Green New Deal, bolstered and proposed by a young woman in the US, AOC, who two years ago was working as a waitress. She was educated, empowered and connected to other young leaders through a few agencies (Justice Democrats; Sunrise Movement; others) looking to shift the political landscape in the US. It's been an amazing process to witness. This model could be applied to water champions? Un fuerte abrazo, e-flows community, and with warmest regards, Madeline Kiser and Oscar Beita Living Rivers Movement, Costa Rica

Cancel Update Comment

Guest - Madeline Kiser on Tuesday, 31 March 2020 20:24

Follow-up documents - Development Space, UNESCO e-flows toolkit in Central America +

All--here are the documents mentioned:

1. Development Space and Sustainability Boundaries
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2018.00113/full

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227682784_Re-Thinking_Environmental_Flows_From_Allocations_and_Reserves_to_Sustainability_Boundaries

2. UNESCO e-flows toolkit, Central America https://es.unesco.org/node/275904

3. Water Justice and Justice Democrats

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10rxLBisP6kE8bWM-47_y-G7frgLPYU66BuMI9LmZgm0/edit
https://www.americanrivers.org/author/dhenton/

Jeroen Vos on Saturday, 04 April 2020 09:33

Closing the first Water Dissensus discussion

Dear contributors and readers of the Water Dissensus,

Today this discussion of e-flows will close. It has been the first thematic discussion on the Water Alternatives Forum, and we are very satisfied with the engaged, substantive and fruitful discussion. A lot of interesting contributions have been made, bringing forward many good examples, including links to further reading. We learned a lot from the insights and cases presented. We also feel that several points raised merit more and deeper discussion (like the comment by Tarik on the supposed “luxury” of e-flows in rich countries, versus the need to harnessing water for development in poor countries), and surely we will have those discussions somewhere in the near future (in this platform or elsewhere).

For now, we would like to thank all authors of comments, and of course also the organisers of the Dissensus: Francois Molle and Douglas Merrey.

We look very much forward to the discussion of next themes in the Water Dissensus!

Take care and stay healthy!

Rutgerd Boelens and Jeroen Vos

Dear contributors and readers of the Water Dissensus,

Today this discussion of e-flows will close. It has been the first thematic discussion on the Water Alternatives Forum, and we are very satisfied with the engaged, substantive and fruitful discussion. A lot of interesting contributions have been made, bringing forward many good examples, including links to further reading. We learned a lot from the insights and cases presented. We also feel that several points raised merit more and deeper discussion (like the comment by Tarik on the supposed “luxury” of e-flows in rich countries, versus the need to harnessing water for development in poor countries), and surely we will have those discussions somewhere in the near future (in this platform or elsewhere).

For now, we would like to thank all authors of comments, and of course also the organisers of the Dissensus: Francois Molle and Douglas Merrey.

We look very much forward to the discussion of next themes in the Water Dissensus!

Take care and stay healthy!

Rutgerd Boelens and Jeroen Vos

Cancel Update Comment

Douglas Merrey on Saturday, 04 April 2020 14:02

Thank you everyone, please wait for the next discussion topic

This discussion of e-flows is now closed. But stay tuned for the next posting on which we will invite your comments.

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Ecological flows are exclusionary, technocratic and top-down practices ... (but could be empowering)

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Jeroen Vos

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