Integraal waterbeheer: de verweving van expertise en belangen

In this PhD thesis I develop an understanding of the meaning of integration in water management from the way water professionals implement integration in their work. I start with a brief exploration of recent changes in the practices of the community of water professionals working in Rijkswaterstaat and other public bodies in The Netherlands (e.g. water boards). As a group, water professionals have been required to enlarge their field of substantive expertise to include topics like ecology and landscape quality. They also had to manage changes in the way this expertise was input into decision making processes as these were becoming more participatory. Last, they had to develop the expertise to manage such participatory decision making processes.

I assert that these changes in the expertise required from water professionals are related to the introduction of ‘integrated water management’ as policy objective in the mid-1980’s. The exploration of the meaning of ‘integration’ in water management constitutes the main body of this PhD thesis. While subsequent policy documents indicate the need for integration and the directions to be taken, integration can be achieved only in practice in concrete projects. This exploration of ‘integration in water management’ therefore is based to a large extent on the ethnographic study of the decision making process in one of these projects, the Integrated Assessment Meuse phase 2 (IVM2), while taking account of its history (preceding projects) and its context (concurrent projects, policy). Additionally, I have organised and/or attended an number of expert meetings where integrated water management was discussed in order to broaden my understanding of the subject.