Integrated Deliberative Decision Processes for Water Resources Planning and Evaluation

This Guidance Document is part of the ADVISOR (“Integrated Evaluation for Sustainable River Basin Governance”) research project funded by the European Commission, under the “Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development” theme of the 5th Framework Research Programme. The aim of ADVISOR is to improve the understanding of evaluation processes as part of river basin planning and management and to provide a framework supported by a toolkit for the conduct of integrated and participatory evaluations.The present document is part of Work Package 4 of the project, whose goal is to transfer the experience and lessons learned during the ADVISOR project to policy makers, contributing especially to the implementation process of the Water Framework Directive. An Integrated Deliberative Decision Process (IDDP) is proposed to be adopted as the platform to achieve integrated evaluations. This document explains and provides a step-by-step guidance on how to design and run such a process. This document is directed to policy makers. Some theoretical reflection however is also provided, where this bears importance to practical implementation. References to theoretical literature have been avoided to a maximum extent to facilitate the “flow of the text”. However, lists of further reading are provided in the end of each section for those who wish to learn more on the issues discussed or find more details about its implementation.