Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers
1
GeoViable, 14940 Córdoba, Spain
2
Stockholm Environment Institute, 115 23 Stockholm, Sweden
3
Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Chin H Wu and Rui Cunha Marques
Water 2022, 14(2), 193; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14020193
Received: 27 September 2021
/
Revised: 2 December 2021
/
Accepted: 13 December 2021
/
Published: 11 January 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social-Hydrological Resilience: Perspectives and Insights in Social-Hydrological Resilience Research)
Damming and water regulation creates highly modified rivers with limited ecosystem integrity and resilience. This, coupled with an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, makes river restoration a priority, which requires water reallocation. Coupled human–natural systems research provides a suitable lens for integrated systems’ analysis but offers limited insight into the governance processes of water reallocation. Therefore, we propose an analytical framework, which combines insight from social–hydrological resilience and water reallocation research, and identifies the adaptive capacity in highly modified rivers as the capacity for water reallocation. We test the framework by conducting an analysis of Sweden, pre- and post-2019, a critical juncture in the governance of the country’s hydropower producing rivers. We identify a relative increase in adaptive capacity post- 2019 since water reallocation is set to occur in smaller rivers and tributaries, while leaving large-scaled rivers to enjoy limited water reallocation, or even increased allocation to hydropower. We contend that the proposed framework is broad enough to be of general interest, yet sufficiently specific to contribute to the construction of middle-range theories, which could further our understanding of why and how governance processes function, change, and lead to outcomes in terms of modified natural resource management and resilience shifts.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
social–hydrological resilience; water resilience; socio-hydrology; adaptive governance; hydropower; riverine ecosystem; electric system; Sweden
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Rudberg, P.M.; Karpouzoglou, T. Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers. Water 2022, 14, 193. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14020193
AMA Style
Rudberg PM, Karpouzoglou T. Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers. Water. 2022; 14(2):193. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14020193
Chicago/Turabian StyleRudberg, Peter M., and Timos Karpouzoglou. 2022. "Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers" Water 14, no. 2: 193. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14020193
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
