Global water problems are obvious: grave problems with water scarcity, bad water quality in many regions and floods are an increasing problem with high risks. Due to the climate change the impacts will increase in many regions.

There are already various approaches and programmes which provide possible ways for sustainable water and land management such as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). But nonetheless there are still several barriers for coherent planning of measures and their implementation:

* Lack of (correlated) data and information as well as poor exchange of data;
* Missing sector- and region-comprehensive integration of different specific information and planning;
* Dominance of technical solutions;
* Very often inefficient or not accepted management structures;
* Lack of competence for realisation/implementation;
* Poor cooperation of the government, municipalities, economic sector and civil society, and
* Lacking or poor participation processes and low hydro-solidarity at the level of river basins.


Against this background the IndiWa project wants to identify success factors for sustainable water and land management processes.

The hypothesis is that there are specific (regional) success determinants for sustainable water and land management which include Information, Integration, Cooperation and Participation as well as Governance. Cultural and social conditions are also playing a central role.

Our approach focuses on four main areas:
I. Management structures: Categorisation of management structures as well as planning and management processes.
II. Use of socio-technical instruments: Identification of adjusted and appropriate socio-technical instruments for data and information exchange, participation and decision making support.
III. Quality and methodologies of participation processes.
IV. Cultural background: Analysis of cultural and spiritual backgrounds in living and risk culture. One special issue is to find out circumstances for hydro-solidarity.

In the first phase (05/09 – 04/10) about 20 case studies in European Member States and four non-European cases will be analysed against a set of criteria in a pilot project. This study is mainly based on document analyses.
In the second phase a thorough and broad survey is planned.

Funded by the Leuphana University of Lueneburg.