Harmoni-CA has the role of bridging the science-policy interface, with respect to river basin management (RBM), i.e. to generate a dialogue and find a common understanding between scientists, involved in integrated assessment and modelling, and policy makers, involved in decision making.

The assumption is that the gap can be bridged by improving communication between the two communities; by improving the understanding of the requirements of policy makers and by improving the quality and application of modelling tools used by policy makers by encouraging the better use of integrated participatory modelling and assessment. Specifically, it is envisaged that there are six steps to identifying and bridging the gap:

• defining the current state of the art in the use of models, the integration of human dimensions, participatory modelling and to identify future research strategies
  
• identifying current policy making practices in RBM and the constraints on policy making
  
• defining the requirements of both scientists and policy makers - what the scientists need to know from policy makers in order to do their work and vice-versa.
  
• initiating a dialogue between the two communities on a common understanding of what can be achieved to improve and develop RBM under the WFD
  
• initiating a dialogue on how stakeholder involvement can be best integrated into model and policy development
  
• initiating a dialogue on how Integrated Assessment can be used as a guiding science to begin the vital process of integration within modelling and policy making e.g. how to integrate human dimensions, sectors and spatial scales within these tasks. An output from this would be a joint scientist-policy maker peer community for a new field: integrated water resources management.
  

Activities of the Workpackage

WP5 organizes river basin meetings and workshops to bring together policy/ decision makers and scientists in the field of water management to support the ambitious aims of the new European water management policy. We also develop - cooperation with other WP's-reports, guidances and review documents where information on specific issues such as environmental economics, the human dimensions in water management and agriculture, to give support the both, water managers and tool developers.

As part of our networking activities, we offer to support the interaction between research projects and policy makers through organized river basin meetings. If you are interested in having your project promoted or information brought to your basin, please contact us.

In total, 8 workshops are planned within the five years of Harmoni-CA. Three workshops have taken place during the first two years to identify needs and requirements for tools in decision making processes in river basin management (see reports on them in public WP5 folder). One of the main results was that tools and models have to been seen in context of the management process they are supposed to serve.

Respecting these results the next five WP5 workshops will focus on specific issues and linking these issues to appropriate tools.
Information on the issues for each workshop can be found in the public download area where the announcements will be posted.
The 2^nd Policy Workshop addressed the interaction of agriculture and water management and gave about 20 water managers the chance to evaluate seven models addressing these issues.
The 3rd Policy Workshop aims to support "Model application by analogy -

From Technical Transferability of Model-based tools to Cognitive Transferability." It will take place in December 2006 and experiment with the transferability of a model to a basin other than the one developed in.

In June 2007, the 4^th Policy Workshop will address economic issues in the WFD, taking up results from an international expert meeting on economics in modelling of water management systems took place in Copenhagen in November 2004.

Also, the 3rd Methods-Workshop of Harmoni-CA/WP5 took place on "Formalised and Non-Formalised Methods in Resource Management -Knowledge and Learning in Participatory Processes". Participatory processes are becoming increasingly important in the management of natural resources. Thus, policy makers,`experts', and `lay persons'- citizens or representatives of organised interest groups - are collaborating in public decisions on issues such as water management or land use planning. Different forms of involvement have been established, allowing for varying degrees of interaction, e.g. focus groups, citizens' juries, consensus-con­feren­ces, or stakeholder platforms, to name but a few. Given the complexity of issues to decide upon and the uncertainties involved, one main reason to involve non-state actors in public decisions is to incorporate different sources of knowledge and to foster social learning, thus allowing for potentially better, i.e. more informed and creative, decision-making. Expected outcomes are thus learning (on the part of the state authority or of the lay persons), facilitated agreements, and improved communication among participants.

In September, the German project PartizipA (Participative Modeling, Actor and Ecosystem Analysis in Regions of Intensive Agriculture, www.partizipa.uni-osnabrueck.de) and Harmoni-CA/WP5 jointly organized a workshop where 40 participants from all over Europe discussed 16 different approaches in a very constructive and fruitful atmosphere. All presentations and a group picture of all participants are now available at http://www.partizipa.uni-osnabrueck.de/wissAbschluss.html .