About CADWAGO

The CADWAGO project aimed to improve water governance by developing a more robust knowledge base and enhancing capacity to adapt to climate change. The three year project was led by Neil Powell (SEI) and managed by Annemarieke de Bruin (SEI) and brought together 10 partners from Europe, Australasia and North America with extensive experience in climate change adaptation and water governance issues. The outputs of CADWAGO are listed here. The CADWAGO blog captures the reflections of researchers during the project and includes links to material used at governance learning events.

CADWAGO built on lessons from ongoing case research to create a forum and dialogue between researchers and stakeholders at different scales. Lessons from the cases were synthesized and used to adapt European decision-making that has a global impact. The poster on the right provides more information about the background and set up of CADWAGO.

The research questions CADWAGO addressed are:

1. What changes are needed in the existing conceptualization and framing of different modes of water governance to enable systemic and adaptive responses to climate change?
2. What are the social and institutional barriers and opportunities for adaptive and systemic responses to climate change within existing water governance regimes
3. What practices and processes are necessary to foster systemic and adaptive responses within water governance?

The research lenses related to these questions are further described here: ‘Research lenses’.

• Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
• Sustainability Research Centre – University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
• Environmental Sustainability Research Centre – Brock University, Canada
• Open Systems Research Group – Open University, United Kingdom
• Griffith Centre for Coastal Management, – Griffith University, Australia
• Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies – University of Tasmania, Australia
• Nucleo di Ricerca sulla Desertificazione (NRD UNISS) – University of Sassari, Italy
• Environmental Communication – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), USA
• Social Sciences Group – Wageningen University, the Netherlands