Professionals in context: How robust is the normative model?

Research on successful change often leads to a normative model. What was an empirical outcome becomes a prescription for action. In water management, research on platforms for decision‐making, multi‐stakeholder processes, social learning, and participatory interventions seems to have made this step to new orthodoxy. Compared to agricultural development, where many still expect technology (smart farming, precision farming, genomics, etc.) to provide the necessary answers to the challenges of anthropogenic biosphere change, thinking about water solutions seems to have moved on and embraced a new normative model that sees necessary action as emerging from the interaction (deliberation, negotiation, conflict resolution, etc.) of multiple stakeholders. However positive this development, the seriousness of the challenges posed by the fact that people have become a major force of nature that is rapidly altering the flimsy and fragile biosphere, compels us to ask whether the normative model can handle these challenges. Some points that will be considered are: (1) inequalities of power among stakeholders, (2) the disproportional influence of vested interest, (3) higher‐level institutional conditions and incentive structures, (4) compromises that undermine efficacious action, (5) and institutions that are geared to economic growth, not to prudent water use (incompatibility between hydrological cycle and linear growth). The paper attempts to examine these issues and to draw some implications for water professionals. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.