A critical appreciation of the “bottom-up” approach to sustainable water management: embracing complexity rather than desirability

Abstract There has been a growing backlash against top-down approaches to environmental management throughout the world because of its tendency to prioritise and solely appreciate professional and scientific “expert” knowledge. This lends the approach a potentially exclusive and paternalistic nature, which can be alienating to local people and their internal resource management schemes. Hence there has been a growing acceptance of bottom-up approaches that characteristically both appreciate and incorporate local people and their local knowledge, skills, needs and experiences (National Capital Development Commission, Government and community involvement in the planning and development of Canberra, Canberra 1977 National Capital Development Commission. 1977. “Government and community involvement in the planning and development of Canberra – Technical Paper 18. ACT”. NCDC. Google Scholar; Hickey and Mohan, Towards participation as transformation: critical themes and challenges, in: Hickey and Mohan, Participation: from tyranny to transformation? Exploring new approaches to participation in development, London: Zed Books 2004 Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. 2004. “Towards participation as transformation: critical themes and challenges”. In Participation: from tyranny to transformation? Exploring new approaches to participation in development, Edited by: Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. London: Zed Books, 3–24. Google Scholar; Tsing et al., Community as conservation: raising questions, in: Brosius et al., Communities and conservation: histories and politics of community-based natural resource management, New York: AltaMira Press 2005 Tsing, A., Brosius, J. and Zerner, C. 2005. “Introduction: Raising Questions about Communities and Conservation”. In Communities and conservation: histories and politics of community-based natural resource management, Edited by: Brosius, J., Tsing, A. and Zerner, C. 1–34. New York: AltaMira Press. Google Scholar). However, whilst the top-down approach certainly has its limitations, so too does the bottom-up approach. Problematic aspects of the bottom-up participatory approach need to be critically analysed and appreciated so as not to fall into the trap of romanticising and essentialising the grassroots movement. Therefore, this article explores four fundamental critiques of the participatory bottom-up approach, including tokenism (McIvor, Community participation in water management experiences from Zimbabwe, Frankfurt: DSE 2000 McIvor, C. 2000. Community participation in water management experiences from Zimbabwe, Frankfurt: DSE. Available from: http://www.inwent.org/E + Z/1997-2002/de100-6.htm Accessed 19 January 2006 Google Scholar), the myths of “communities” as coherent and cohesive bodies (Nicholson and Schreiner, Community participation in city decision making, Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press 1973 Nicholson, S. and Schreiner, B. 1973. Community participation in city decision making, Milton Keynes, , UK: Open University Press. Google Scholar; Guijt and Shah, The myth of community: gender issues in participatory development, London: Intermediate Technology 1998 Guijt, I. and Shah, M. 1998. The myth of community: gender issues in participatory development, London: Intermediate Technology. Crossref , Google Scholar), the fundamental lack of resources (Cleaver, Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development, in: Cooke and Kothari, Participation – the new tyranny?, London: Zed Books 2001 Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. 2001. “The case for participation as tyranny”. In Participation – the new tyranny?, Edited by: Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. 1–15. London: Zed Books. Google Scholar) and the often critical lack of knowledge about the actual process and how to successfully facilitate it (Carr, Grass roots & green tape: principles and practices of environmental stewardship, Sydney: Federation Press 2002 Carr, A. 2002. Grass roots & green tape: principles and practices of environmental stewardship, Sydney: Federation Press. Google Scholar). Whilst the focus of this article is a critical analysis of the bottom-up approach, the aim is to encourage critical reflection, so that the potential limitations of the approach can be appropriately appreciated and addressed.