Managing the socio-ecology of very large rivers: Collective choice rules in IWRM narratives

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been lauded as an integrative and participatory form of governance. However, critics claim that actual implementation remains problematic, because of deep path dependencies and the entrenched interests. This paper investigates this claim by looking at the formation of collective choice rules in integrated water resources management reforms in China’s Yellow River and the Ganges in India. The two rivers provide a natural experiment—similarity in physical scale, complexity, and integrated water resources management reforms, but highly different in social and policy contexts. Using the Q methodology and Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, we find that, despite differences in policy contexts, narratives amongst the stakeholders in the two rivers are surprisingly similar, including a continued role for a negotiated local approach, and the presence of normative incentives for collective action, underwritten by deep historical meanings of the rivers. These narratives in turn provide some explanation for the choice of collective rules in use. They suggest that a modified form of integrated water resources management, taking into account narratives and collective choice rules, is useful for the governance of very large rivers across different contexts.