Building on adaptive capacity to extreme events in Brazil: water reform, participation, and climate information across four river basins

Abstract Building the capacity of water systems to prepare and adapt to climate-driven events has become an important goal for water managers in Brazil. One aspect of building adaptive capacity (AC) is the ability of organizations and actors within these systems to apply techno-scientific knowledge (TSK), in particular, climatic information, to plan and respond to extreme events. However, the way the use of knowledge interacts with theorized determinants of AC, such as stakeholder-driven governance and democratic deliberation, remains relatively unexplored in the empirical literature. In this article, we propose a simple heuristic to understand the relationship between the use of climate knowledge and participatory management and explore it empirically in the context of integrated water resources management (IWRM) in four river basins in Brazil. We find that despite an overall increase in the capacity of the basins studied to manage drought through time, the relationship between use of TSK and participation is not straightforward. Rather, knowledge use to inform decision-making remains mostly insulated, with few groups controlling both the process of producing knowledge and making decisions in times of crisis. Yet, across all cases, the continued exposure of river basin organizations (RBOs) to TSK suggests a growing appreciation for the role of information in supporting action and increased efforts by RBOs to develop their own knowledge resources to become more relevant in the decision-making process.