The application of environmental governance for sustainable watershed-based management

In recent years, it has become popular for some of countries and regions to adapt the system of governance to varied and complex issues concerned with regional development and the environment. Watershed management is possibly the best example of this. It involves flood control, water use management and river environment simultaneously. Therefore, comprehensive watershed-based management should be aimed at balancing those aims. The objectives of this study are to introduce the notion of environmental governance into the planning process, to establish a method for assessing the alternatives and to develop a procedure for determining the most appropriate plan for environmental governance. The planning process here is based on strategic environment assessment (SEA). To verify the hypothetical approach, the middle river basin in the Tokachi River, Japan was selected as a case study. In practice, after workshop discussions, it was found to have the appropriate degree of consensus based on the balance of flood control and environmental protection in the watershed.