Towards the transdisciplinary engineer: Incorporating ecology, equity and democracy concerns into water professionals' attitudes, skills and knowledge

IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE

Irrig. and Drain. 58: S195–S204 (2009)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ird.510

TOWARDS THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY ENGINEER: INCORPORATINGECOLOGY, EQUITY AND DEMOCRACY CONCERNS INTO WATER

PROFESSIONALS’ ATTITUDES, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGEy

PETER P. MOLLINGA*

Center for Development Studies (ZEF), Bonn, Germany

ABSTRACT

This paper uses emerging frameworks for transdisciplinary research on natural resources management as a model

for defining the attitudes and skills of water professionals able to address the present-day challenges to the

agricultural water sector. These challenges can be generically classified as: (a) internalising ecological concerns

into water systems design, management and governance; (b) shaping the co-evolution of the water technological/

infrastructural system and the water social system from a human development perspective; and (c) constructive

involvement of the water-control-systems-associated interest groups in the design, management and governance of

these systems. In terms of ‘‘attitude’’, transdisciplinary water engineers will have to be explicitly (i.e. self-

consciously) normative, as negotiated problem definition and problem solving is a core component of the new

professionalism. The (new) ‘‘skills’’ required involve (a) conceptual skills to conceive and operationalise the

multidimensionality of water control, (b) instrumental skills to shape water systems as boundary objects for

different uses and users, and (c) behavioural and institutional design skills to engage in and shape processes of

negotiated design, management and governance. In the process, the water resources engineering and hydrology

knowledge and methods that constitute professional identity at present will have to be creatively rethought.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

key words: water resources management; water resources engineering; transdisciplinarity; boundary work

Received 8 December 2008; Revised 27 January 2009; Accepted 27 January 2009

RESUME

Cet article utilise les nouveaux cadres de la recherche multidisciplinaire sur la gestion des ressources naturelles

comme modele pour definir les attitudes et les competences des professionnels de l’eau necessaires pour aborder les

defis actuels du secteur de l’eau agricole. Ces defis peuvent etre generalement classees comme suit:

(a) l’internalisation des preoccupations ecologiques dans la conception, la gestion et la gouvernance des

systemes hydrauliques; (b) l’elaboration de la co-evolution des constructions technologiques et des constructions

sociales dans une perspective de developpement humain, et (c) la participation constructive des groupes d’interet

associes pour la maıtrise de l’eau a la conception, la gestion et la gouvernance des systemes. En termes « d’’attitude »,

les ingenieurs multidisciplinaires devront etre explicitement (c’est-a-dire consciemment) normatifs, car la

definition negociee du probleme et la resolution de ce probleme est un element essentiel du nouveau profes-

sionnalisme. Les (nouvelles) « competences » requises impliquent (a) les competences conceptuelles pour

concevoir et rendre operationnel le caractere multidimensionnel de la maıtrise de l’eau, (b) les competences

* Correspondence to: Peter P. Mollinga, Senior researcher, Center for Development Studies (ZEF), Bonn, Germany.E-mail: [email protected] l’ingenieur multidisciplinaire: Integrer l’ecologie, l’equite et la democratie dans les attitudes, les competences et les connaissances desprofessionnels de l’eau.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

S196 P. P. MOLLINGA

techniques pour mettre en forme les systemes hydrauliques comme objet-frontiere pour differents usages et

utilisateurs, et (c) les competences comportementales et institutionnelles necessaires pour s’engager et mettre en

forme les processus negocies de conception, de gestion et de gouvernance. Dans le processus, l’ingenierie des

ressources en eau et les connaissances et methodes de l’hydrologie, qui constituent l’identite professionnelle

actuelle, devront etre repensees avec creativite. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

mots cles: gestion des ressources en eau; ingenierie des ressources en eau; multidisciplinarite objet-frontiere

INTRODUCTION

During the past decade the notion of integrated water resources management (IWRM) has played a prominent role

in global and many national water policy discussions. In the variety of meanings of the concept there is at least one

common point: water management, and the related water infrastructure, can no longer be conceived from a single

standpoint or perspective. Their design, maintenance, transformation and development require the alignment of

different objectives, different water uses, different interest groups, different scale levels, different natural resources,

different development priorities, and so forth. This complexity is captured in the single term ‘‘integration’’, which is

thus a bit of a black box, and a Pandora’s box, because it can be understood in many different ways. However, the

reality of contemporary water resources management is such that this complexity, and the related uncertainties,

cannot be avoided or wished away. Controversies around water use, management and governance are proliferating

in many places in the world. It is in this contested terrain that the contemporary water resources engineer has to be

able to operate.

This raises the question of what new demands the contemporary water resources situation makes on the

professional attitude, knowledge and skills of the water resources engineer, as compared with the often more quiet

disciplinary and single-purpose past.

The paper attempts to answer this question in the following steps. The first section presents Chambers’ analysis

of ‘‘normal professionalism’’, and shows that we have been dealing with the problems of disciplinary professional

orientation for quite some time already. In section two I briefly outline the nature of the new demands on the water

sector – the societal challenges that the water resources engineering profession needs to respond to. The pertinence

of these challenges may give a greater push to rethinking the desired characteristics and role of the water resources

profession. In the third section I summarise a number of insights from the practice of transdisciplinary research on

natural resources management. This leads, in section four, to a description of the ‘‘boundary work’’ that water

resources engineers are asked to do, and the required conceptual, instrumental and institutional design

competencies associated with that. I conclude with a brief outlook in section five.

THE PROBLEM: ‘‘NORMAL PROFESSIONALISM’’

The 1980s saw the consolidation of irrigation management as a concept, field of research and area of policy

intervention, prominently marked by the establishment of the International Irrigation Management Institute (IIMI)

as a CGIAR institute in 1984. The 1980s were an extremely fruitful decade in terms of the production of new

insights and approaches to irrigation and water resources management. Robert Chambers’ work has specific

relevance for this paper. He describes the standard professional attitudes, reflexes and standard science of engineers

and other professions/disciplines with the term ‘‘normal professionalism’’. ‘‘Normal professionalism is the

thinking, values, methods and behaviour dominant in a profession. Reproduced through education and training and

sustained by hierarchy and rewards, it tends to specialised narrowness’’ (Chambers, 1988). The basic argument is

that this ‘‘specialised narrowness’’ leads to fragmented and partial approaches to problem solving and planning.

Every profession or discipline has its own (reduced) perception of a specific concrete water resources management

problem, and its own (reduced) solution for it.

Chambers argues that we should not be too impressed and held up by this fragmentation, but that there are plenty

of opportunities to do something about it. He is reasonably optimistic, with a sense of urgency: all can act, there is

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S195–S204 (2009)

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TOWARDS THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY ENGINEER S197

no need to wait (Chambers, 1988). Twenty years later that optimism seems not to have been justified, though the

urgency has probably only increased (see section two). The irrigation sector seems to be caught in the same

predicament to a large extent still, a predicament that has been described by Tony Allan as the ‘‘pursuit of the

hydraulic mission’’ (Allan, 2006).

Allan argues that the modernising water bureaucracies of the twentieth century have vigorously pursued the

‘‘harnessing’’ of water resources (for irrigation, flood control and hydropower) motivated by the primary concern of

economic (agricultural) growth. The professional orientation is that of supply enhancement and increase of

technical control of water flows through building water infrastructure, preferably large scale. The central

disciplines/professions in this ‘‘hydraulic mission’’ are hydrologists and civil engineers. This form of ‘‘normal

professionalism’’ has produced great achievements, but in the developed world started to be questioned from the

1970s on several grounds. Different undesirable consequences of large-scale water infrastructure development and

‘‘harnessing’’ water started to be observed and articulated by societal groups, the negative ecological consequences

being the major one. Thus starts the shift towards ‘‘reflexive modernity’’ in water resources management, triggered

by environmental movements (see Espeland, 1998; Disco, 2002).

However, the change or shift has been partial, and there have also been steps back towards the ‘‘hydraulic

mission’’ perspective. The orientation of most developing countries’ water bureaucracies is still firmly located in

the ‘‘hydraulic mission’’ paradigm (Suhardiman, 2008; Wester, 2008). We thus are obliged to revisit Chambers’

critique of ‘‘specialised narrowness’’ as a characteristic of the water resources engineering and other water

resources professions.

CHALLENGES FOR WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Since 1988 the complexity of water resources management problems has become much more recognised.

‘‘Complexity’’ and ‘‘complex systems’’ have become buzzwords in the natural resources sciences, and in many

other domains. Moreover, it is a safe prediction that water problems are likely to become more serious, certainly in

developing country contexts. Water controversies are also likely to proliferate (Joy et al., 2008), that is, water

resources use, management and governance will continue to be a politically contested terrain. The societal corollary

of this is that water problems have become important on the policy agenda, as is testified by a plethora of global and

national ‘‘water reports’’ and ‘‘vision documents’’.

The ‘‘new’’ challenges that face water professionals can be generically classified as follows:

(

Co

a) i

pyrig

nternalising ecological concerns into water systems design, management and governance;

(b
) s haping the co-evolution of the water technological/infrastructural system and the water social system from
a human development perspective;

(
c) c onstructive involvement of the associated interest groups of water control systems in the design,
management and governance of these systems.

In summary, these are the well-known challenges of ecological sustainability, human development, and

democratic governance.

The recognition of this is visible in the policy domain in the massive investment in developing ‘‘integrated

approaches’’ to complex societal problem solving, for example in the context of the European Water Framework

Directive. ‘‘Integrated approaches’’ will not overtake disciplinary or specialised approaches; these will in all

likelihood continue to constitute the bulk of professional work, but the professional capacity to ‘‘integrate’’

definitely has to be upgraded to be able to deal with current water management challenges and conflicts.

TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ON NATURAL RESOURCES

This paper argues that an answer to the question ‘‘how does one create more ‘integrative’ capacity?’’ may partly be

found in the emerging practice of transdisciplinary research on natural resources management.

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S198 P. P. MOLLINGA

Interdisciplinary research is research in which a jointly defined problem is collaboratively analysed by

researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds.1 The joint process of problem definition and collaboration in

analysis requires that each researcher’s approach will have to be conceptually and methodologically adapted to ‘‘fit

in’’ the overall approach. This stands in contrast with multidisciplinary research – where disciplinary approaches

remain untouched, and all disciplines basically ‘‘do their own thing’’, in parallel. Transdisciplinary research is

interdisciplinary research that is strongly embedded in the problem context. In transdisciplinary research so-called

‘‘stakeholders’’ (interest groups) are intimately involved in research formulation and implementation, affecting the

way ‘‘science is done’’ deeply. ‘‘There is a need for TR [transdisciplinary research] when knowledge about a

societal relevant problem field is uncertain, when the concrete nature of problems is disputed, and when there is a

great deal at stake for those concerned by problems and involved in dealing with them’’ (Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn,

2007: 20). This situation applies to many water resources management issues. One way to formulate the core idea of

transdisciplinarity is that transdisciplinary research aims to democratise scientific practice. It is often

‘‘participatory’’ in nature, with strong understandings of participation implied. Put yet differently,

stakeholders/interest groups are not just consulted, investigated, funding agents or handed over the results, but

they are involved in the design, governance as well as the implementation of the research.2

Some of the main characteristics of transdisciplinary research are – thus – the following.

Problem or issue orientation

The research starts from the complexity of real, live problems and issues as these present themselves in society,

and the research aims to contribute to their ‘‘solution’’, while acknowledging that ‘‘solutions’’ are never final, but

steps in a process of development and transformation.

Emphasis on the process of problem definition

Transdisciplinary research takes the process of problem definition very seriously, based on the understanding that

different groups involved may perceive the ‘‘same problem’’ in very different ways, and what is a problem for some

may be a boon for others.

Explicit attention to the research process

Transdisciplinary research pays a lot of attention to organisation of, and communication in, the research process:

‘‘internally’’ as regards the research team, and others directly involved, and ‘‘externally’’ to those more indirectly

related to the conduct of the research. ‘‘External’’ institutional arrangements refer to the relationships with funding

agencies and interest groups, relations with the general public, with policy makers, and so forth. Some aspects of

internal institutional arrangements are the following:

� G

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overnance of a project (allocation of tasks and responsibilities, distribution of power within the project,

decision-making rules, control over the budget, etc.)

� M
anagement of the project (communication methods/strategies, knowledge-sharing strategies/methods,
supervision practices, division of labour in the project, etc.)

� P
roject culture: behavioural rules for meetings, seminars, project ethics, skill/capacity training, etc.
� I
ncentives for good performance, collaboration, integration, etc.
Emphasis on translating output/outcome into impact/change

The idea that ‘‘good science’’ automatically leads to ‘‘good policy’’ is not part of the transdisciplinary

perspective. Apart from knowledge having to be credible, to be recognised and ‘‘taken up’’, knowledge has to be

salient and legitimate also (Cash et al., 2003). Scientists and engineers have traditionally focused on credibility; that

is, how to create reproducible and scientifically accurate information to address a given natural resources

management problem. Salience refers to the relevance of information for stakeholders and decision makers.

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Information needs to be timely, accurate, and specific for it to be salient for real-world applications. Legitimacy

refers to the fairness of the information-gathering process. For a process to be legitimate, it needs to consider

appropriate values, interests, concerns, and specific circumstances from perspectives of different users. If salience

and legitimacy aspects are not adequately addressed, knowledge may remain unused.

Another useful insight from the literature on transdisciplinary research is that more than one type of knowledge is

needed to make research effectively contribute to ‘‘problem solving’’ and social transformation. The three types of

knowledge are systems knowledge, target knowledge and transformation knowledge (Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn,

2007).

Systems knowledge is knowledge about the ‘‘problem itself’’ – understanding the object of research and the

context it is part of. Target knowledge is knowledge about why change is necessary and in what direction change is

desired. There is an explicit normative and political dimension to this knowledge. Given that there are different

perceptions of the problem and different interests associated with it, negotiating normative and political standpoints

is an inherent aspect of transdisciplinary research, as it is of any process of societal transformation. Transformation

knowledge is strategic knowledge about how to get from A to B, that is, knowledge about how to ‘‘do

transformation’’. These three knowledge domains are not independent, but shape each other in the ongoing,

iterative process of change and transformation.

The best metaphor I know to summarise in one phrase what inter- and transdisciplinarity is about is that of

‘‘boundary crossing’’, which is also the title of a well-known book on interdisciplinarity (Klein, 1996). There is an

emerging literature on boundary processes and boundary work in the context of sustainability science for instance

(Cash et al., 2003; see Star and Griesemer, 1989 for the basic statement on boundary objects) that systematises the

characteristics of the processes and work at the different boundaries in change-oriented research: disciplinary

boundaries, research–policy boundaries, research–society boundaries, and researchers–professional boundaries

being the main ones. Boundary work has to be taught and learnt – in education, in professional training and in

practice.

BOUNDARY WORK: ATTITUDES, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

To describe the characteristics of education and training for ‘‘integrative skills’’ I subdivided these characteristics

into the attitudes, skills and knowledge that the ‘‘transdisciplinary engineer’’ requires.

Attitudes

The first attitudinal characteristic is that of being willing to cross boundaries, in Becher and Trowler’s (2001)

terms, being non-tribal and non-territorial. A second one is being reflective and self-consciously normative, that is

not shying away from addressing normative and political questions, and willing to reflect on how one’s own views

and biases shape one’s work. As Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn put it for transdisciplinary research, ‘‘[t]he

transdisciplinary research process should clarify how to understand the concept of the common good and its

implications as a normative principle for dealing with problems in the life-world’’ (2007). A third attitudinal

characteristic relates to the fact that change-oriented work is collaborative work, that is, a non-individualistic

attitude is required. A fourth characteristic has to do with the technology–masculinity connection, also strong in the

water resources domain. That connection needs to be questioned.

This list is easily made, but less easily inducted through teaching and training. However, there are a number of

starting points in the literature on engineering and other professional practices. Partly these are ‘‘role models’’,

partly these are characteristics of engineering as a social practice.

The engaged problem solver. Christian Pohl makes the point that for understanding the problems of

transdisciplinary collaboration in environmental research, it is perhaps more useful to distinguish between

researchers as being either ‘‘detached specialists’’ or ‘‘engaged problem solvers’’, rather than to distinguish them

on disciplinary grounds. Pohl concludes:


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‘‘One of the Engaged Problem Solver’s core characteristics is that he or she refuses to discuss a topic in an

abstract way, and so is willing or able to think and debate issues only in a given problem context. This

distinguishes him or her from the Detached Specialist, who is willing and able to discuss things in a much more

abstract, generalised and context-free manner.’’

The distinction between Engaged Problem Solvers and Detached Specialists is not the same as the one between

the natural and the social scientist. In a project on climate change, a natural scientist emphasised that his main

interest in the programme was to perform sophisticated climate research into a unique climatic situation in the

Swiss Alps. He was, as a Detached Specialist, primarily interested in the mechanisms of climate and only

secondarily in climate change as an environmental problem of high priority. In contrast, an Engaged Problem

Solver was in charge of the joint social scientific project, whose object was, by means of focus groups, to make

lay people familiar with the natural scientific findings about climate change, as a first step towards encouraging

them to make political statements requesting a more rigorous climate policy. (Pohl, 2005)

However, in other projects the two roles were performed by the other discipline. Pohl observes a division of

labour in many research projects along these lines, where the engaged problem solvers are the guardians of

‘‘integration’’.

Lele and Norgaard (2005) make a similar, though not identical, point, when they argue that disciplines are

‘‘academic administrative artifacts’’:

There is both a great deal in common across disciplines and much variety within them. In the social sciences,

market economic models are used in economics, anthropology, history, sociology, political science, public

policy, and even psychology; those from different disciplines who use these models may have more in common

with each other than with those from the same departments who use Marxist perspectives. The biological

sciences have reorganized over the past quarter-century, dropping the historic disciplinary distinctions, for

example, between the plant and animal world and organizing more on levels of analysis from the gene to the

organism to the ecosystem. Yet evolutionary biology cuts across all levels of analysis, and ecologists use genetic

techniques to understand ecological systems and processes. Thus the structure of scientific knowledge and the

differences in epistemologies, theories, and methods among scientists have little to do with what have

historically been called disciplines. So, when approaching collaborative work between scientists, forget

disciplines; think scientific communities. (Lele and Norgaard, 2005)

Scientific communities having a similar perspective share among their members (a) a subject focus;

(b) underlying assumptions of the factors they study (for example the nature of human agency); (c) assumptions

about the larger world they do not study (for example assumptions about predictability); (d) the type of models they

use; (e) the audience they strive to inform through research (Lele and Norgaard, 2005).

The social auditor. Marcus Moench et al. (1999, 2003) model the process of ‘‘adaptive management’’ (of

natural resources like water), including the process of knowledge generation as an interactive social process in

which four different groups are involved. Change agents (1) push against the network of relationships of resource

users (2) and managers (3), and of a category that Moench et al. call social auditors (4). These are ‘‘the ‘watch dog’

social activists as well as various organs of the state that are responsible for assuring appropriate justice’’ (Moench

et al., 1999).

When research and capacity building are situated in such a process, the role of the expert-researcher differs rather

strongly from ‘‘conventional’’ academic pursuits. S/he becomes a (political) actor in a development process, rather

than a neutral outsider, and will have to consciously address the issue of ‘‘knowledge as a resource’’ in the power

struggles that are part of natural resources management policy and practice.

The deliberative practitioner. Participatory planning processes are a logical corollary of a transdisciplinary

perspective. Forester (1999) discusses the attributes needed by deliberative practitioners to function effectively in

such processes, and the characteristics of participatory planning itself. His work in and on city and regional

planning motivates him to ask


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how diverse community members and the planners hoping to work with them can act more effectively in the face

of political inequality, racism, turf wars, and the systematic marginalization and exclusion of the poor (. . .) The

subject is practical public action in messy political circumstances, and my objective is to illuminate both

requirements and opportunities for productive if inevitably political, deliberative practice. (Forester, 1999)

In a chapter on challenges of mediation and deliberation in the design professions, Forester characterises the

position of the designer as follows:

Because planners and designers work in the midst of many interested parties, they inevitably work in the face of

conflict. To do that, they need to improvise creatively and proactively; they must often act as both negotiators

seeking desirable ends and mediators managing the conflictual planning or design process itself (...). This

means, though, that planners and designers can do far more than chase after compromises: they can promote

effective processes of public learning, practical and innovative instances of public deliberation, even consensus

building in many parts of the larger planning process. (Forester, 1999)

Replace planner and designer by water resources engineer, and it is not difficult to read this as a description of

actually existing water resources planning and design processes. Forester gives the last word in this chapter to a

Washington DC-based planner and mediator, William Potapchuk, who formulates, based on his experience, the

skills that have to be part of the education of planners to prepare them for work in conflict-characterised change

processes. These are (a) skills as a negotiator; (b) facilitation skills; (c) institutional design skills (meeting design

skills, process design skills); (d) a clear sense of mediation strategy; and (e) some substantive understanding of what

is being talked about. A general requirement for this, but something that cannot be taught according to Potapchuk,

is that

the core knowledge is understanding politics and how it works: the interplay between the governance process

and the electoral process, the role of staff and advisory bodies and how they work, and how the lobbying process

works. Unless you understand the system as it works, it’s going to be very difficult to act as an intervener and as

an advocate for changing the system and changing the process. (Forester, 1999, citing Potapchuk)

It should, however, be possible to show in teaching and training the inherently political nature of design and

planning, and to discuss ways of engaging with that.

Invention by design and success through failure. Henry Petroski, a civil engineer, has written several books

about the nature of engineering and technology (Petroski, 1996, 2006). His work emphasises the exploratory and

craft aspects of engineering:

(...) each engineering project is touched by the idiosyncracies of individual engineers, companies, communities,

and marketplaces. And there are questions of economics, politics, aesthetics, and ethics. Furthermore, each

engineering project is highly dependent upon the availability of raw materials of varying quality. And though

engineering is the art of rearranging the materials and forces of nature, the immutable laws of nature are forever

constraining the engineer as to how those rearrangements can or cannot be made. (Petroski, 1996)

In Petroski’s analysis ‘‘[f]ailure is (...) a unifying principle in the design of things large and small, hard and soft,

real and imagined’’ (Petroski, 2006) – engineering is always a response to a failure of some sort. ‘‘[T]he interplay

between failure and success in the development of technological artifacts and systems is (...) an important driving

force in the inventive process’’ (ibid.). This means that engineering is an open-ended process as every ‘‘success’’

will generate new real and imagined ‘‘failures’’, because it creates new capabilities, which are only partially

anticipated.

Confronting masculinity. The first sentence of Ruth Oldenziel’s book on ‘‘men, women and modern machines

in America’’ is ‘‘[m]en’s love affair with technology is something we take for granted’’ (Oldenziel, 1999). Water

resources engineering is a strongly male-dominated and masculine profession, as Zwarteveen (2008) discusses.

Engineering is strongly linked with male and female identities. The twentieth century witnessed the reproduction of

engineering as a ‘‘male middle-class domain’’ (Oldenziel, 1999). Things may be changing. For example in South


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S202 P. P. MOLLINGA

Asia women are entering the water resources engineering profession in increasing numbers. However, that does not

necessarily say something about the masculinity of the profession. Feminism has confronted technology as

masculine culture (Wajcman, 1991), but, to my knowledge, a social history of water resources engineering that

addresses its class, gender and race dimensions, and its relation to the rise of industrial capitalism, main themes in

work like that of Oldenziel and Wajcman, is still to be written.

Together these sketches of role models and characteristics of engineering as a social practice can be taken as

inspiration for shaping the disposition of the transdisciplinary engineer.

Skills

The types of skills required for ‘‘transdisciplinary engineering’’ as already announced and suggested above, can

be more systematically profiled by distinguishing the different kinds of ‘‘boundary work’’ that need to be performed

by the transdisciplinary engineer. Three types of skills can be identified (based on Mollinga, 2008):

� C

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onceptual skills to conceive and operationalise the multidimensionality of water control (boundary

concepts);

� I
nstrumental skills to shape water systems as useful devices for different uses and users (boundary objects);
� B
ehavioural and institutional design skills to engage in and shape processes of negotiated design, manage-
ment and governance (boundary settings).

Conceptual skills are needed to be able to think across boundaries, that is, to grasp the multidimensionality of

processes and objects. The vocabularies needed for that are not self-evident, as testified by the substantial

communication problems in projects and other work teams. This is not a question of deciding on ‘‘proper

definitions’’ once and for all, because the issue is exactly that words/concepts have different meanings for different

people. So-called boundary concepts are needed that can capture multidimensionality, and can thus be used by

different (groups of) people. An example is the concept of ‘‘ecosystem services’’, which captures the multiplicity of

functions of ecosystems in a way intelligible to a wide range of perspectives. A form of ‘‘conceptual integration’’

can be achieved in this way.

Engineering is a practical profession; engineers like to solve problems. In practical problem solving

‘‘integration’’ means bringing together different objectives and different interest groups, and translate these

diversities, contradictions and uncertainties in the design of working water systems. Water systems can be thought

of as so-called boundary objects, devices that span and hold together diverse uses and users across different kinds of

boundaries, while working effectively. Again, designing such boundary objects is no trivial matter, as testified by

the problematic functioning of many irrigation systems for instance. Instrumental skills are required that go to the

heart of engineering practice understood as a creative process of ‘‘bricolage’’ or finding your way through the

labyrinth of a problem and coming up with something useful at the end (Latour, 2002).

‘‘Integrated problem solving’’ is very much a social process, given the iterative and collaborative character it has,

and the close relationships with societal groups and organisations it involves. It requires different types of social

interaction, which need to be learnt and practised. The energy spent (and wasted) on ineffective social interaction in

project teams and other organisational forms, and in dealing with funders, clients and policy makers can testify that

also this aspect is not self-evident. Partly the issue lies at the level of individual attitudes and behaviour, but there is

a very important institutional design component also. Careful design of the governance and management

arrangements, communication methods, accountability relations, and many other institutional dimensions of

collaborative work and organisation are important preconditions (boundary settings) for successful ‘‘integration’’.

Knowledge

After this sketch of the components of a transdisciplinary attitude and the different types of ‘‘integrative skills’’

associated with transdisciplinary engineering, it may be asked what happens to the professional ‘‘core’’ of

engineering knowledge in the process, the possession of which forms the centrepiece of many engineers’

professional identity? The basic point is that a ‘‘transdisciplinary engineering’’ perspective asks engineers to

creatively rethink their professional knowledge and skills in order to use these strategically in addressing the

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complexity of water resources management problems. ‘‘Integrated problem solving’’ constitutes many professional

challenges that can only partly be addressed by conventional means. In the Dutch context the history of the

Oosterschelde storm surge barrier is a case in point. The idea that ecology and safety could be combined in the

design of this kind of a dam was first rejected and resisted by civil engineers. When they were forced to come up

with a solution of this kind, a lot of ingenuity and creativity was mobilised to produce something that is now the

pride of Dutch water engineering, with a lot of new knowledge developed in the process (Bijker, 2002).

A transformation towards transdisciplinary engineering is thus by no means a process of ‘‘deskilling’’ or dilution

of engineering expertise – arguably quite the contrary. It does involve, however, as suggested, a partial reskilling.

The focus of knowledge development in transdisciplinary engineering may be summarised with the phrase

‘‘designing for multifunctionality’’ (cf. Abdeldayem et al., 2005). The creation of multifunctional water systems

through an inclusive design process is the main professional challenge in the new water resources management

paradigm.

CONCLUDING REMARK

As Petroski suggests, between an idea and its realisation may lie a long, complicated and curved route. This also

applies to the idea of the transdisciplinary engineer. The need for rethinking the attitudes, skills and knowledge that

make up the professional identity of the water resources engineer derives from the ‘‘failures’’ that existing

engineering has produced. However, these ‘‘failures’’ should be considered as the beginning of new ‘‘successes’’, as

steps towards a new type of engineering that contributes more effectively to present ideas of sustainable human

development. One practical step that can be taken is to redesign water resources education programmes keeping the

attitudes, skills and knowledge needed for transdisciplinary engineering in mind, calibrated against the three kinds

of challenges that water resources management faces (see section two). This will no doubt be a journey through a

labyrinth, but one with all the anticipation and excitement that come with finally finding the exit. The names of

some of the capacity-building programmes that attempt to establish such education programmes speak for

themselves: WaterNet (Southern Africa), Concertacion (Latin America) and Crossing Boundaries (South Asia;).3

These networks act and do not wait.

NOTES

1. The reference is collaborative research by groups of researchers. Interdisciplinarity can also be done individually,

but the scale and complexity of contemporary water resources management issues being considered here usually

require group effort, in research as well as in practice.

2. Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn (2007) contains three annexes, of together 27 pages, in which the different definitions,

terminology used and meanings ascribed to interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are presented.

3. Web addresses are: http://www.waternetonline.ihe.nl/, http://www. concertacion.info/indexeng.php and

http://www.saciwaters.org/CB/cbhome.asp

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Towards the transdisciplinary engineer: Incorporating ecology, equity and democracy concerns into water professionals' attitudes, skills and knowledge