Designing stakeholder engagement processes for river basin management: Using culture as an analytical tool

River basin management is inherently complex, leading to the need for engagement of a large variety of stakeholders to develop both technically sound and acceptable management options. The effective design of these engagement processes - across governance levels, sectors and disciplines - is thus paramount to developing sustainable river basin management. As working across these stakeholder groups can also lead to conflicts based on differing needs and values of stakeholders, engagement process designers require methods and tools that can help them to manage and transform these conflicts into constructive dialogues and acceptance of management plans. A range of stakeholder engagement handbooks and guidelines exist to help meet this need, yet little support is provided in these on how these 'best practice' suggestions may need modification to fit different cultural contexts, both between the cultures inherent across stakeholder groups in basins, and across countries. This paper seeks to investigate and demonstrate the importance of culture in river basin management and their stakeholder engagement process design. To this end it introduces and shows how cultural analytic frameworks - 'cultural theory' and different 'cultural orientations' - can be used to guide design choices for stakeholder engagement processes, as well as understanding required and preferred water management options. For this demonstration, the paper draws on data and experiences from real river basin management engagement processes around the world, including the Upper Iskar Basin in Bulgaria and the Lower Hawkesbury River in Australia. Recommendations for future river basin management practice based on these tools are provided, as well on the applicability of their use for other water management and policy issues.