Use of Participatory System Dynamics Modelling for Collaborative Watershed Management in Québec, Canada

The participation of stakeholders is an important component in integrated and adaptive watershed planning and management. In Québec, Canada watershed organizations are in the process of implementing participatory based watershed planning and management schemes. However, there is a lack of simple and readily implementable frameworks and methods to explicitly involve stakeholders, as well as integrate physical and social processes in watershed planning and management in Québec. The application of the first three stages of a newly proposed five stage stepwise ‘Participatory Model Building’ framework’ is described that was developed to help facilitate the participatory investigation of problems in watershed planning and management through the use of the systems thinking approach (causal loop diagrams). In the Du Chêne watershed in Québec, eight individual stakeholder interviews were conducted in cooperation with the local watershed organization to develop qualitative system dynamics models that represent the main physical and social processes underlying the problem of water pollution. The method was found to be accessible for all the interviewees, and was deemed to be very useful by the watershed organization to develop an overview of the different perspectives of the main stakeholders in the watershed. The results of this study demonstrate the diversity of perspectives regarding the water quality problem in the Du Chêne watershed, and highlight the critical need for participatory approaches to help solve water quality problems. Based on the results generated in this study, stakeholders can jointly discuss diverging points of view, goals and interests by referring to a concrete system structure. This discussion process can again be facilitated by a group-built causal loop diagram and its subsequent conversion into a quantitative system dynamics model (describing the socioeconomic-political components of the watershed).