Inter- and Transdisciplinary research in Integrated Water Resources Management: insights from a case study in Tandil, Buenos Aires, Argentina

While integrated water governance approaches, such as Integrated Water Resources

Management (IWRM), are constantly promoted in the sustainability agenda, they face

several challenges, especially in developing countries, where monetary resources are

scarce and socioeconomic contexts are unstable. Moreover, the baseline is often a

problematic but resilient configuration of a complex system, which calls for inter- and

transdisciplinary (ID and TD) research. However, the adoption of these approaches for

IWRM implementation is still limited, while their use to analyse IWRM past experiences

is even less frequent. In this article, we use the TD heuristic framework developed by

Vienni-Baptita et al. (2022) to study a series of IWRM workshops conducted in Tandil,

Argentina. Our results show that methodological weakness can excessively extend

the problem-framing phase, conditioning the process outputs. Regarding actors, our

analysis suggests that the engagement of citizens is not only ethically relevant, but

may be crucial to impulse the actions needed to foster IWRM.