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70Green and Fernández-Bilbaoinfluence these key stakeholders then it will not beable to deliver on the Water Framework Directive(Le Quesne and Green 2005).Absent from this list of key stakeholders are theenvironmental non-governmental organizations.This is because the Environment Agency has acentral commitment to environmental conservation.In particular, the Chief Executive of the agency wassuccessively Chief Executive of the Royal Societyfor the Protection of Birds, the most importantenvironmental non-governmental organization,and then of English Nature, the government agencywith responsibility for environmental conservation.This leaves other environmental non-governmentalorganizations, such as the World Wildlife Fund,without an obvious ecological niche.In seeking to influence these other stakeholders,the agency will have to recognize the asymmetriesof interest among the stakeholders. The localauthorities may have little to gain from workingclosely with the agency and a lot to lose. Thelocal authorities have multiple objectives andconstraints with which they must cope, includingthe needs either of socio-economic regeneration orof accommodating large inflows of development.Taking account of water management issues willadd to their difficulties and will restrict both wheredevelopment can take place and the form of thatdevelopment.The competent authority will have not onlyto be very successful at influencing the otherstakeholders, but also at co-ordinating the actionsof those other stakeholders. Key to both tasks is theestablishment of some form of stakeholder forumfor each catchment; what is at issue is the powerthat would reside in each of those fora and hencein each stakeholder. Each forum could be simplya sounding board and means of liaison betweenthe different stakeholders, the EnvironmentAgency’s original proposal for implementing theWater Framework Directive (Environment Agency2005). Or, it might make recommendations to thedifferent stakeholders as to the actions each shouldtake as part of the program of actions necessaryto deliver the objectives of the Water FrameworkDirective. Finally, it might decide on the riverbasin management plan and the program of actionnecessary to implement it.Given the lack of experience in England of suchapproaches, it would be useful to allow differentforms to emerge in different catchments, as thelocal stakeholders decide. Within each catchmentforum, there would then also be scope for adoptingdifferent processes; that process has been variouslyframed in quite different ways as “conflictresolution” (Acland 1990, Handmer et al. 1991,Priscoli 1996), “consensus building” (Innes 1996),“future search” (Weisbord and Janoff 1995), “sociallearning” (Pahl-Wostl 2002, Craps 2003, Ison et al.2004, HarmoniCOP 2005) and “learning alliances”(Adank et al. 2006). What is required is an overallsystem for evaluating the relative success of eachdifferent forum. In the short run, that evaluationhas to focus upon process rather than outcomes,and the key process characteristic is change: thenature and extent of the changes, particularly in theunderstandings of each stakeholder of each other(Green et al. 2004).We are further faced with the problem ofdelivering integration through functional linebudgets. Some general source of revenue whichcould be used for general purposes to enhance theperformance of the catchment would be a usefullubricant here. In the past, the introduction ofspecific charges for abstractions and discharges tocover the administrative costs for permitting havebeen rejected when they have been considered aspossible economic instruments (Department of theEnvironment, Transport and the Regions 1997,2000). Our proposal here is instead for a levy asa source of revenue rather than any expectationthat such a levy would have any effect upon landand water users. A small charge, the simplest formbeing that of a property tax, would generate fundswhich could then make it easier to put togetherother funding from the line budgets of the differentpublic and private stakeholders. Decisions as tothe appropriate spending of these funds would bedetermined by the stakeholder fora.ConclusionsIntroducing IWRM requires very differentinstitutional practice than we have seen in the past inEngland. It is a challenge for which the centralizedgovernment tradition of England has ill-preparedthe people. Indeed, the adoption without discussionof the Environment Agency as the competentauthority under the Water Framework Directive isUCOWRJOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATION