An integrative negotiation model to deal with conflicts toward water resources management: a case study in Brazil

An integrative negotiation model is proposed so that watershed committees (WSC) can deal better with conflicts over alternatives for protecting water resources from pollution and overcoming water shortages by, for example, making conscious use of water and soil, introducing best agricultural practices, and recovering riparian forest. All of these have an impact on the hydrological cycle and the health of the basin. The proposed model consists of three phases: pre-negotiation, negotiation, and post-negotiation. In the pre-negotiation phase, an approach that extends value focused thinking to situations that involve a group is applied to provide WSC members (representatives from different segments of society) with the opportunity to think creatively about their values, objectives, attributes, and also to generate alternatives that integrate their perspectives and encourage collaboration for the efficient and sustainable use of water. In the negotiation phase, multi-objective optimization models and the global criterion method (GCM) are used so as to select sets of alternatives and to allocate them among the representatives of the WSC. Also, GCM is proposed as a new way of scoring proposals in the bargaining process. Finally, in the post-negotiation phase, the agreement on implementing alternatives is formalized. A realistic case study based on the WSC of the Pajeú River in northeastern Brazil is presented to illustrate the use of the proposed model and the results show the compromise solution between the segments. This study advances the understanding of negotiating alternatives for preserving water resources from a proactive perspective and also enhances users’ ability to use this model to resolve conflicts in other hydrographic basins worldwide.