Land use Planning and Water Resources at Local Scale: Opportunities and Challenges towards an Integrated Management Strategy

The relationship between land use and land cover (LULC) and water issues has been extensively studied. However, there is still a need to develop management strategies that effectively integrate both aspects at the local level. For this reason, this paper aims to identify opportunities and challenges for the integrated management of LULC and water resources in the district of Tornquist, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines stakeholder analysis, social perception surveys, and participatory workshops to provide a comprehensive assessment of socio-institutional dynamics. Our findings reveal water and LULC management fragmentation across institutional and political levels. At the provincial and national levels, stakeholder connections are weaker than at the local level, requiring improved interactions and dialogue spaces involving all actors. Attention is predominantly on water availability rather than flooding. In both cases, the main cause of their changes was associated with the lack of water policies and infrastructure. The local community does not identify LULC changes as the main cause of variations in flooding and water availability but they recognize their relationship with water problems. Identifying, interpreting, and leveraging stakeholder relationships can contribute to the design of an integrated management strategy. By situating its analysis in a semiarid region with significant climatic and socio-environmental variability, the study provides actionable insights for similar contexts globally and underscores the critical need for inclusive, place-based solutions to address the growing pressures on land and water resources.