Prioritizing long-term watershed management strategies using group decision analysis

There is a growing consensus that an effective way of enhancing long-term water resources management and environmental sustainability is through locally based planning at the watershed scale. Managing watershed resources for particular uses requires interactive dialogue among all stakeholders who have different objectives. Therefore, the resolution of inter-group conflict should be an acknowledged task of the planning process. In this paper, an integrated framework for prioritizing watershed management strategies is proposed. A case study is employed to highlight the challenges of using group decision analysis in strategic planning and to illustrate the interaction between different stakeholders on watershed issues. In particular, two group decision-making approaches are used to assess and analyse different stakeholders' preferences for various strategies and alternatives. Professional experts, government agencies and community leaders constitute the different parties included in the framework. The main focus is on the application of group decision analysis in the long-term watershed planning process. The results of the overall preference analysis show that water resources development is the most important strategy followed by agricultural and range management.