Conservation biology uses various tools including spatial ecology and molecular ecology to provide better understanding of species that can be used to support and design effective conservation strategies. Many wetland bird species in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are poorly known, and we lack detailed knowledge about their breeding ecology, spatial distribution and genetic differentiation. The first objective of my PhD research was to investigate the parental behaviour of an understudied endemic shorebird to the Middle East, the Crab Plover Dromas ardeola to record parental behaviour at the burrows over a 24-hour period. Since adult males and females look identical, I used molecular markers for sex determination. Molecular sexing was conducted using two different markers applied for 66 Crab Plover blood samples. I demonstrated that both males and females fed chicks, and that females brought food to chicks more frequently than did males (Chapter 2). The second objective was to investigate the breeding distribution of Crab Plovers along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia and to compare the results with the last comprehensive survey conducted in 1996. I showed that the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia has approximately 35% of the Arabian breeding population of Crab Plovers. The major threats to this species along the Red Sea coast were also discussed (Chapter 3). The third objective was to model the spatial distribution of 22 wetland bird species along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) based on occurrence data and 10 environmental variables and then to determine sites with high species richness. This analysis identified 17 areas predicted to be suitable for supporting high species richness. I recommended using this model of areas with high wetland bird species richness as a guide for monitoring and surveys to inform conservation strategies in the Red Sea region of the KSA (Chapter 4). The fourth objective was to use microsatellite markers to investigate the genetics and morphometric differentiations of a wide-spread shorebird species, the Kentish Plover, between islands and mainland sites. The main result of the latter investigation was that breeding populations are genetically and morphometrically differentiated between mainland sites and islands, as well as between different archipelagos. This finding calls for a reconsideration of the current conservation status of this species (Chapter 5). Finally, my PhD research has generated several research lines that warrant further investigation (Chapter 6).

In the last century, India has progressed from a famine prone country to one that is food self-sufficient. However, India's water resources are now under threat from a growing population with increasing demands, a changing climate and water mismanagement. Developing realistic and sustainable solutions to water resource management in India requires an understanding of local scale water use practices, leading to improved water management tools which incorporate and examine the potential impacts brought by changes in socio-economic and environmental conditions. This research involved the collection of field level data within four districts of the Indian Gangetic Basin; one of the most intensely populated areas of the world, improving understanding of irrigation water use practices in the region. Semi-structured interviews; a method more commonly used in social sciences and healthcare, were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative hydrological information on individuals' water use. The approach provides an effective and efficient method for the collection of information in data scarce regions along with detailed insights into the drivers behind many water use practices. The importance of collecting and incorporating local scale information into large scale understanding is also highlighted, with significant differences between modelled irrigation water requirements, and field reported volumes shown. The information collected and insights gained were used to develop a modelling framework that is capable of accounting for changes in water level and farmer income, resulting from variations in climate, farmer irrigation behaviour, water source and agricultural costs. Calibrated model outputs match observed values of groundwater levels and crop yield in each of the four districts. The modelling framework is used to investigate how predicted and plausible changes in boundary conditions may impact water resources and farmer livelihood. Results show that predicted future climate is likely to have little direct impact on water resources or farmer income, and may lead to increased water availability. Utilising this increase in precipitation through an additional abstraction event suggests an increase in crop yields of up to 0.5 tonnes/ha. Results also suggest additional abstraction is likely to be more sustainable in certain districts if managed appropriately, highlighting the need for local scale understanding and tailor-made solutions. This practice can also help decrease incidences of flooding, and reduce runoff resulting from high groundwater levels in aquifers. The research undertaken could have significant implications for model development, water resource management and policy, as well as poverty alleviation in India and similar developing world settings.

The Mexican water polity underwent a deep process of Neo-liberal Statetransformation, oriented at modifying the relationship between the State and society and through the implementation of a range of State-strategies. These Statestrategies produced a number of drawback and contradictions. One of such strategies was the establishment and institutional development of multi-stakeholder platforms for groundwater resources management (MSPs), a form of socio-political governance arrangement allegedly created to enable a more democratic social participation and stakeholder cooperation throughout the water resources management process. As a result of a ‘critical juncture’ two models of MSPs were established, one supported by the central-State and another by the state-level authorities in the state of Guanajuato. They had important differences in that the latter represented a more serious attempt to truly enable a socio-political governance arrangement. Today, regardless of the initiative, these MSPs remain extremely weak and their contribution to a more participatory, cooperative and democratic groundwater governance is very limited. The central hypothesis of the thesis is that the principle factor –the culprit– behind these drawbacks and limitations is the State, but that still the MSPs for groundwater governance have generated some form of ‘countervailing power’ –an opportunity inherent to these governance arrangements–that supports some small, but important democratic effects. Through the integration of a ‘heuristic-analytical’ device supported by various theoretical developments –including governance and democratic studies, but mainly underpinned by a Historical Institutionalist approach–, this thesis analyses different critical aspects of this phenomenon. Accordingly, this device is structured in six different moments of analysis that focus on different aspects of the process of Neoliberal State transformation and the institutional development of the MSPs. The device ultimately seeks to develop and understanding of the prospects and challenges of the MSPs, assess their democratic performance, and investigate the role of the State in the process –including the reasons or factors that determine this role.

Stationarity assumptions of linked human-water systems are frequently invalid given the difficult-to-predict changes affecting such systems. Population growth and development is fuelling rising water demand whilst in some parts of the world water supply is likely to decrease as a result of a changing climate. A combination of infrastructure expansion and demand management will be necessary to maintain the water supply/demand balance. The inherent uncertainty of future conditions is problematic when choosing a strategy to upgrade system capacity. Additionally, changing stakeholder priorities mean multi-criteria planning methods are increasingly relevant. Various modelling-assisted approaches are available to help the water supply planning process. This thesis investigates three state-of-the-art multi-criteria water source systems planning approaches. The first two approaches seek robust rather than optimal solutions; they both use scenario simulation to test the system plans under different plausible versions of the future. Under Robust Decision Making (RDM) alternative strategies are simulated under a wide range of plausible future scenarios and regret analysis is used to select an initial preferred strategy. Statistical cluster analysis identifies causes of system failure enabling further plan improvement. Info-Gap Decision Theory tests the proposed strategies under plausible conditions that progressively deviate from the expected future scenario. Decision makers then use robustness plots to determine how much uncertain parameters can deviate from their expected value before the strategies fail. The third approach links a water resource management simulator and a many-objective evolutionary search algorithm to reveal key trade-offs between performance objectives. The analysis shows that many-objective evolutionary optimisation coupled with state-of-the art visual analytics helps planners assess the best (approximately Pareto-optimal) plans and their inherent trade-offs. The alternative plans are evaluated using performance measures that minimise costs and energy use whilst maximising engineering and environmental performance criteria subject to basic supply reliability constraints set by regulators. The analyses show that RDM and Info-Gap are computationally burdensome but are able to consider a small number of candidate solutions in detail uncovering the solutions’ vulnerabilities in the face of uncertainty in future conditions while the multi-objective optimisation approach is able to consider many more possible portfolios and allow decision makers to visualize the trade-offs between performance metrics.

This thesis is about how unique Indigenous conceptions of and relationships to water can be translated into law and subsequently recognised and protected. Water is Country and Country is culture. Water is not only an essential element of all life processes but also of the unique identities of the Canning Basin traditional owners; the Karajarri, Nyikina and Mangala, Ngurrara, and Tjurabalan people. Relationships to water reflect not only intimate knowledge of where water can be sourced, whether a water source is permanent or seasonal, and its interactions with the underlying groundwater, but are also the source of Indigenous rights and interests. ‘Ownership’ of land and waters is expressed as ‘belonging to Country,’ with specific duties and responsibilities to care for water sources. Senior law holders are responsible for the maintenance of specific water places, and the cultural relationships with the sentient beings that live within permanent water sources (or jilas). Custodianship of water and the authority to make decisions over water are built into social interactions between landscapes and people. As such these norms form the basis of the legal traditions of the Canning Basin groups, providing a normalising authority for judging water access and use. The modes of cultural validation within the Canning Basin are reflected in the language, laws and customs of the Karajarri, Nyikina and Mangala, Ngurrara, and Tjurabalan people. As such, it is the relationships, and the corresponding knowledge and interactions that sustain these relationships that create the rights of the Canning Basin traditional owners to water, and, as we will see, form the basis of their recognised native title rights and interests. In Australia, Indigenous forms of native title are legally recognised by a statutory process outlined in the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) enacted after the original Mabo decision, in which the High Court held that Indigenous laws and customs continue to exist and would be recognised by Australia’s property law system. The Mabo decision has enabled the retrospective recognition of Indigenous laws and customs. Parallel to the emerging legal recognition of Indigenous relationships to Country has been the recognition of the urgency of climate change, water scarcity and ecological degradation, creating an opportunity for an alliance between Indigenous and non-indigenous interests in protecting water places. In particular, the slow decline of the Murray Darling has brought the need to reconsider existing water management practices into stark relief while also causing developers to focus on the undeveloped northern Basins in Australia. The way in which water development is negotiated reflects broader questions: how can the pre-sovereignty rights of Indigenous people to traditional waters be recognised and to what extent will the relationships between the Canning Basin traditional owners and their underground rivers find expression in current laws? These questions are often answered based on the interaction between water planning and allocation and native title as enacted under legislation. However, focus on the internal coherency of the law has often distracted scrutiny away from the origins of legal traditions and its role in the iterative relationship with culture and identity. Socially and culturally ascribed normative values underpin the ability of the law to accommodate Indigenous claims. Within marginal contexts, dominant and projected relationships to water will continue to prevent the self-determined development of Indigenous groups. The central question of this thesis is: how can Indigenous relationships to water be meaningfully translated into Australia’s water laws? This research question involves two objectives: to articulate, both conceptually and legally, Indigenous legal traditions for defining relationships to water, reflected through cultural values and practices that relate to water, and to assess how Indigenous rights and interests in water have been translated into judicial decisions, as well as policy and legislative initiatives in both Australia and comparative jurisdictions.

Water supply service delivery has been recognised as a complex challenge facing communities in developing countries. Its particularly serious in sub-Saharan Africa where a significant proportion of the population still lack basic access to safe drinking water supply. Over the years, many externally supported community-managed water facilities have failed to deliver sustainably. This results not only in a loss of financial investment but also constitutes a real threat to people’s health and well-being. Therefore, this study aimed to explore options for innovative water service delivery approach that can support vibrant water supply provision as well as provide a guidance framework for sustainable water service delivery in Nigeria. Due to the socio-technical complexity of the research, the mixed method approach was found to be the most suitable research method after extensive considerations and reviews of other several available research methodologies. The study found that the hand-dug wells (HDW) have enormous potential in sustainable water service delivery to households within the proposed framework arrangement. This research successfully presented a unique model, based on the concept of HDW self-supply, using rope pump technology in conjunction with a community-based water resource management concept. The proposed approach led to the production of a set of Guidance Frameworks that will aid planning and implementation of a proposed solution. This was validated with key stakeholders and it applicability was rated highly relevant in the water sector. The approach did not only address the question of technical and financial sustainability but also make a case for environmental sustainability. Hence, ensuring that meeting present domestic water needs will not jeopardise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Further research was recommended to ensure wider applicability of the model.

The establishment of six shingle-beaches species( Crambem aritima (sea-kale),E ryngium maritimum (sea-holly), Glauciumflavum (yellow homed-poppy), Honckenya peploides (sea sandwort), Lathyrusjaponicus (sea pea) and Rumex crispus (curled dock)) was investigated to mitigate the disturbance caused by the construction of a power station at Sizewell, Suffolk, UK. The potential for creating vegetation from container-grown plants, sown seed or the soil seed bank was examined. Shingle-beach vegetation comprising these species was successfully established using container-grown plants, whereas seeding shingle beach areas was generally unsuccessful. Mature container-grown plants were able to survive erosion or accretion, at least to some extent, because they possessed extensive root or rhizome systems which provided sufficient resources for subterranean growth, while seedlings had only a limited capacity to elongate to the new beach surface after inundation. Hernicryptophyte species were most successful in surviving disturbance; Honckenya peploides recovered from up to 0.41 m accretion or 0.26 m erosion. The monocarpic chamaephyte species, Glauciuniflavum, showed poor survival after disturbance, but successfully established from seed within one season. Seedling emergence techniques showed that there was a very limited germinable soil seed bank in June on the shingle beach compared to the neighbouring dune grassland. The seed bank was not likely to provide an adequate source of propagules for vegetation restoration. Innate hard-seed dormancy mechanisms were important in five of the six species. Dormancy reduced the potential for rapid field-establishment from seed. The use of seed stored at low temperature and humidity for 5 years showed that germination of seed, of apparently high viability, but of low vigour, was reduced because of sensitivity to non-optimal temperatures, inappropriate light conditions or low salinity concentrations. Seed germination of all species was totally inhibited by 50-100% sea-water. The establishment of vegetation was significantly influence by beach substrate composition which affected the survival, growth and fecundity of container-grown plants and seedlings emergence, survival and growth in sown plots. A mixture of shingle and sand allowed significantly greater growth in Crambe maritima, Rumex crispus and Glauciumflavum plants compared to almost pure sand substrates.

Community participation and management has been hailed as central to the provision of essential services like clean water facilities to underserved communities in developing countries. In Ghana, community participation and management is seen as the blue-print to water facility provision and management in both rural and small towns of the country due to the failure of the top-down approach to the provision and management of this essential facility. I argue in this thesis that the water sector reform in Ghana is being influenced by external forces like the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as such community management (CM) of water in rural areas of Ghana is not made to serve the interests of the poor but to relieve the government of providing good and affordable water to these people. It is argued in the thesis that the use-values people in rural and small towns attached to different sources of water are not properly enumerated in the water sector. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the bottom-up approach to water facilities provision in the Akatsi District of Ghana through the use of extensive field surveys, observation, focus group discussions, and interview with key informants in two communities- a rural community that benefited from a borehole (tube well) facility and a ‘small town’ where people use different forms of water sources like wells, boreholes, rain harvesting systems and pipe scheme (gravity fed borehole). The study assesses how the facilities are being managed and reasons why people use a particular water source at a particular time. Findings show that whilst water has been commodified, remuneration given people managing the facilities have not been commodified. Women agreed to participate in water management but later leave the water and sanitation development boards (WSDB) because they derive little remuneration from this undertaking. Within the WSDB, there is no consensus of opinion among “indigenous” citizens of Akatsi and people from different towns serving in the board on how the facilities should be managed. Sustainability and replication of the facilities is at stake because institutions and bodies owe the WSDB arrears that could have been used to pay for the initial capital cost incurred by the DA or extension of service to new areas. The DA is also not assisting the WSDB to institute legal action against these defaulters to recover these costs because the water facilities in principle belong to the community. Indeed, the institutional pluralism in the construction and management of water facilities in rural areas and small towns of Ghana is de-motivating WSDBs and people in beneficiary communities to make additional contribution for the development of their water systems because some communities were assisted with water facilities without paying initial capital cost of construction. Even though distance people travelled to gather water has been shortened as a result of the provision of public stand pipes and boreholes in various locations in Akatsi, the new infrastructure associated with the CM strategy has increased time spent gathering water. The findings also show that people of Akatsi do not have demand for the water facilities being provided them because they refused to pay part of the initial capital cost of the facility provision and get connected to the piped network. They are also resisting CM of water facilities because they do not take part in the activities of the WSDB leaving the facilities to be managed by these selected few. Findings from the thesis shows that the use-values people attached to a particular type of water are very important in addition to the price they have to pay to use it. People use a particular type of water for a specific purpose base on the characteristics the water possesses. Borehole water does not replace rain harvested water or river use because of its taste and hardness. The study reiterated that existing local water management strategies like rainwater harvesting should be incorporated into CWSP in small towns as well as villages for the people to use this water source for purposes like drinking or washing. This study fills a gap in development geography which often overlooks how gender is created through water resource interventions by concerning itself with how new meanings of community management is reinforcing gender inequality and spatial development through water facilities management and its commodification. It contributes to feminist and development geography literature by demonstrating that participatory approaches to water resource management act as a constraint to women empowerment and poverty alleviation. The study concludes that, community participation and management of water facilities is not benefiting the intended beneficiaries as such the whole concept of community participation and management should be given a second thought in the development geography literature.

Conventional resource management pervades the practice of ecosystem governance and the performance of alternative models is inconsistent, particularly in developing country contexts. I argue for a perspective that focuses on enabling underlying principles of governance to improve a range of governance regimes. This thesis prioritises three principles of adaptive governance, namely, inclusive decision-making, diversity of ecological knowledge, and integration of complexity thinking. It examines how these are enabled or disabled in practice, and the implications for the legitimacy and effectiveness of management strategies, including marine protected areas, expected to secure resilience of desirable ecological configurations. An institutional analysis with a concern for power relations, socio-cultural practice, and historical social geographies is employed. Empirical data were collected from two marine social-ecological systems in Kenya, using a range of qualitative techniques. Mombasa Marine National Park and Reserve and Diani-Chale Management Area provide appropriately complex systems where interactions between individuals and their environment are intense and multi-faceted, and where interactions between actors differ between and within sites. These cases provide appropriate contexts for intricate and critical analysis. At the local level, actors' interactions and knowledge integration are mediated by a suite of institutional, socio-cultural, and historical factors. The behaviour of local actors is also strongly influenced by perceptions of ethics and collective rights. Forums for ethical debate and resolution of historical conflict \vithin the social-ecological systems are necessary to improve both the legitimacy and effectiveness of governance. \Vithin the coastal zone, a diversity of knowledge, which reflects complexity thinking to different extents, is available. However, the potential of inclusionary processes to facilitate environmental feedback into decisions made is severely curtailed by power dynamics and the inertia of national institutional reform. Nevertheless, opportunities for actors to interact in more democratic, inclusive and informative ways are emerging in practice, despite the prevalence of governance mechanisms founded on conventional thinking.

Ensuring the high of assets in water utilities is critically important and requires continuous improvement. This is due to the need to minimise risk of harm to human health and the environment from contaminated drinking water. Continuous improvement and innovation in water asset management are therefore, necessary and are driven by (i) increased regulatory requirements on serviceability; (ii) high maintenance costs, (iii) higher customer expectations, and (iv) enhanced environmental and health/safety requirements. High quality data on asset failures, maintenance, and operations are key requirements for developing reliability models. However, a literature search revealed that, in practice, there is sometimes limited data in water utilities - particularly for over-ground assets. Perhaps surprisingly, there is often a mismatch between the ambitions of sophisticated reliability tools and the availability of asset data water utilities are able to draw upon to implement them in practice. This research provides models to support decision-making in water utility asset management when there is limited data. Three approaches for assessing asset condition, maintenance effectiveness and selecting maintenance regimes for specific asset groups were developed. Expert elicitation was used to test and apply the developed decision-support tools. A major regional water utility in England was used as a case study to investigate and test the developed approaches. The new approach achieved improved precision in asset condition assessment (Figure 3–3a) - supporting the requirements of the UK Capital Maintenance Planning Common Framework. Critically, the thesis demonstrated that, on occasion, assets were sometimes misallocated by more than 50% between condition grades when using current approaches. Expert opinions were also sought for assessing maintenance effectiveness, and a new approach was tested with over-ground assets. The new approach’s value was demonstrated by the capability to account for finer measurements (as low as 10%) of maintenance effectiveness (Table 4-4). An asset maintenance regime selection approach was developed to support decision-making when data are sparse. The value of the approach is its versatility in selecting different regimes for different asset groups, and specifically accounting for the assets unique performance variables.