Problem Solving by Bridging between Diverse Disciplines and Industry Sectors

The necessary knowledge exists to solve many water resource problems. The barriers to their solution are more social and political than technical. Fragments of the necessary knowledge may exist within two or more specialist disciplines but the specialists do not listen to each other, so there is a lack of synthesis of research findings into practicable courses of action. Even when technical solutions are known they may not be communicated effectively either to decision makers or to the voting public and the media, who can exert pressure for solutions to be implemented. This paper proposes some initiatives to improve bridge building between the diverse specialist research disciplines and stakeholders and briefly describes some cases where water-related problems have been addressed by synthesizing knowledge from diverse fields. It is suggested that individuals and organizations with this ability to synthesize, which is different from the ability to focus on one specialist topic, are at least as useful as specialists and should be encouraged and given more say in policy making.