A Decision Support Tool for Stakeholder Involvement in Sustainable Water Resource Development

This paper describes the application of a decision support tool for stakeholder involvement in a proposed water resource development project in the Ma Oya river basin in Sri Lanka. The decision support tool is a five-step framework developed based on ‘Educated Trade-offs.’ The tool assesses the natural resource uses; identifies the present and future probable issues with regard to resource uses, elicit stakeholder views and then estimate the social and environmental impacts of a proposed development project. The results obtained through the application of the framework are direct inputs for stakeholder education for informed decision-making by the stakeholders. This paper highlights the stakeholder education achieved in the proposed project area and the down stream areas. The study validated the ‘Educated Trade-offs’ framework which is the decision-support tool and demonstrated its effectiveness.