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Planning for retail development: a critical view of the British experience

(UK, Mekong, South Africa, Peru, etc). It is rich in ideas and ‘good practice’, a term that should be used lightly in such an innovative and explorative endeavour. I believe the editor, J. Warner, has done an excellent job and I highly recommend it without equivocation. A few concerns should perhaps be identified; although the book attempts to answer the question of whether multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) make a difference, this is insufficiently traced in terms of water productivity and managerial performance outcomes (but it should be readily admitted this is very difficult to achieve) in the various case materials. In other words, did the MSP result in enhanced river basin performance no matter how the latter might be measured? Second, associated with this, is the question of epistemological knowledge management in public participation, particularly when all stakeholders should perhaps realise that knowledge gaps, and indeed myths, might be deeply embedded on all sides, including the scientist. Thus, how should MSPs self-manage to ensure that the ‘things that are not known’ become known, to the extent that they can be compared and judged to the things that are normatively scientifically ‘accepted facts’? To aid this, one might ask, what kind of natural resource and social experimentations that meet the scalar and temporal dynamics associated with IWRM provide platforms for deeper discussions? Although the book reflects on this process (for example, Newson’s chapter), it is instructive that in Figure 2.1 on p. 25, the idea that the quality of knowledge governance that transforms rather than works with current knowledge is omitted – an early flaw that the book never puts right in an explicit manner. However, that said, this is an urgent and immediate book that should find wide readership, not only amongst water managers but those interested and working at the interfaces between natural resources, communities and society.