The first panel met on November 14, 1997, in Nicaragua to develop a mission statement and criteria to be used by the second panel to define and rank issues that are vital to the management of Nicaragua’s water resources. The panelists followed the Vital Issues process format. (Panelists)

Goal The panel developed the following mission statement for the Initiative: Develop and apply a national system of information on water resources to promote its sustainable use. This system should serve as a base for decision making involved in the management of water resources of Nicaragua and also for the formulation of national policies. This system should also respond to all of the uses and users of water and stimulate a shared vision of the importance of water resources for the development of Nicaragua.

Criteria

The panelists used three metacriteria, listed below, to select, screen, and rank the criteria.

Necessary - elimination of the criterion from the list would allow some important aspect of the goal to go unrecognized.

Operational - the criterion can be used by the next panel to assess the relative importance of issues that are vital to the management of Senegal’s water resources.

Sufficient - the collection of criteria recognizes all important aspects related to the goal of managing Nicaragua’s water resources.

The panelists then selected and defined the following seven criteria for assessing the relative importance of issues considered vital to the management of Senegal’s water resources:

• Magnitude: The measurement of the extent and scope of a vital issue’s impact in environmental, economic, technical, and various other realms. All measures of social impact are excluded. Social impact was applied as a specific criterion to analyze the human aspects.
• Likelihood: The probability or frequency of the occurrence of an issue’s impact.
• Time frame: The time that it takes for an impact to occur, the time it takes to respond to the impact, and the time it takes for the response to take effect.
• Social impact: The positive or negative impact of a relevant matter on a determined population.
• Territoriality: Importance of the occurrence in spatial territory, if it applies only to a specific place or could be applied to several.
• Feasibility: The possibility of solving an issue or whether studying an issue can make a difference in its solution.
• Pertinence: Asks whether the issue is relevant. All vital issues must be pertinent.

The first five criteria, magnitude, likelihood, time frame, social impact, and territoriality, were identified as “evaluation” criteria because they were considered quantifiable and could be used to determine the relative importance of the vital issues. The remaining two criteria, feasibility and pertinence, were identified as “gatekeeper” criteria, that is, they could be used to determine whether or not an issue is vital in the first instance. It was decided that, in order for an issue to be considered vital to the management of Nicaragua’s water resources, it must be both feasible and pertinent.

Relative Importance of the Criteria

The five quantitative criteria, magnitude, likelihood, time frame, social impact, and territoriality, were scored in the context of their relative importance in assessing the issues using pairwise comparisons. Figure 1 shows the means and standard deviations of the scores (the square is the mean value, and the distance between the diamond and the triangle is two standard deviations in the scores). As shown in the figure, the ordinal ranking of the relative importance of the criteria is

magnitude > likelihood > time frame ~ social impact > territoriality.

The standard deviation is an indication of the extent of the panelists’ disagreement with regard to the rankings. The ordinal ranking with respect to the level of agreement in the relative importance of the criteria is

magnitude ~ social impact > time frame > likelihood ~ territoriality.

Figure 1. Nicaraguan Water Resources Initiative evaluation criteria scoring results.

For more information contact Dr. Dennis Engi, (505) 845-8284.

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