5.2.2. Understanding the Problem

The Mahanadi Basin is essential for agriculture, industry, drinking water and the environment. Negotiating water-sharing agreements in this Basin would require an objective tool that would foster cooperation and partnership between contrasting stakeholder groups and governing bodies. The use of the Basin Futures platform could provide an easy exchange of information based on a common agenda across many production systems and ecological zones. Cooperation could be further facilitated through clear mechanisms and lines of communication. All efforts and resources of stakeholders should be channelled in that direction, guided by common understanding and agreements on priorities achieved through fully inclusive and participatory processes (Table 2). Furthermore, the use of the same datasets, methods and modelling platform would allow for unbiased dialogues and solutions to be created.

**Table 2.** Stakeholder model inputs, contributions and outputs at various assessment levels within the Mahanadi Basin. Directions of arrows indicate increases (↑) and decreases (↓) of outputs.



#### **Table 2.** *Cont.*

#### *5.3. Case Study 3: Environmental Flows*

Water resources produced by healthy ecosystems provide livelihood support for millions of people; this support is often extremely critical and essential for developing regions. River flow regimes are regarded to be the primary drivers of riverine and floodplain wetland ecosystems [32–34]. The flow regime is a major determinant of both biotic and abiotic components of a river system. Alteration of the natural flow regime can have serious consequences on the ecological sustainability of rivers and their associated floodplain wetlands [32,34]. The environment needs water to sustain itself, but in the water allocation decision-making process, the needs of the environment are often neglected [35]. If too much water is allocated to other sectors, the impacts on ecosystems can be devastating. A balance needs to be struck between people's direct water needs for domestic use, industry and agriculture and their indirect needs, through the numerous and unquantified goods and services provided by functioning ecosystems [36]. Stakeholder engagement and consensus in environmental flows can be difficult to obtain due to a lack of clarity on the issue, perceived non-transparent information and complexities of interacting perspectives.

The Basin Futures platform can be used to explore and collaborate on environmental flow scenarios. The platform is objective, transparent and allows users to run their own models, interpret results and form their own opinions instead of relying on more prescribed information. The platform can be used to range find and balance the inter-dependencies between hydrological, social, economic and ecological needs in river, lake and aquifer basins. We have selected the Pangani Basin in Tanzania, Africa, to demonstrate a potential stakeholder engagement strategy for environmental flows using the Basin Futures platform.
