ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the point men routing and rerouting streams of ideas and resources and the strategies they pursue seeking to achieve their objectives by way of linking, coupling and spanning across boundaries. A competent boundary spanner manages complexity while trying to introduce, translate, and implement an innovative idea into public practice. Bressers and Lulofs define boundary spanning as adaptive governance activities of water managers linking their sector, scales, and time frames to previously independent other sectors, scales and time frames. The case of the Grensmaas river project on the river Meuse illustrates this insight. The case study introduces the tactics of several important leaders that translated the new concept of nature development', developed in the 1980's, into a concrete intervention project. The concept of nature development seemed well suited to a languishing plans to unchain the Grensmaas, a boundary river between the Netherlands and Belgium. The Grensmaas project needed to be saved many times over.