Social-Ecological Resilience and Law in the Platte River Basin (original) (raw)
Related papers
Resilience and Water Governance: Adaptive Governance in the Columbia River Basin
Ecology and Society, 2012
Political boundaries are drawn without consideration of river basin boundaries. Over the next decade, several contributing factors could trigger rapid change and social and economic instability in these multi-jurisdictional watersheds, placing greater demands on competing water interests and a greater need to cooperate across jurisdictional boundaries. The degree of uncertainty surrounding the drivers of change complicates efforts to predict and manage under traditional approaches that rely on historic ecosystem responses. Using work on the type of adaptive management/governance required to foster ecological system resilience, the paper will discuss means to delegate more flexible and adaptive authority to water management entities, while retaining legitimacy in governance. It will apply this approach to adaptive management/governance to the Columbia River Basin, a complex, multi-jurisdictional setting, by exploring an early failed attempt at adaptive management in salmon recovery, discussing why the current rigid structure has resulted in litigation gridlock, and proposing alternative forms of adaptive management/governance with a broader application.
2014
There is growing recognition that the sustainable governance of water resources requires building social-ecological resilience against future surprises. Adaptive comanagement, a distinct institutional mechanism that combines the learning focus of adaptive management with the multilevel linkages of comanagement, has recently emerged as a promising mechanism for building social-ecological resilience. This paper employs the concept of adaptive comanagement to analyze ongoing institutional reforms in the Cache River watershed of southern Illinois. Since the 1970s, efforts have been made to promote collaborative decisionmaking aimed at the restoration of the watershed. However, the current governance system remains vulnerable because little attention has been given to building the capacity of the watershed for learning and adaptation. Adaptive comanagement can contribute to building resilience in the watershed by creating awareness, generating interest, creating opportunities, and building capacity for adaptation. Acheson, J.M. 2006. Institutional failure in resource management. Annual Review of Anthropology. 35: 117-134. Adams, J.; Kraft, S.; Ruhl, J.B.; Lant, C.; Loftus, T.; Duram, L. 2005. Watershed planning: pseudo-democracy and its alternatives-the case of the Cache River watershed, Illinois. Agriculture and Human Values. 22: 327-338. Adger, N.W.; Hughes, T.P.; Folke, C.; Carpenter, S.R.; Rockstrom, J. 2005. Social-ecological resilience to coastal disasters. Science. 309: 1036-1039. Akamani, K. 2012. A community resilience framework for understanding and assessing the sustainability of forest-dependent communities. Human Ecology Review. 19: 99-109. Akamani, K. 2013. Transitions toward adaptive water governance: the case of the Cache River watershed in southern Illinois, U.S.
Water, 2018
Highly variable water regimes, such as California's, contain distinctive problems in the pursuit of secure timing, quantities and distributions of highly variable flows. Their formal and informal systems of water control must adapt rapidly to forceful and unpredictable swings on which the survival of diversified ecosystems, expansive settlement patterns and market-driven economies depends. What constitutes resilient water governance in these high-variability regimes? Three bodies of theory-state resource government, resilience and social mediation-inform our pursuit of governance that adapts effectively to these challenges. Using evidence drawn primarily from California research and participation in the policy and practice of water governance, we identify two stark barriers to learning, adaptation and resilience in high-variability conditions: (1) the sharp divide between modes of governance for ecological (protective) and for social (distributive) resilience and (2) the separation between predominant paradigms of water governance in "basins" (shared streamflow) and in "plains" (minimized social risk). These sources of structural segregation block adaptive processes and diminish systemic resilience, creating need for mediating spaces that increase permeability, learning and adaptation across structural barriers. We propose that the magnitude and diversity of need are related directly to the degree of hydro-climatic variability.
A Resilience History of the Columbia River Basin and Salmonid Species: Regimes and Policies
Environments
We view the history of the Columbia River Basin through a resilience lens from the point of view of salmonids, as keystone species for the river basin ecosystems and social systems. We rely on the concept of multiple stable states as depicted in a stability landscape, as a scientific theory, but equally as a metaphor and a mental model. Using evidence-based plausibility arguments concerning the existence, creation, and potential critical transitions between regimes, we describe change over centuries. We argue that a critical transition occurred taking the state of the system from its historic regime into a novel regime stabilized by new social feedbacks and institutional configurations. By using a state space defined by four variables used in policy deliberations for salmon recovery we tie our results to historical and contemporary management issues. Knowledge of (a) which regime is currently occupied and (b) which critical transitions between regimes are possible are both crucial t...
The Social-Ecological Resilience of an Eastern Urban-Suburban Watershed: The Anacostia River Basin
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
assessment of the Rio Chama basin, a major upper tributary of the Rio Grande basin). 10. Nemec et al., supra note 6. 2014] NREL EDITION 31 competing uses of water under conditions of uncertainty and disturbance, particularly the effects of climate change like sustained or unprecedented drought. These conditions and disturbances pose threats to the flow regimes, aquatic habitats, and structural integrity of the basins as both ecosystems and important societal organizing units in western communities and economies. 12 However, other types of river basins also need adaptive water governance systems to enhance and sustain ecosystem and social-system resilience to climate change and other uncertainties and disturbance. These include smaller basins, Eastern basins, and basins influenced more by pollution, runoff (urban, suburban, and agricultural), and flooding than by scarcity and drought. 13 The Anacostia River Basin, which stretches from rural and suburban Maryland through the heavily urbanized District of Columbia, has all of these characteristics. When we started to analyze the resilience of the Anacostia River Basin, we initially used the Resilience Alliance's resilience assessment workbooks for scientists and practitioners. 14 However, our research soon revealed the strong role of institutions, which received too little systematic attention in the workbooks, and we shifted our methods of analysis to an institutional-historical analysis. Institutions are "the prescriptions that humans use to organize all forms of repetitive and structured interactions. .. at all scales." 15 Institutions are composed of rules, norms, and cultural-cognitive beliefs, all of which shape social action. 16 Institutions include law and legal regimes, formal governance systems and policies, and informal or decentralized systems of governance, including collaborative management of common resources, community norms, loose networks for collective action, and the like. 17 Institutions can be analyzed at macro levels of large-scale struc-11.
Political boundaries are drawn without consideration of river basin boundaries, as illustrated by the fact that 263 surface water resources cross international boundaries. Over the next decade, several contributing factors could trigger rapid change and social and economic instability in these international watersheds, placing greater demands on competing water interests and a greater need to cooperate across jurisdictional boundaries. These contributing factors include: climate change; continued population growth; a threatened and deteriorating ecosystem; demand for non-fossil fuel energy; and aging infrastructure. Uncertainty in these factors challenges traditional approaches to governance of transboundary water resources. These approaches also rely on the certainty that historic data concerning water supply, demand, values, and ecosystem health can be used to predict the future. In addition, these traditional approaches protect sovereignty through clear rules for dividing resourc...