The Role of Native American Tribes in Transforming River Basin Governance in the U.S. West

The purpose of this research was to investigate the hypothesis that in the U.S. West, the presence of Native American land ownership (reservations) and capacity for tribal natural resource management supports adaptive river basin governance, and specifically, helps to balance cultural and ecological values of rivers in the federal processes of hydropower relicensing. I approached this research through a mixed methods approach of spatial (GIS) analysis, analysis of existing datasets of U.S. dam removals, and a robust literature review

Evolving adaptive governance: challenging assumptions through an examination of fisheries law in Solomon Islands

Unprecedented, rapid social-ecological change threatens marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of communities who depend on them. Governance scholars have identified adaptive governance principles that enable managers and decision makers to respond flexibly to such change. However, much of this work is the result of case studies undertaken in the Global North, primarily in democratic countries. Despite this research bias, governance actors (e.g., government officials, nongovernmental organization professionals) in countries with other types of governing systems are increasingly applying adaptive governance principles normatively to policy. This expansion in the implementation of adaptive governance requires that governance scholars account for substantial variation across legal systems and sociocultural norms around decision-making in different geographies. Governance scholars must closely examine areas where adaptive governance principles need to evolve to better suit a wide variety of governance contexts. Here, we conduct such an examination through an empirical case study of a fisheries law developed in a country in the Global South: the Solomon Islands Fisheries Management Act (2015). We analyze the content of the Act along with data from interviews with governance actors and fishing village residents. We show how the Act realizes several adaptive governance principles through novel provisions that formally incorporate local communities and their practices into national fisheries management. We then illustrate four challenges for implementation that require critical reflection on approaches to institutionalizing adaptive governance in diverse contexts. We illustrate how these challenges are rooted in three assumptions underlying adaptive governance theory. These assumptions relate to: (1) the role of the state, (2) the role of democratic ideals in enforcement, and (3) the role of Western science, compared to other epistemologies, in decision-making. We conclude with suggestions for evolving these assumptions to improve the institutionalization of adaptive governance in countries with a wide variety of legal systems and governing norms

Resilience, Adaptation, and Transformation in the Klamath River Basin Social-Ecological System

The Klamath River Basin straddles northern California and southern Oregon and has been the locus of a century-long struggle for multivalent resilience—resilience of resident Native American tribes in the face of settlement by Europeans and others, resilience of immigrant settlers pursuing agriculture in a water-limited environment, and resilience of native ecosystems and fish species in the face of significant hydrologic fragmentation via dams and irrigation infrastructure resulting in severely reduced access to and changes in habitat. Recently, however, the communities of the Klamath Basin have worked together in an effort to transform regional environmental governance to promote greater resilience across all these valences. This article uses the four-phase adaptive cycle model that Lance Gunderson and C.S. Holling described in 2002 to trace the history of the Klamath Basin social-ecological system (“SES”) through periods characterized by vulnerability, resilience, and transformation. We conclude that while Klamath Basin stakeholders have worked out a compromise settlement that may signify the emergence of a new, more resilient regime of environmental governance, the Basin’s future is uncertain. We identify important thresholds that, if triggered, could move the SES into alternate regimes, and we consider whether formalization of emergent institutions through legislation might influence this trajectory