Decentralisation and drought adaptation: Applying the subsidiarity principle in transboundary river basins

Determining how to adapt to freshwater scarcity and variability has become an important question for institutional analysis and development. This paper addresses the assignment challenge in drought adaptation, namely the challenge of assigning and coordinating governance responsibilities across nested levels of social organisation. The subsidiarity principle suggests that adaptation decisions and associated governance responsibilities should occur at the lowest level at which they can be performed competently. Droughts and related slow-onset ‘shocks’ throw into question which level is lowest, and how this varies with the duration, severity and extent of the event. This paper explores the potential for the subsidiarity principle to guide the assignment and assessment of governance responsibilities associated with drought adaptation. It reviews literature at the intersection of common pool resource studies and new institutional economics to elaborate four diagnostic questions: (1) what are the opportunities and limits of decentralised (independent) drought adaptation?; (2) how are social dilemmas and spillovers associated with drought adaptation managed?; (3) when do higher level institutions complement versus crowd out decentralized adaptation?; and (4) how does adaptation by individuals and groups affect adaptive efficiency? An illustrative comparison of drought adaptation in the US portions of the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers of North America demonstrates: (i) the potential and limits of decentralised adaptation through urban water conservation and irrigation efficiency (ii) the importance of both formal and informal coordination institutions (e.g. river basin organisations) to address cross-border externalities, including conflicts and economies of scale, and (iii) the pivotal role of groundwater management for adaptive efficiency, requiring a balance between local, short-term dependence on groundwater for drought adaptation with trans-boundary, long-term outcomes caused by unsustainable extractions

SLIDES: Learning from Drought Crises in Federations: Principles, Indicators and Lessons Learned

Presenters: Lucia De Stefano, Complutense Universidad de Madrid Dustin Garrick, McMaster University/University of Oxford Daniel Connell, Australia National University 27 slide

The water governance reform framework: Overview and applications to Australia, Mexico, Tanzania, U.S.A and Vietnam

The world faces critical water risks in relation to water availability, yet water demand is increasing in most countries. To respond to these risks, some governments and water authorities are reforming their governance frameworks to achieve convergence between water supply and demand and ensure freshwater ecosystem services are sustained. To assist in this reform process, the Water Governance Reform Framework (WGRF) is proposed, which includes seven key strategic considerations: (1) well-defined and publicly available reform objectives; (2) transparency in decision-making and public access to available data; (3) water valuation of uses and non-uses to assess trade-offs and winners and losers; (4) compensation for the marginalized or mitigation for persons who are disadvantaged by reform; (5) reform oversight and “champions”; (6) capacity to deliver; and (7) resilient decision-making. Using these reform criteria, we assess current and possible water reforms in five countries: Murray–Darling Basin (Australia); Rufiji Basin (Tanzania); Colorado Basin (USA and Mexico); and Vietnam. We contend that the WGRF provides a valuable approach to both evaluate and to improve water governance reform and, if employed within a broader water policy cycle, will help deliver both improved water outcomes and more effective water reforms.D.G. received partial funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. Grant Number: 430–2014-00785. A.M. received partial supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research under project number FSC2013-00

Bringing polycentric systems into focus for environmental governance

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Introduction to the special issue on Polycentricity in Enioronmental Policy and Governanc

Moral economies for water: A framework for analyzing norms of justice, economic behavior, and social enforcement in the contexts of water inequality

Over the past two decades, scholars have invoked E. P. Thompson\u27s and James Scott\u27s concept of a “moral economy” to explain how people mobilize notions of justice to make claims to water. We draw together 20 years of literature to assess the state-of-the-art present in research on moral economies for water. We trace the historical foundations of the moral economies concept and its relevance to water; define the three basic components of a moral economy for water—(1) shared understandings of justice, (2) normative economic practices, (3) social pressure mechanisms—and provide examples of how they manifest globally. We then discuss how moral economies for water can cycle through four basic states—balanced struggle, intensified reaction, mass revolt, and collapse and dissolution—at different scales. We also explore the implications of the moral economies framework for key areas of current research on water: water sharing, water commons, water markets, and biocultural outcomes, and discuss the ways in which the moral economies framework dovetails with recent advances in water research, especially the economics of water and development. We argue that the moral economies framework is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding the relationships between ideas of water justice, economic behaviors, and mechanisms of social enforcement that complements other methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives. We envision moral economies for water as a field that can facilitate a range of norm-based analyses of economic behavior and water justice, including across scales—from local to global—and in broad, integrative, multiscalar, and cross-disciplinary ways. This article is categorized under: Human Water \u3e Water Governance Human Water \u3e Value of Water Human Water \u3e Rights to Water

ReFRESH: Canada-US Transboundary Water Governance and the Columbia River Treaty Renegotiations

The Columbia Basin is at a crossroads due to the potential termination of the 1964 Canada-US Columbia River Treaty. Once widely recognized as a world-leading, innovative approach to transboundary water governance, concerns are mounting about whether the renegotiation process can address the numerous issues that have emerged since 1964 and regain the Columbia River’s status as a recognized global leader in transboundary governance. In preparation for this milestone, Canadian and US agencies have begun to address what Kenney (2009) calls the “omissions of the past”: ecosystem integrity, cultural flows, indigenous values, and climate change (see Province of BC, 2013; U.S. Entity, 2013). The small body of scholarship that has characterized Canada-US transboundary water governance has primarily highlighted challenges, such as the limited power of local actors (Norman and Bakker, 2009) and the lack of resilience planning (Cosens and Williams, 2012). Questions remain about how to apply the emerging research on innovative governance approaches and water security, in light of these challenges. That is, how can governance innovation be supported in Canada’s transboundary basins, specifically in the Columbia given the critical juncture poised by the Treaty renegotiation process

Groundwater governance in the Rio Grande: Co-evolution of local and intergovernmental management

The physical interconnection of ground and surface waters is rarely acknowledged in inter-state and international agreements over surface water. This is especially true in the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin, where groundwater pumping is at the heart of several disputes and legal cases related to compliance with intergovernmental water agreements. This research considers the Upper and Middle Rio Grande basin to explore how groundwater use and management interact with interstate (i.e. intranational within the US) and international relations (US-Mexico). We consider three distinct geographic regions to address the following questions: how have intergovernmental surface water agreements affected local groundwater management and policies? And, how does groundwater management at local scale influence intergovernmental relations over water? We combine documentary data and interview data collected through extensive fieldwork during 2016 and 2017. The analysis reveals the emergence of both state-driven and community-based groundwater initiatives aimed at reconciling needs and obligations stemming from different geographical and institutional levels. The analysis uncovers strong institutional interplay across water management levels and suggests that compliance with intergovernmental agreements in federal and international contexts both affects and is affected by local groundwater management. Moreover, we observed that while local water managers are sometimes prevented from solving problems locally due to interstate rules, opportunities for innovation in local groundwater governance can also be triggered by compliance obligations at other levels

Uncovering indicators of adaptive water capacity: A rapid systematic map

The global water crisis is driven by the absence of effective and efficient governance systems.There is a large and growing need to benchmark the current status of water governance in Canada and monitor trends over time. This research seeks to inform the development of a rapid, low cost and consistent indicator framework by reviewing the global literature on water governance indicators. We used a rapid systematic map to identify, screen and review 49 studies and the indicators they use to assess adaptive water governance capacity across 12 dimensions.This research was undertaken thanks, in part, with support from the Global Water Futures Program funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF

Groundwater governance in the Rio Grande: Co-evolution of local and intergovernmental management

The physical interconnection of ground and surface waters is rarely acknowledged in inter-state and international agreements over surface water. This is especially true in the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin, where groundwater pumping is at the heart of several disputes and legal cases related to compliance with intergovernmental water agreements. This research considers the Upper and Middle Rio Grande basin to explore how groundwater use and management interact with interstate (i.e. intranational within the US) and international relations (US-Mexico). We consider three distinct geographic regions to address the following questions: how have intergovernmental surface water agreements affected local groundwater management and policies? And, how does groundwater management at local scale influence intergovernmental relations over water? We combine documentary data and interview data collected through extensive fieldwork during 2016 and 2017. The analysis reveals the emergence of both state-driven and community-based groundwater initiatives aimed at reconciling needs and obligations stemming from different geographical and institutional levels. The analysis uncovers strong institutional interplay across water management levels and suggests that compliance with intergovernmental agreements in federal and international contexts both affects and is affected by local groundwater management. Moreover, we observed that while local water managers are sometimes prevented from solving problems locally due to interstate rules, opportunities for innovation in local groundwater governance can also be triggered by compliance obligations at other levels

Groundwater Governance in the Rio Grande: Co-evolution of Local and Intergovernmental Management

The physical interconnection of ground and surface waters is rarely acknowledged in inter-state and international agreements over surface water. This is especially true in the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin, where groundwater pumping is at the heart of several disputes and legal cases related to compliance with intergovernmental water agreements. This research considers the Upper and Middle Rio Grande basin to explore how groundwater use and management interact with interstate (i.e. intranational within the US) and international relations (US-Mexico). We consider three distinct geographic regions to address the following questions: how have intergovernmental surface water agreements affected local groundwater management and policies? And, how does groundwater management at local scale influence intergovernmental relations over water? We combine documentary data and interview data collected through extensive fieldwork during 2016 and 2017. The analysis reveals the emergence of both state-driven and community-based groundwater initiatives aimed at reconciling needs and obligations stemming from different geographical and institutional levels. The analysis uncovers strong institutional interplay across water management levels and suggests that compliance with intergovernmental agreements in federal and international contexts both affects and is affected by local groundwater management. Moreover, we observed that while local water managers are sometimes prevented from solving problems locally due to interstate rules, opportunities for innovation in local groundwater governance can also be triggered by compliance obligations at other levels