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

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

Valuing water for sustainable development

Achieving universal, safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030, as envisioned by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, is projected to require capital expenditures of USD 114 billion per year (1). Investment on that scale, along with accompanying policy reforms, can be motivated by a growing appreciation of the value of water. Yet our ability to value water, and incorporate these values into water governance, is inadequate. Newly recognized cascading negative impacts of water scarcity, pollution, and flooding underscore the need to change the way we value water (2). With the UN/World Bank High Level Panel on Water having launched the Valuing Water Initiative in 2017 to chart principles and pathways for valuing water, we see a global opportunity to rethink the value of water. We outline four steps toward better valuation and management (see the box), examine recent advances in each of these areas, and argue that these four steps must be integrated to overcome the barriers that have stymied past efforts

Lessons from Australian water reforms: Indigenous and environmental values in market-based water regulation

The Australian model of water governance is considered one of the most effective, efficient and resilient approaches to designing and implementing water governance. In place since the early 1990s, the Australian approach is a hybrid governance system involving collaborative planning of water resources together with market mechanisms and statutory regulation. However, in implementing the model, successive reforms have yet to completely redress the historical exclusion of Aboriginal peoples from water law frameworks, and have struggled to account for the needs of a healthy and sustainable aquatic environment. In this chapter we examine the trajectory of water law and policy reform in Australia, including two of the most recent developments: the push to intensify water development in the northern Australian White Paper and the collaborative planning approach set in the Water for Victoria policy. Our study of the incremental and evolving Australian water law reforms highlights the difficulty of ensuring fairness in the operation of hybrid governance systems for water regulation, and reveals important lessons for international policy-makers embarking on and implementing water reforms in their own jurisdictions. From its inception, strategic planning for innovative water law reform must be supported by meaningful engagement with Indigenous peoples, and embed Indigenous and environmental values and rights in water planning and governance.Authors acknowledge assistance provided by CCIF grant 501319GL, The University of Melbourn

Explaining Institutional Diversity in Emerging Markets for Environmental Flows: A Transaction Costs Approach to Comparative Policy Evaluation in the Columbia Basin

ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLEDISSERTATION NOT AVAILABLEDissertation removed per author's request Feb. 2012; abstract removed per author's request May 2012

Governing water in federal river basins

Depto. de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y PaleontologíaFac. de Ciencias GeológicasTRUESocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaForum of FederationsUniversidad Complutense de MadridMcMaster University and the Getches-Wilkinson Centre for Natural Resources Energy and the Environment of the University Colorado Law Schoolpu

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

Managing the cascading risks of droughts : institutional adaptation in transboundary river basins

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Transboundary river basins experience complex coordination challenges during droughts. The multiscale nature of drought creates potential for spillovers when upstream adaptation decisions have cascading impacts on downstream regions. This paper advances the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to examine drought adaptation decision-making in a multijurisdictional context. We integrate concepts of risk management into the IAD framework to characterize drought across its natural and human dimensions. A global analysis identifies regions where severe droughts combine with institutional fragmentation to require coordinated adaptation. We apply the risk-based IAD framework to examine drought adaptation in the Rio Bravo/Grande-an archetypical transboundary river shared by the United States and Mexico and by multiple states within each country. The analysis draws on primary data and a questionnaire with 50 water managers in four distinct, yet interlinked, "institutional catchments," which vary in terms of their drought characteristics, socioeconomic attributes, and governance arrangements. The results highlight the heterogeneity of droughts and uneven distribution of their impacts due to the interplay of drought hazards and institutional fragmentation. Transboundary water sharing agreements influence the types and sequence of interactions between upstream and downstream jurisdictions, which we describe as spillovers that involve both conflict and cooperation. Interdependent jurisdictions often draw on informal decision-making venues (e.g., data sharing, operational decisions) due to the higher transaction costs and uncertainty associated with courts and planning processes, yet existing coordination and conflict resolution venues have proven insufficient for severe, sustained droughts. Observatories will be needed to measure and manage the cascading risks of drought

Adaptive basin governance and the prospects for meeting Indigenous water claims

The United States and Australia confront the challenge of meeting multi-faceted Indigenous water requirements within the wider context of intensified competition for freshwater supplies and expiation of historic inequality of access. Fulfilment of Indigenous water claims requires acceptance of currently unrecognised uses that may be in conflict with water planning in irrigation-dominated basins. Adaptive governance regimes have been applied to deal with uncertainly and change in water planning and allocation decisions, including changes related to the recognition of Indigenous water claims, values, and knowledge. This paper examines the prospects of adaptive governance regimes to combine: (a) insights into decision-making and policy learning in contexts of high levels of uncertainty over the information base and legal and policy arrangements; with (b) institutional arrangements to coordinate decision-making and accountability across multiple decision-making units, values and jurisdictions, to accommodate Indigenous water claims. In both countries, efforts have involved (re)allocation of water entitlements and greater participation in multi-stakeholder basin planning. In this paper we find that a mix of these adaptive governance mechanisms shows greatest promise for overcoming resistance to the recognition of Indigenous water claims