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2018 | Buch

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Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance

Linking Law to Social-Ecological Resilience

herausgegeben von: Barbara Cosens, Lance Gunderson

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book presents the results of an interdisciplinary project that examined how law, policy and ecological dynamics influence the governance of regional scale water based social-ecological systems in the United States and Australia. The volume explores the obstacles and opportunities for governance that is capable of management, adaptation, and transformation in these regional social-ecological systems as they respond to accelerating environmental change. With the onset of the Anthropocene, global and regional changes in biophysical inputs to these systems will challenge their capacity to respond while maintaining functions of water supply, flood control, hydropower production, water quality, and biodiversity. Governance lies at the heart of the capacity of these systems to meet these challenges. Assessment of water basins in the United States and Australia indicates that state-centric governance of these complex and dynamic social-environmental systems is evolving to a more complex, diverse, and complex array public and private arrangements. In this process, three challenges emerge for water governance to become adaptive to environmental change. First, is the need for legal reform to remove barriers to adaptive governance by authorizing government agencies to prepare for windows of opportunity through adaptive planning, and to institutionalize the results of innovative solutions that arise once a window opens. Second, is the need for legal reform to give government agencies the authority to facilitate and participate in adaptive management and governance. This must be accompanied by parallel legal reform to assure that engagement of private and economic actors and the increase in governmental flexibility does not destabilize basin economies or come at the expense of legitimacy, accountability, equity, and justice. Third, development of means to continually assess thresholds and resilience of social-ecological systems and the adaptive capacity of their current governance to structure actions at multiple scales. The massive investment in water infrastructure on the river basins studied has improved the agricultural, urban and economic sectors, largely at the cost of other social and environmental values. Today the infrastructure is aging and in need of substantial investment for those benefits to continue and adapt to ongoing environmental changes. The renewal of institutions and heavily engineered water systems also presents the opportunity to modernize these systems to address inequity and align with the values and objectives of the 21st century. Creative approaches are needed to transform and modernize water governance that increases the capacity of these water-based social-ecological systems to innovate, adapt, and learn, will provide the tools needed to navigate an uncertain future.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. An Introduction to Practical Panarchy: Linking Law, Resilience, and Adaptive Water Governance of Regional Scale Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract

This chapter introduces the volume on Practical Panarchy: Linking Law, Resilience, and Adaptive Water Governance of Regional Scale Social-Ecological Systems. It begins by defining the terminology and theoretical concepts to present the bridging framework among ecological resilience, governance, and law relied on throughout this volume and then introduces this three-part volume. Part I presents the effort to assess resilience and transformation in riverine and wetland social-ecological systems in six US watersheds (the Anacostia River, Columbia River, Everglades wetlands, Klamath River, Middle Rio Grand River, and central Platte River) and one Australian system (the Lake Eyre and Great Artesian basin). Part II focuses on the legal dimensions of watershed governance that directly relate to ecological resilience and transformability of the social-ecological systems and synthesizes the results of the basin assessments to advance the understanding of the role of law and governance as a trigger, facilitator, or barrier to adaptation and transformation in the face of rapid environmental change, including shifting climate. Part III looks at the broader relation between social-ecological resilience and governance through synthesis of the basin assessments and resort to the broader literature on institutions and governance. As a whole, this volume presents the results of a 3-year pursuit on the cross-scale interactions among law, ecosystem dynamics, and governance to address the adaptive capacity of regional scale watersheds as they respond to accelerating environmental change.

Barbara Cosens, Lance Gunderson

Assessing Resilience of Regional Scale Social-Ecological Systems

Frontmatter

Chapter 2. Case Studies in Adaptation and Transformation of Ecosystems, Legal Systems, and Governance Systems

Abstract

Seven water basins, six in North America and one in Australia, were chosen as case studies to investigate the dynamic interactions among ecosystems, society, and legal systems. These cases were chosen because of local knowledge and expertise of a group of interdisciplinary scholars. The teams were asked to describe the structures and processes that contribute to resilience, adaptations, and transformations in both the ecological and social components of the linked system. The role of law in triggering or hindering change in governance and institutional reformation was explored. The cases also describe conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed water systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system.

Lance Gunderson, Barbara Cosens

Chapter 3. Resilience of the Anacostia River Basin: Institutional, Social, and Ecological Dynamics

Abstract

The Anacostia watershed traverses the urban-suburban areas around Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Historically, the Anacostia River basin has transitioned from a biologically rich natural ecology prior to European settlement through three periods of ecosystem degradation due to agriculture and navigation, industrialization, and urbanization. The current regime is dominated by restoration and green-infrastructure activities yet is still influenced by previous regimes’ legacy effects and continued urban-development pressures. The major drivers of regime shifts from presettlement to the present are (1) societal treatment of the basin’s waters, lands, vegetation, and wildlife as exploitable goods and services for short-term economic benefit (even in the current regime in which improved water quality and restored lands are public goods and services); (2) shifts from weak to strong environmentalist values and activism; (3) changing ways that humans psychologically relate to the basin and its functions; (4) patterns of structural inequality, oppression, discrimination, and movements to seek social and environmental justice; and (5) changes in governance institutions, including laws, to support and facilitate the dominant social values and policies of the time. Institutions have played strong and pervasive roles in both the watershed’s declining ecological resilience and potential for improving social-ecological resilience. The greatest opportunities for a more resilient, climate-adaptive Anacostia River watershed require continued and improved changes in watershed governance, restoration and green-infrastructure initiatives, land-use regulation, public engagement, integration of social justice into watershed decision-making, and monitoring and feedback loops.

Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Olivia Odom Green, Daniel DeCaro, Alexandra Chase, Jennifer-Grace Ewa

Chapter 4. Social-Ecological Resilience in the Columbia River Basin: The Role of Law and Governance

Abstract

The Columbia River is a complex water basin shared by 2 countries, 15 Native American Tribes, 15 First Nations, 7 US states, and 1 Canadian province. Dam construction during the twentieth century has engendered a basin economy that is dependent on low-cost electricity and irrigated agriculture. Yet, these dams are a major factor in the decline of populations of salmon and steelhead species that are critical to the culture of Indigenous peoples. Climate change scenarios predict a transformation from snow- to rain-dominated precipitation in the basin’s lower latitudes, greater extremes in flood and drought, and an increasing water deficit as a result of higher rates of evapotranspiration with increasing temperature. Reduced late summer flow may pose challenges for the sustainability of irrigation and fish. The basin provides a unique laboratory to explore resilience of a highly developed social-ecological system to changing climate and rising empowerment of Indigenous peoples. Review of the Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada that governs much of the operation of the river presents a window of opportunity for change. This window provides a moment in time to rethink environmental governance and to consider an approach which reflects neither top-down nor bottom-up control of resources but a third path in which each level of government plays a supporting role to a regional vision of the basin’s future governance.

Barbara Cosens, Alex Fremier

Chapter 5. Social, Legal, and Ecological Capacity for Adaptation and Transformation in the Everglades

Abstract

The Florida Everglades is a subtropical wetland in the southeastern USA that has been hydrologically modified to protect urban and agricultural lands from flooding, while supplying water for urban interests and Everglades National Park. The social-ecological system has sought control over the surface water through infrastructure of canals, levees, and pumps to direct water movement, managed by a complex institutional arrangement of federal, state, and local governments. Water control has been largely achieved through adaptation and transformation to unforeseen environmental events, too much or too little rainfall and nutrient movement across the wet landscapes. Law has provided both the resources to foster economic and conservation objectives but also resulted in rigid planning and continuing litigation, constraining the adaptive capacity of the social-ecological system of the Florida Everglades to respond to seen and unforeseen environmental changes. Rigid management at higher levels and failure to balance stability of economic investment and varied stakeholder values of the Everglades with flexibility to adjust management measures have limited the emergence of adaptive governance.

Lance Gunderson, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Keith W. Rizzardi, J. B. Ruhl, Alfred R. Light

Chapter 6. The Emergence of Adaptive Governance in the Klamath River Basin

Abstract

The Klamath River Basin of south-central Oregon and northern California has been the locus of historic conflict over the governance of water situated at the spiritual, cultural, and economic confluence of fishing and farming livelihoods. In recent years, a series of crises have impacted communities and stakeholder groups across the basin and jeopardized the continued existence of endangered and threatened fish species as well as the dominant economic and social relations in the basin. From these crises, however, a set of human-driven processes emerged that closely resemble the seeds of adaptive environmental governance. This chapter describes social-ecological system structures and dynamics that led to this potential emergence of adaptive governance in the Klamath River Basin. The major aim of this chapter is to critically evaluate the role of law in the basin as a tool for both creating disturbances and opening windows of opportunity through which adaptive processes could emerge. The major insight from the Klamath case is that the distribution and application of political power cannot be underestimated as either a barrier or facilitator of adaptive governance. Without an explicit recognition and analysis of power dynamics, adaptive governance scholarship lacks a critical lens to interrogate the contexts of governance transitions and evaluate the potential for new arrangements to attain explicit goals such as the sustainability of ecosystem services, the fair allocation of resources, and other principles of good governance that promote social and environmental justice.

Brian C. Chaffin, Hannah Gosnell, Robin K. Craig

Chapter 7. Governing the Rio Grande: Challenges and Opportunities for New Mexico’s Water Supply

Abstract

The Rio Grande in New Mexico provides water to the urban environments of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, as well as surrounding small towns and rural agricultural communities. Long-term climate change projections suggest that New Mexico will experience ongoing drought in the coming decades, placing stress on a system already struggling to meet increasing water demands. Resilience theory provides a lens through which the governance challenges associated with climate change and other factors can be examined. The construction and operation of the many dams, reservoirs, and levees, along with channelization activities, have lowered the overall functional diversity of the river system through channel simplification and bed degradation, with implications for both riverine and riparian habitats. The earlier peak will require more nuanced and intensive water management, including more management flexibility. Changes in water governance strategies will be needed in order to adapt to increased temperatures and other challenges the future will bring. New strategies will include more aggressive management of the upland forest system to decrease the risk of wildfire in the watershed, more operational flexibility for dams and reservoirs, and a new approach to water storage and allocation.

Melinda Harm Benson, Ryan R. Morrison, Dagmar Llewellyn, Mark Stone

Chapter 8. Resilience and Law in the Platte River Basin Social-Ecological System: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

A characteristic of the Anthropocene is an acceleration in the rate of change of many global environmental resources, including loss of biodiversity and increased freshwater use. However, societal response to accelerated environmental change often does little to prevent the undesirable and sudden social-ecological system changes that occur in response to relatively incremental resource depletion. Resilience theory provides a framework for evaluating the interactions among social-ecological systems and the policies meant to guide them toward desirable outcomes. This chapter examines the resilience of the Platte River Basin system through time, assessing linkages among environmental change and governmental institutions, policies, and geophysical realities of the region during three distinct social-ecological regimes: pre-European settlement, heavy modification of the river and adjacent land, and the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program (PRRIP). Policy guided by resilience theory accommodates the potential for rapid, nonlinear change characteristic of complex systems such as the Platte River Basin. With increasingly extreme floods and droughts predicted for the Great Plains in coming decades as climate change progresses, a resilience approach to policy and decision-making will contribute to desirable outcomes for people and nature in the next iteration of the Platte River Basin.

Hannah E. Birgé, Craig R. Allen, Robin Kundis Craig, Dirac Twidwell

Chapter 9. Assessing Adaptive Water Governance for Lake Eyre Basin and Linked Portions of the Great Artesian Basin in Australia

Abstract

The Lake Eyre Basin in the heart of the outback of Australia is a place in which the social-ecological system is not only highly dependent on but is also defined by the intermittent presence and absence of water. Tributary rivers of this hydrologic system arise in Queensland and the Northern Territory and feed the landlocked Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in central Australia. Due to decadal cycles of rain, the basin has one of the most variable flows in the world; in any given year, the lake may be a vast expanse of blue against the red soils of the arid lands or a white salt flat. The Great Artesian Basin that underlies portions of the Lake Eyre Basin has been an important source of fresh water for humans, initially serving Aboriginal inhabitants, then the railroad system, and today large pastoral farms of the basin. The setting provides an opportunity to consider the link among resilience, governance, and law outside the North American context yet within a federal system. The efforts of the Australian Commonwealth and state governments to engage in catchment planning and involve both scientists and local stakeholders can be characterized as a governmental effort to achieve adaptive governance across jurisdictions. This much more formal and intentional approach has indeed enhanced the adaptive capacity of Australian water basins and moved them beyond their North American counterparts in which emergence of adaptive governance remains ad hoc in response to a social or ecological disturbance. At the same time, the Australian approach is top-down and, without both greater authority and capacity at the local level, may not achieve the level of adaptive governance needed to navigate the changes to come.

Barbara Cosens, Angela H. Arthington

The Role of Law in Adaptive Governance and Resilience

Frontmatter

Chapter 10. Legal Pathways to Adaptive Governance in Water Basins in North America and Australia

Abstract

Law dictates the structure, boundaries, rules, and processes within which governmental action takes place and in doing so becomes one of the focal points for analysis of governmental barriers to adaptation as the effects of climate change are felt. Governance encompasses both governmental and nongovernmental participation in collective choice and action. Adaptive governance contemplates a level of flexibility and evolution in governmental action beyond that currently found in the heavily administrative governments in the United States and Australia. Nevertheless, over time, law itself has proven highly adaptive in democracies, evolving to address and even facilitate the emergence of new social norms (such as the rights of women and minorities) or to provide remedies for emerging problems (such as pollution). Thus, law can adapt, evolve, and be reformed to facilitate adaptive governance. In doing so, not only may barriers be removed, but law may be adjusted to facilitate adaptive governance and to aid in institutionalizing new and emerging approaches to governance. The key is to do so in a way that also enhances legitimacy, accountability, and justice (i.e., good governance), or such reforms will never be adopted by democratic societies or, if adopted, will destabilize those very societies. By identifying those aspects of adaptive governance relevant to the legal system, this chapter presents guidelines for evaluating the role of law in environmental governance and demonstrates their use by applying them to the basin studies presented in Part I of this volume.

Barbara Cosens, Robin Kundis Craig, Shana Hirsch, Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Melinda Harm Benson, Daniel DeCaro, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Hannah Gosnell, J. B. Ruhl, Edella Schlager

Chapter 11. Stability and Flexibility in the Emergence of Adaptive Water Governance

Abstract

One of the goals of adaptive governance is to increase management flexibility in the face of a changing social-ecological system. In contrast, one of the key functions of governance systems is to provide stability, predictability, and security for the people subject to that system. This chapter explores this adaptive governance paradox, focusing on the Klamath and Everglades case studies presented earlier in this volume—although the paradox arises in all of the case study river basins and indeed in most adaptive governance projects. It concludes that while the Everglades system has detrimentally privileged stability at the expense of flexibility and adaptability, the Klamath Basin system is showing signs that it may be able to appropriately balance stability and flexibility in its governance institutions to better address changing climatic, legal, and political realities.

Robin Kundis Craig, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Craig R. Allen, Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Hannah Birgé, Daniel DeCaro, Hannah Gosnell

Chapter 12. Finding Flexibility in Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act Through Adaptive Governance

Abstract

The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) prohibits federal agency actions likely to jeopardize listed species or adversely modify critical habitat. Scholarship on the application of the ESA characterizes the process as unwaveringly rigid, a legal “hammer.” This chapter draws on lessons derived from applying the ESA in the Klamath Basin along the Oregon-California border, where an integrated implementation strategy lessened rigidities and barriers to change. Collaboration among leaders in the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the US Bureau of Reclamation supported efforts to replace an ecologically and socially fragmented approach to ESA implementation that was fraught with conflict with a more adaptive, flexible, integrated approach to water sharing among competing interests. Keys to success included existing collaborative capacity related to improved tribal-irrigator relations and a shift in local agency culture facilitated by empathic leadership which led to a greater sense of shared responsibility for ESA compliance. This effort exemplifies governmental adaptive capacity for flexibility and evolution within constraints of formal law. A truly bioregional approach to endangered species recovery, however, will necessitate greater integration between federal and nonfederal activities.

Hannah Gosnell, Brian C. Chaffin, J. B. Ruhl, Craig A. (Tony) Arnold, Robin K. Craig, Melinda H. Benson, Alan Devenish

Social-Ecological Resilience and Adaptive Governance

Frontmatter

Chapter 13. Cross-Basin Patterns of Systemic-Change Drivers and Adaptive Governance Features

Abstract

Features of adaptive governance and drivers of systemic change were derived using qualitative textual analysis of six North American basin resilience assessments. This meta-analysis sought new knowledge that transcends each study concerning two categories of variables: (1) drivers of change in complex social-ecological-institutional water systems that affect systemic resilience and (2) features of adaptive governance. Pervasive themes, concepts, and variables from these six interdisciplinary texts were identified through inductive textual analysis and then analyzed for cross-basin patterns. Synthesis frameworks, as well as comprehensive lists of the variables that these studies uniformly or nearly uniformly addressed, are presented. These results are cross-interdisciplinary in that they identify patterns and knowledge that transcend several diverse interdisciplinary studies. The relevant and potentially generalizable insights into complex system change and adaptive governance, as well as a set of methods for synthesizing diverse interdisciplinary studies, form a foundation for future research on the dynamics of complex social-ecological-institutional systems and how they could be governed adaptively for resilience.

Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Hannah Gosnell, Melinda Harm Benson, Robin Kundis Craig

Chapter 14. Trajectories of Change in Regional-Scale Social-Ecological Water Systems

Abstract

The six North American case studies described in Part I of this volume provide the opportunity to explore patterns of change over time associated with the development and management of social-ecological systems. The historical assessments show the trajectories that have led to the current heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. This chapter uses Panarchy theory as a general framework to evaluate the interactions between societal and ecological regime shifts and the governance regimes that mediate those interactions. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery which include lurches in adaptation and learning, and (c) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross-scale interactions (Panarchy) among levels and sectors of government and society reveals that larger-scale processes and structures may constrain development and growth, but may also provide resources for recovery and renewal following crises or create windows or opportunities for system change. Smaller-scale processes provide opportunities for innovation and novelty, but may also be the source of revolts or crises that lead to broader system transformations. The case studies illustrate different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and social (and particularly legal) processes.

Lance Gunderson, Barbara Cosens, Brian C. Chaffin

Chapter 15. Uncertainty and Trade-Offs in Resilience Assessments

Abstract

Several frameworks have been developed to assess the resilience of social-ecological systems, but most are time consuming and require substantial time and technical expertise. Stakeholders and practitioners often lack the resources for such intensive efforts. Furthermore, most resilience assessments end with problem framing and fail to explicitly address trade-offs and uncertainty inherent in any assessment of resilience. This chapter reports on a rapid assessment of survey responses to compare the relative resilience across four North American social-ecological watershed systems with respect to a number of proposed resilience properties. Responses were compared among four stakeholder categories: (1) government (policy, regulation, management), (2) end users (farmers, ranchers, landowners, industry), (3) agency/public science (research, university, extension), and (4) nongovernmental organizations (environmental, citizen, social justice) in each of the watersheds. Conceptually, social-ecological systems are comprised of components ranging from strictly human to strictly ecological, but that relate directly or indirectly to one another in complex ways. They have soft boundaries and several important dimensions or axes that together describe the nature of social-ecological interactions (e.g., variability, diversity, modularity, slow variables, feedbacks, capital, innovation, redundancy, and ecosystem services). There is no absolute measure of resilience, so our design takes advantage of comparisons across watersheds and therefore focuses on relative resilience. Our approach quantifies and compares the relative resilience across watershed systems and the potential trade-offs among different aspects of the social-ecological system (e.g., among social, economic, and ecological contributions). This approach permits explicit assessment of several types of uncertainty (e.g., self-assigned uncertainty for stakeholders; uncertainty across respondents, watersheds, and subsystems) and subjectivity in perceptions of resilience among key actors and decision-makers and provides an efficient way to develop the mental models that inform stakeholders and stakeholder categories.

Craig R. Allen, Hannah Birgé, David G. Angeler, Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Brian C. Chaffin, Daniel DeCaro, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Lance H. Gunderson

Chapter 16. Theory and Research to Study the Legal and Institutional Foundations of Adaptive Governance

Abstract

Adaptation to major social and ecological changes requires the participation, innovation, social learning, and political deliberation of many stakeholders, doing many different governance activities at different scales. Legal and institutional systems set the ground rules for this governance activity, establishing boundaries and opportunities for widespread innovation and cooperation. However, the enabling conditions for adaptive governance are poorly understood, making it difficult to facilitate. Candidate design principles that describe enabling conditions for adaptive environmental governance are proposed. Research opportunities are outlined to study the effects of these factors in different social-ecological systems and to further refine the principles.

Daniel A. DeCaro, Brian C. Chaffin, Edella Schlager, Ahjond S. Garmestani, J. B. Ruhl

Chapter 17. Theory and Research to Study Principles of Social Cognition and Decision-Making in Adaptive Environmental Governance

Abstract

Environmental governance systems must adapt to address increased uncertainty and new social-ecological conditions posed by stressors like climate change. This chapter presents several principles of social cognition and decision-making that influence adaptive governance. The principles are illustrated with examples from six US river basins. Future research opportunities are also outlined.

Daniel A. DeCaro, Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, Ahjond S. Garmestani

Summary and Conclusions

Frontmatter

Chapter 18. Adaptive Water Governance: Summary and Synthesis

Abstract

The Adaptive Water Governance project was set up to examine how law, policy, and ecological dynamics influence the governance of regional-scale water-based social-ecological systems in the United States and Australia. With the onset of the Anthropocene, global and regional changes in biophysical inputs to these systems will challenge their capacity to respond while maintaining functions of water supply, flood control, hydropower production, water quality, and biodiversity in a time of aging infrastructure. At the heart of the capacity of these systems to respond to these challenges is their governance. Governance of these complex and dynamic social-environmental systems has moved beyond state-centric, legally bounded control to a complex mix of public/private self-organization. The resilience assessments of case studies and integrative scholarship led to this synthesis, which is presented in the form of three challenges to adaptive water governance. The first is to consider the role of government in removing barriers to adaptive governance by facilitating actions that take advantage of windows of opportunity and institutionalize the results of innovative solutions. The second challenge is to assure that in embracing these new approaches, society must continue to evaluates trade-offs. Such governance should assure that engagement of private and economic actors and the increase in governmental flexibility do not destabilize nor come at the expense of legitimacy, accountability, equity, and justice. Law in its role of establishing the structure and process of government and in placing bounds on the interaction of governmental entities with private actors is a key component in striking the balance between stability in government and adaptability of governance. The third challenge is to identify whether government might be given the authority to facilitate and participate in adaptive governance. Meeting these challenges will increase the capacity of these social-ecological systems to innovate, adapt, and learn their way into an uncertain future, by increasing participation in adaptive governance in ways that are legitimate, transparent, and just.

Barbara Cosens, Lance H. Gunderson

Titel: Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance
herausgegeben von: Barbara Cosens
Lance Gunderson
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-72472-0
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72470-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72472-0