CAREER: Analyzing the Impact of Collaborative Processes on the Performance of Large-Scale Polycentric Environmental Governance Systems

通过加强协作，可以改善复杂环境治理的绩效。该研究小组分析了过去20年来在一个日益受到威胁的流域——科罗拉多河流域（CRB）实施的协作水治理努力的全系统影响。CRB位于美国西部和墨西哥北部，由于历史上的水资源过度分配和气候变化导致的持续干旱，它面临着可持续性挑战。对水的需求现在经常超过可用的供应，对依赖科罗拉多河的人民、经济和环境造成负面影响。尽管近几十年来，CRB的政策制定变得更加具有参与性，但要解决这一不断演变的可持续性危机的根源，需要流域不同利益相关者共同治理科罗拉多河的方式进行更深层次的转变。通过对过去和正在进行的合作水治理过程的评估和比较，本研究为改善CRB的治理提供了及时的经验教训，这些经验教训也可转移到面临资源稀缺挑战的其他复杂社会环境系统中。此外，该项目还吸引了一支多元化的学生团队参与跨学科政策研究，并为决策者、水管理专业人员和更广泛的社区提供宣传和教育活动。通过制定协同研究和教育计划，该CAREER项目解决了环境治理中两个核心概念：多中心和协作之间的知识鸿沟。以多个半自治的决策权力中心为特征的多中心安排被认为非常适合治理复杂的社会环境系统，部分原因是它们支持可与当地条件相匹配的多样化、适应性强的机构。然而，多中心系统在系统级别执行或实现预期目标的能力经常受到不同规模治理中涉及的众多参与者和实体之间缺乏协调的挑战。在过去的30年里，协作治理过程在环境政策领域几乎无处不在，通过让不同的政策参与者参与共识导向的审议和围绕共同问题的决策，可能有助于解决其中的一些协调问题。虽然是直观的，但关于协作治理过程对多中心系统性能的更广泛影响的经验证据缺乏。在博弈论生态学的指导下，本项目整合了政策文件的纵向内容分析、精英访谈和政策参与者的大规模调查，以模拟和评估2000年至今各种协作过程如何影响科罗拉多河流域多中心水治理系统的结构（即参与者和论坛之间的联系）和功能（即合作、学习和资源分配）。解决该流域不断变化的可持续性挑战需要加强分散实体之间的合作，这些实体通过错综复杂的联邦、州、地方和部落机构来管理该流域的水资源。比较不同的协作过程对流域规模治理的影响，以及与不断变化的社会和环境条件的关系，为解决全球复杂的环境治理挑战提供了新的实践和理论见解。该项目由决策、风险和管理科学项目和促进竞争研究的既定项目（EPSCoR）共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The performance of complex environmental governance can improve through enhanced collaboration. The research team analyzes the system-wide impacts of collaborative water governance efforts that have been implemented over the past 2 decades in an increasingly-threatened watershed: the Colorado River Basin (CRB). Located in the western United States and northern Mexico, the CRB faces sustainability challenges due to both historical water over-allocation and continued aridification from climate change. Demands for water now regularly exceed available supplies, creating negative impacts for the people, economies, and environments that depend on the Colorado River. Although policy making in the CRB has become more participatory in recent decades, addressing the roots of this evolving sustainability crisis requires a deeper transformation in the way the basin’s diverse stakeholders work together to govern the Colorado River. Through an assessment and comparison of past and on-going collaborative water governance processes, this research provides timely lessons for improving governance of the CRB that are also transferrable to other complex socio-environmental systems facing resource scarcity challenges. Additionally, this project engages a diverse team of students in interdisciplinary policy research and supports outreach and education activities for decision makers, water management professionals, and the broader community.Through the development of a synergistic research and education program, this CAREER project addresses a knowledge gap at the nexus of two core concepts in environmental governance: polycentricity and collaboration. Polycentric arrangements, characterized by multiple semi-autonomous centers of decision-making authority, are assumed to be well-suited to govern complex socio-environmental systems, in part because they support diverse, adaptable institutions that can be matched to local conditions. A polycentric system’s ability to perform, or achieve desired goals at the system level, however, is often challenged by insufficient coordination among the numerous actors and entities involved at different scales of governance. Collaborative governance processes, which have become nearly ubiquitous in the environmental policy domain over the last 30 years, may help to solve some of these coordination problems by engaging diverse policy actors in consensus-oriented deliberation and decision making around shared problems. Though intuitive, there is a paucity of empirical evidence about the broader impacts of collaborative governance processes on the performance of polycentric systems. Guided by the Ecology of Games Theory, this project integrates longitudinal content analysis of policy documents, elite interviews, and large-n surveys of policy actors to model and assess how various collaborative processes have impacted the structure (i.e. connections among actors and forums) and function (i.e. cooperation, learning, and resource distribution) of the Colorado River Basin’s polycentric water governance system from 2000 to the present. Addressing the evolving sustainability challenges in this basin requires enhanced collaboration among the fragmented entities that govern its water through an intricate set of interlocking federal, state, local, and tribal institutions. Comparing the impacts of different collaborative processes on basin-scale governance over time and in relation to changing social and environmental conditions provides new practical and theoretical insight into approaches for solving complex environmental governance challenges across the globe.This project is jointly funded by the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.