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

通过加强协作，可以提高复杂环境治理的绩效。研究小组分析了过去20年在一个日益受到威胁的分水岭--科罗拉多河流域(CRB)--实施的合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，由于历史上水资源过度分配和气候变化导致的持续干旱，CRB面临可持续发展挑战。现在对水的需求经常超过可用水的供应量，这对依赖科罗拉多河的人民、经济和环境造成了负面影响。尽管近几十年来CRB的政策制定已变得更具参与性，但解决这场不断演变的可持续危机的根源需要该流域的不同利益相关者共同努力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进程的评估和比较，这项研究为改善CRB的治理提供了及时的经验教训，这些经验教训也可以转移到面临资源稀缺挑战的其他复杂的社会环境系统。此外，该项目吸引了不同的学生团队参与跨学科的政策研究，并支持面向决策者、水资源管理专业人员和更广泛社区的外展和教育活动。通过开发协同研究和教育计划，该职业项目解决了环境治理中两个核心概念：多中心和协作--之间的知识差距。以多个半自治决策权力中心为特征的多中心安排被认为非常适合管理复杂的社会环境系统，部分原因是它们支持能够与当地条件相匹配的多样化、适应性强的机构。然而，多中心系统在系统一级执行或实现预期目标的能力往往受到涉及不同治理规模的众多行为者和实体之间协调不足的挑战。协作治理进程在过去30年中在环境政策领域几乎无处不在，通过让不同的政策行为者参与以共识为导向的审议和围绕共同问题的决策，可能有助于解决其中一些协调问题。虽然直观，但缺乏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。在博弈论生态学的指导下，该项目整合了对政策文件的纵向内容分析、精英访谈和对政策参与者的大调查，以建模和评估从2000年到现在各种合作进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)。应对该流域不断演变的可持续性挑战，需要分散的实体之间加强合作，这些实体通过一套错综复杂的联邦、州、地方和部落机构来管理其水资源。比较不同协作过程随时间变化对流域治理的影响以及与不断变化的社会和环境条件有关的影响，为解决全球复杂环境治理挑战的方法提供新的实践和理论见解。该项目由决策、风险和管理科学计划和既定的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.