Title: Political Pitfalls of Integrated Watershed Management
Abstract: ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Integrated watershed management, preferably under the direction of a watershed or basin management body, has been prescribed in the water policy literature and from other quarters for decades. Few instances may be found where this recommendation has been implemented. This gap between prescription and practice is sometimes attributed to politics, as a sort of nuisance to be overcome or avoided through rational, comprehensive, consensus-based decision making. Fundamental political considerations are inherent in water resources management, however, and are unavoidable even if the desire for watershed-scale decision-making bodies were realized. Boundary definition, choices about decision-making arrangements, and issues of accountability will arise in any watershed and may help to explain why watershed management has more often taken polycentric organizational forms composed of subwatershed communities of interest. An example of a small Southern California watershed is used to highlight the political issues inherent in attempts at watershed management. Keywords: consensus decision makingintegrated water resources managementpolitical decision makingwatershed managementwatershed organizations Acknowledgments The authors are very grateful to colleagues who critiqued earlier versions of this article at conferences—Sally Fairfax, Helen Ingram, and Tomas Koontz—and to the four anonymous reviewers for this journal, who made several constructive recommendations that improved it. Notes As Rabe (1996 Rabe , B. G. 1996 An empirical examination of innovations in integrated environmental management: Experience in the Great Lakes Basin . Public Admin. Rev. 56 : 372 – 381 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 374) states: "A growing scholarly literature reveals countless failures and offers repeated lamentations but yields little insight as to how policy might best be modified to increase administrative efficiency and foster greater outcomes effectiveness." Different policy literatures suggest different explanations of this gap. Explanations grounded in public administration theory would attribute the problems to bureaucratic pathologies such as inertia and turf protection. Interest group theory suggests that business and environmental advocacy groups are too invested in existing practices to risk the uncertainties of adopting alternative management regimes, and will therefore undermine change. An alternative explanation for the lack of watershed authorities would be "path dependency." Fragmented property rights systems and regulatory regimes that developed over long periods cannot be transformed easily, leaving a plethora of institutional barriers to integrated management. The institutional status quo may indeed present obstacles to integration, but even if policy makers began with a clean slate, integration would be difficult because of choices that must be made concerning boundary conditions (who should participate), decision making arrangements (how participation should be structured), and accountability (how and to whom decision makers within a watershed are answerable). Nakamura and Born (1993 Nakamura , L. and S. M. Born . 1993 Substate institutional innovation for managing lakes and watersheds: A Wisconsin case study . Water Resources Bull . 29 : 807 – 821 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 808) cite two other examples—Florida's Water Management Districts and Nebraska's Natural Resource Conservation Districts—but conclude nonetheless that the creation of such organizations is "a political rare event in the United States." As the notion of matching jurisdictional to natural boundaries is not new, neither is skepticism about it. More than forty years ago, Arthur Maass (1962 Maass , A. 1962 System design and the political process: A general statement In Design of water-resource systems , ed. A. Maass , M. M. Hufschmidt , R. Dorfman , H. A. Thomas , Jr. , S. A. Marglin , and G. M. Fair . 565 – 604 . Cambridge , MA Harvard University Press [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 601) observed: "Some believe that natural or ecologic—we should call them technologic—relationships between water and land resources are sufficiently potent to require that the agency which plans one plan the other." Maass responded with a quote from Charles McKinley: "The concept of an organic unity of nature which compels a single administrative entity for both aspects of resources is only partly true and may be overworked." By contrast, Freemuth (2000 Freemuth , J. 2000 . Science, politics and watersheds: Thoughts on their integration. In Western watersheds: Science, sense, strategies , ed. C. W. Slaughter , 123 – 125 . Riverside , CA : University of California Centers for Water and Wildland Resources . [Google Scholar], 125) provides an observation from Western laureate Wallace Stegner, who "once reminded us: a place is nothing in itself. It has no meaning, it can hardly be said to exist, except in terms of human perception, use and response." This is a significant issue in the study of politics. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Truman (1951 Truman , D. 1951 . The governmental process: Political interests and public opinion. New York : Knopf . [Google Scholar]) and Dahl (1961 Dahl , R. 1961 . Who governs? Democracy and power in an American city . New Haven , CT : Yale University Press [Google Scholar]) argued that the U.S. political system, particularly at the local level, was open and fair—most interests were represented and received a fair hearing. Individuals and interests absent from politics were absent on purpose; they were silent because they were satisfied. This theory of pluralism was subject to a blistering critique (e.g., Parenti 1970 Parenti , M. 1970 Power and pluralism: A view from the bottom In An end to political science , eds. M. Surkin and A. Wolfe , 111 – 143 . New York , Basic Books [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) after many U.S. cities erupted in riots in the 1960s. Bates et al. (1993 Bates , S. D. Getches , L. MacDonnell , and C. Wilkinson . 1993 . Searching out the headwaters: Change and rediscovery in Western water policy. Washington , DC : Island Press . [Google Scholar], 3) describe current Western water policy as "a Gordian knot." It is reasonable to ask whether the meaningful involvement of the interests of every person or group that affects or is affected by a watershed, even those separated by distance and time, combined with a requirement of consensus-based decision making, would cut the Gordian knot or pull it even tighter. It is challenging to imagine a single watershed restoration project that could be adopted and implemented using such an approach, even in a relatively small watershed. Hooghe and Marks (2003 Hooghe , L. and G. Marks . 2003 . Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance . Am. Polit. Sci. Rev . 97 ( 2 ): 233 – 243 .[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have provided a similar but more general discussion (i.e., beyond the water-resource context) of these choices between what they call "Type I" and "Type II" approaches to governance. According to Tarlock (2000 Tarlock , A. D. 2000 . Putting rivers back in the landscape: The revival of watershed management in the United States . Hastings West-Northwest J. Environ. Law Policy 6 : 167 – 195 [Google Scholar], 192), one reason for the growing popularity of informal collaborative processes for addressing watershed problems is that collaboration offers an alternative to the rigidities and limits of governmental management. If integrated watershed management would somehow operate outside the framework of the existing political system, however, accountability issues would become all the more critical. It is uncertain how collaborative nongovernmental efforts relate to the administration of existing environmental laws, and how citizens can challenge decisions made through collaborative efforts (Tarlock, 2000 Tarlock , A. D. 2000 . Putting rivers back in the landscape: The revival of watershed management in the United States . Hastings West-Northwest J. Environ. Law Policy 6 : 167 – 195 [Google Scholar], 195). Wester and Warner (2002 Wester , P. and J. Warner . 2002 . River basin management reconsidered . In Hydropolitics in the developing world: A southern African perspective , ed. A. Turton and R. Henwood , 61 – 71 . Pretoria , South Africa : African Water Issues Research Unit . [Google Scholar], 68) concur: "Serious thought needs to be given to how hard-won democratic rights in conventional social and political domains are [to be] assured in the river basin domain." The description of this case is abridged and updated from Blomquist (1998 Blomquist , W. 1998 . Water security and future development in the San Juan Basin: The role of the San Juan Basin Authority . Fountain Valley , CA : National Water Research Institute . [Google Scholar]). This district, commonly referred to as Metropolitan or MWD, covers nearly all of the Southern California region and provides water from the Colorado River Aqueduct and from Northern California via the State Water Project. In December 1999, improper operation of valves created a pressure surge that blew out a section of pipeline supplying imported water to the upper portion of the San Juan Creek watershed. Replacement of the lost section and restoration of flow through the pipeline took 7 days.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-26
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 310
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