Can local governmental collaborations mitigate water quality degradation?

Keywords: watersheds, collaborative governance, water resource management
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 68

Abstract

Collaborative governance has been touted as a means to tackle water resource conflicts by creating an opportunity for actors to work towards mutually acceptable or win-win outcomes. While collaborative approaches have been attempted in some situations around water quality degradation, there is relatively limited insights on whether the lessons learned in other water or natural resource conflicts apply. One of the major difficulties in water-based challenges is upstream-downstream asymmetry, where upstream actors often have far greater power to dictate terms than downstream actors. In the United States, a prevalent outcome of this dynamic in Corn Belt has been the degradation of water quality from fertilizer loss from agriculture; where water discharge is not regulated. However, the state of Iowa created anthe opportunity for local governments to form watershed management authorities based on watershed boundaries. While there is substantial evidence that simply shifting jurisdictional boundaries to watersheds does little to change existing power dynamics, the opportunity for local governments to exercise existing legal authority offers the potential for local actors to make binding commitments and allocate financial resources towards new agreements they could enter into. This paper studies four Iowa watershed management authorities, conducting semi-structured interviews (n=61) with board members to identify their motivations for engaging in collaborations. Findings are mixed. In two cases, watershed management authorities used their legal authority for forming agreements, but in all four cases the organizations mostly avoided water quality as too politically charged.