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Abstract Collaborative governance has emerged as a promising approach for addressing complex water sustainability issues, with purported benefits from enhanced democracy to improved environmental outcomes. Collaborative processes are often assumed to be inherently more equitable than traditional governance approaches due to their goal of engaging diverse actors in the development of policy and management solutions. However, when collaborative water governance processes ignore issues of politics and power in their design, they risk creating or even exacerbating existing inequities. How, then, can collaborative water governance processes be designed to enhance, rather than undermine, equity? To answer this question, we first conduct an extensive review of the collaborative governance literature to identify common design features of collaborative processes, which each present potential benefits and challenges for actualizing equitable collaborative water governance. After critically discussing these design features, we explore how they are executed through two case studies of collaborative water governance in western North America: groundwater governance reform in California and transnational Colorado River Delta governance. In reflecting on these cases, we chart an agenda for future collaborative water governance research and practice that moves beyond engaging diverse actors to promoting equity among them. This article is categorized under:Human Water > Water GovernanceScience of Water > Water and Environmental ChangeEngineering Water > Planning Water
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Arctic Sea Ice Decline and Geoengineering Solutions: Cascading Security and Ethical Considerations.
Climate change is generating sufficient risk for nation‐states and citizens throughout the Arctic to warrant potentially radical geoengineering solutions. Currently, geoengineering solutions such as surface albedo modification or aerosol deployment are in the early stages of testing and development. Due to the scale of deployments necessary to enact change, and their preliminary nature, these methods are likely to result in unforeseen consequences. These consequences may range in severity from local ecosystem impacts to large scale changes in available solar energy. The Arctic is an area that is experiencing rapid change, increased development, and exploratory interest, and proposed solutions have the potential to produce new risks to both natural and human systems. This article examines potential security and ethical considerations of geoengineering solutions in the Arctic from the perspectives of securitization, consequentialism, and risk governance ap‐ proaches, and argues that proactive and preemptive frameworks at the international level, and es‐ pecially the application of risk governance approaches, will be needed to prevent or limit negative consequences resulting from geoengineering efforts. Utilizing the unique structures already present in Arctic governance provides novel options for addressing these concerns from both the perspec‐ tive of inclusive governance and through advancing the understanding of uncertainty analysis and precautionary principles.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1749081
- PAR ID:
- 10389262
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Challenges
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2568-4019
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 22
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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