Use of Science in Collaborative Environmental Management: Evidence from Local Watershed Partnerships in the Puget Sound

The science-policy nexus has long puzzled scholars and managers working across diverse public policy areas, including environment. The rise of science-based management, especially in an era of big data, assumes science can improve environmental policy. At the same time, increasing attention to stakeholder engagement provides avenues for non-scientists to participate in collaborative environmental management, which might displace science in decision-making processes. Prior research points to a variety of factors thought to affect the degree to which science is used in collaborative partnerships. Drawing on such research, we examine the use of science across 9 collaborative partnerships structured and resourced from the top-down by a state government agency. All of these partnerships are working in the U.S.’s second largest estuary, the Puget Sound in Washington State. Data from partnership meeting minutes indicates that science is scarcely discussed in executive committee meetings, but is more commonly discussed in technical committee meetings. We thus might expect that the ecosystem management plans produced by these technical committees would be closely informed by science. Results indicate these plans include few citations to peer-reviewed scientific studies, but they do draw consistently on scientific information from grey literature including scientific and technical reports from federal and state agencies. These results raise important questions about government efforts to foster the use of science in collaborative partnerships, including the benefits and drawbacks of using grey literature rather than scientific articles directly, the interaction of science with other forms of knowledge, and local actors’ capacity to understand and access science.

Collaboration as process: a case study of Michigan's watershed permit

Collaborative watershed management has been heavily promoted and widely implemented to address a variety of natural resource concerns, resulting in the adoption and adaptation of the approach to management by regulatory agencies. Although several characteristics or indicators of success for watershed partnerships have been identified in the literature, these often portray a direct cause and effect relationship between partnership characteristics and outcomes. However, partnerships involve dynamic processes that can be influenced by both form and function (internally and externally) throughout various stages of the partnerships' existence. Our study presents an evaluation framework from the group process and evaluation literature to highlight the importance of evaluating ‘intermediate measures of partnership effectiveness’ in watershed partnerships, using the case of Michigan's voluntary watershed-based stormwater permit. Given the increasing use of watershed partnerships in a regulatory setting that is constantly in flux and the difficulty in assessing the effects of such groups on water quality, results suggest the utility of ‘intermediate measures of partnership effectiveness’ for assessing partnership process in order to provide ongoing feedback and incentives to ensure long-term success.

Understanding perceptions of successful cooperation on water quality issues: A comparison across six western U.S. interstate watersheds

Water in the western United States sustains multiple purposes despite being over-allocated, over-used, and o en quality-impaired. Interstate river watersheds, where rivers pass through jurisdictional boundaries of two or more states, face particular management challenges to facilitate cooperation across multiple state and local jurisdictional boundaries. This paper focuses on mechanisms of cooperation used to manage water quality across western interstate watersheds. A range of cooperative mechanisms were examined, from meetings to watershed management and creation of memoranda of understanding. To understand different stakeholders' perceptions of successful cooperation, fortyeight watershed professionals were surveyed across six study areas. Ordinal logistic regression analysis indicated that survey respondents perceived watershed organizations, watershed partnerships, and meetings as the most successful cooperative activities for addressing water quality issues. This paper discusses the relationships between mechanisms of cooperation and additional variables examined in the study, and offers insights into regional cooperation and social cohesion over shared environmental resources. Spanish En el oeste de los Estados Unidos, el agua tiene varios usos a pesar de su sobreasignación, sobreuso/explotación, y el frecuente deterioro de su calidad. Las “cuencas interestatales“ de esta región, referidas a aquellos ríos que cruzan dos o más estados, enfrentan desafíos particulares para la cooperación a través de múltiples fronteras estatales y jurisdicciones locales. Este artículo se enfoca en los mecanismos de cooperación para manejar la calidad del agua en estas cuencas. Se examinan reuniones de trabajo, consejos/manejo de cuencas, y la creación de memorandums de entendimiento. Para comprender las percepciones de cooperación exitosa, se entrevistaron a 48 profesionales de cuencas hidrográ ficas a través de seis áreas de estudio. Los entrevistados perciben los organismos/asociaciones de cuencas hidrográ ficas y sus respectivas reuniones, como las actividades de cooperación más exitosas para abordar las cuestiones de calidad del agua. El artículo analiza las relaciones entre los mecanismos de cooperación y otras variables, y ofrece una visión sobre la cooperación regional y la cohesión social sobre los recursos ambientales compartidos. French En dépit d'une eau souvent de mauvaise qualité et soumise à une surexploitation et une surutilisation, ce e ressource remplit de nombreuses missions dans l'Ouest des États Unis. Les bassins hydrographiques interétatiques (où les fleuves traversent les frontières juridictionnelles de deux États ou plus) rencontrent des problèmes de gestion particuliers, dont le dé fiest surtout de faciliter la coopération interétatique et les frontières juridictionnelles locales. Cet article met l'accent sur les mécanismes de coopération mis en place dans la gestion de la qualité de l'eau des bassins interétatiques de l'Ouest du pays. Un éventail de mécanismes de coopération a été examiné, allant de réunions à la gestion de bassins et la création de mémorandums d'entente. A fin de comprendre la perception d'une coopération réussie des différents acteurs, quarante-huit professionnels des bassins hydrographiques ont participé à une étude sur six cas. L'analyse de la régression logistique ordinale a révélé que les participants percevaient les organisations des bassins, les partenariats de bassins et les réunions comme les activités de coopération les plus réussies pour aborder les questions de qualité de l'eau. Cet article examine les liens entre les mécanismes de coopération et les variables additionnelles examinées dans ce e étude, et propose un aperçu de la coopération régionale et de la cohésion sociale concernant le partage de ressources environnementales.