Federal rivers: a critical overview of water governance challenges in federal systems

Garrick, Dustin; Anderson, George R.M.; Connell, Daniel; Pittock, Jamie

doi:10.4337/9781781955055.00010

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Insights on the formation and actual performance of cooperation on the level of subnational governments are still sparse (Garrick et al 2014;Schlager et al 2012; for examples, see Moore 2017Moore , 2018Schlager and Heikkila 2009;Schertzer et al 2018;De Stefano and Garrick 2018). Existing studies assessing horizontal cooperation between subnational governments or other regional and local authorities consider mostly cultural factors (Bowman 2004;Wallner 2017;Bochsler 2009), dynamics of common beliefs and preferences (Deslatte and Feiock 2018;Song, Park, and Jung 2018), administrative capacities (Hawkins et al 2018), or institutional incentive structures (Bolleyer 2018) as drivers for cooperation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Policy-Specific Factors Influence Horizontal Cooperation among Subnational Governments: Evidence from the Swiss Water Sector

Fischer

Jager

2020

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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Horizontal cooperation among political systems is crucial for addressing large-scale and boundary-crossing policy problems. This article introduces and analyzes policy-specific factors that help to explain horizontal cooperation among subnational-governments. It thereby builds on but specifies arguments from the literature on horizontal federalism that has usually been focusing on general institutional and societal factors to explain cooperation. These factors capture how a given policy problem unfolds (problem pressure), the ways in which subnational governments are exposed to and experience its consequences in similar or unequal ways (functional interdependencies and their symmetry), and how the issues are treated domestically (problem awareness). We illustrate the potential importance of these factors by analyzing treaties among Swiss substates in the water domain and relying on network analytic methods. We find that problem awareness and functional interdependencies and their (a)symmetries are important, whereas problem pressure has a mixed influence, depending on the issue area.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Policy-Specific Factors Influence Horizontal Cooperation among Subnational Governments: Evidence from the Swiss Water Sector

Fischer

Jager

2020

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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“…While gathering less scholarly attention than international cooperation, cooperation among substates is a central component of the governance of federal systems in general and environmental governance in particular (De Stefano & Garrick, 2018;Garrick et al, 2014;Moore, 2017Moore, , 2018Schlager et al, 2012;Schlager & Heikkila, 2009). Substates often rely on different institutions to codify their cooperation, ranging from sporadic contacts to regular meetings or formal routines and statutes (Bolleyer, 2006).…”

Section: Paths Of Intergovernmental Cooperation In Federal Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we extend the literature on intergovernmental cooperation in federal systems (Bolleyer, 2006;Bowman, 2004;Garrick et al, 2014;Woods & Bowman, 2018) in two dimensions. We investigate our system over time, considering cooperation as a long-term, open-ended process where previous choices impact future cooperation activities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design paths of federal intergovernmental cooperation

Montfort

Fischer

Hollway

et al. 2023

Policy Studies Journal

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Actors rarely approach institutional design choices with a blank slate but are influenced by design choices made at earlier stages. How does institutional design evolve over time and are there specific paths to deepening cooperation? We investigate the institutional design paths of subnational cooperation that are chosen to address increasingly complex and interconnected policy problems. We theorize that besides the substantive problem, earlier choices matter to explain what institutional design mechanism is chosen; that is, the design of existing institutions between two subnational governance units, called substates, influences the design of subsequent institutions. Using a semi‐parametric Cox proportional hazards model, we show that the design paths of subnational cooperation in the Swiss water governance sector correlate with earlier design choices. Our results indicate that not all cooperation is self‐reinforcing and path‐dependent, but they show which specific design choices are more likely to follow each other in repeated formal federal intergovernmental cooperation.

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“…As well as the economic importance and the associated social values of large river basins, these systems are critical habitat for freshwater biodiversity. Rivers, lakes, and other 'wetlands' occupy just 0.8 percent of the Earth's surface but support 6 percent of all described species including 35 percent of all vertebrates [23], especially fish. Large rivers with higher flow volumes tend to support more fish species, and tropical rivers tend to have higher levels of species richness.…”

Section: Large River Basins-character and Importancementioning

confidence: 99%

Disruptive Technologies for Improving Water Security in Large River Basins

Harshadeep

Young

2020

Water

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Large river basins present significant challenges for water resource planning and management. They typically traverse a wide range of hydroclimatic regimes, are characterized by complex and variable hydrology, and span multiple jurisdictions with diverse water demands and values. They are often data-poor and in many developing economies are characterized by weak water governance. Rapid global change is seeing significant changes to the pressures on the water resources of large basins, exacerbating the challenge of sustainable water management. Diverse technologies have long supported water resource planning and development, from data collection, analytics, simulation, to decision-making, and real-time operations. In the last two decades however, a rapid increase in the range, capability, and accessibility of new technologies, coupled with large reductions in cost, mean there are increasing opportunities for emerging technologies to significantly “disrupt” traditional approaches to water resources management. In this paper, we consider the application of ‘disruptive technologies’ in water resources management in large river basins, through a lens of improving water security. We discuss the role of different actors and institutions for water management considering a range of emerging disruptive technologies. We consider the risks and benefits associated with the use of these technologies and discuss the barriers to their widespread adoption. We obverse a positive trend away from the reliance solely on centralized government institutions and traditional modeling for the collection and analysis of data, towards a more open and dynamic ‘data and knowledge ecosystem’ that draws upon data services at different levels (global to local) to support water planning and operations. We expect that technological advances and cost reductions will accelerate, fueling increased incremental adoption of new technologies in water resources planning and management. Large-basin analytics could become virtually free for users with global, regional, and national development agencies absorbing the costs of development and any subscription services for end users (e.g., irrigators) to help improve water management at user level and improve economic productivity. Collectively, these changes can help to ‘democratize’ water management through improved access to data and information. However, disruptive technologies can also be deployed in top-down or centralized processes, and so their use is sometimes contested or misunderstood. Increased attention therefore needs to be given to ensuring equity in technology access, and to strengthening the governance context for technology deployment. Widespread adoption of disruptive technologies will require adjustments to how water professionals are trained, increased adaptiveness in water resources planning and operations, and careful consideration of privacy and cybersecurity issues.

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Federal rivers: a critical overview of water governance challenges in federal systems

Cited by 6 publications

References 9 publications

How Policy-Specific Factors Influence Horizontal Cooperation among Subnational Governments: Evidence from the Swiss Water Sector

How Policy-Specific Factors Influence Horizontal Cooperation among Subnational Governments: Evidence from the Swiss Water Sector

Design paths of federal intergovernmental cooperation

Disruptive Technologies for Improving Water Security in Large River Basins

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