Modelling to bridge many boundaries: the Colorado and Murray-Darling River basins

Abstract

Increasing pressure on shared water resources has often been a driver for the development and utilisation of water resource models (WRMs) to inform planning and management decisions. With an increasing emphasis on regional decision-making among competing actors as opposed to top-down and authoritative directives, the need for integrated knowledge and water diplomacy efforts across federal and international rivers provides a test bed for the ability of WRMs to operate within complex historical, social, environmental, institutional and political contexts. This paper draws on theories of sustainability science to examine the role of WRMs to inform transboundary water resource governance in large river basins. We survey designers and users of WRMs in the Colorado River Basin in North America and the Murray-Darling Basin in southeastern Australia. Water governance in such federal rivers challenges inter-governmental and multi-level coordination and we explore these dynamics through the application of WRMs. The development pathways of WRMs are found to influence their uptake and acceptance as decision support tools. Furthermore, we find evidence that WRMs are used as boundary objects and perform the functions of 'boundary work' between scientists, decision-makers and stakeholders in the midst of regional environmental changes.

The Water Governance Reform Framework: Overview and Applications to Australia, Mexico, Tanzania, U.S.A and Vietnam

“…(2) Transparency Long-term planning and operational decision-making are guided by the Colorado River Simulation System (CRSS), a river system model that requires explicit and transparent assumptions regarding water availability, water deliveries and allocation rules [108,109]. The 2010-2012 Colorado River Basin Study used CRSS to engage stakeholders and establish a common language to navigate trade-offs associated with intensifying scarcity and shortage risks.…”

“…The reliance on CRSS for stakeholder engagement and water planning involves both strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, the federal agency managing the reservoirs in the basin note that, as a result of the modeling system, 'transparency facilitated stakeholders being on relatively equal ground, rather than [certain parties] having an advantage' [108]. At the same time, the barriers to entry are substantial, which involves a steep learning curve that has required the capacity for building for historically marginalized groups, including environmental and indigenous stakeholders.…”

Governing water in federal river basins

“…First, information and knowledge sharing create platforms for coordination and conflict resolution. Based on the experience of the Colorado and the Murray Darling basins, Wheeler et al (2018) observe that water resources models in federal governance structures act as 'boundary objects' to enable the sharing of knowledge across multiple state and national governments, stakeholder interests and disciplinary perspectives to support river basin planning. They conclude their analysis by pointing out the importance of including stakeholder knowledge in the development of the models and of ensuring transparency in how models are built and run in order to gain acceptance and relevance in participatory decision making.…”

“…All the papers focus on institutional mechanisms, governance arrangements and policy tools that are in place to manage decision-making processes in a context of distributed authority and institutional overlaps. Some articles analyse water governance arrangements through comparison, examining multiple countries or river basins in order to detect common trends and lessons learned from different settings (Benson 2018; De Stefano and Hernandez-Mora 2018; Garrick et al 2018;Heinmiller 2018;Muller 2018;Wheeler et al 2018). Several papers emphasise the importance of observing institutional arrangements over time (Chokkakula 2018;De Stefano and Hernandez-Mora 2018;Empinotti et al 2018;Garrick et al 2018), as decentralisation and intergovernmental relationships are constantly evolving to adapt to changing societies and power dynamics.…”

Exploring Cooperative Transboundary River Management Strategies for the Eastern Nile Basin

“…Alternatively, hydropolicy simulation models are designed to accurately reflect reservoir operations and provide transparency of the data and algorithms used to enhance their legitimacy among policy makers and stakeholders. A defining characteristic of these models is their ability to simulate essentially any management policy that can be envisioned, allowing alternative management rules to be tested and readily implemented into practice (Wheeler et al, ).…”