Using social criteria to select watersheds for non-point source agricultural pollution abatement projects

Babin, Nicholas; Mullendore, Nathan D.; Prokopy, Linda Stalker

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.06.021

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The patchwork approach can be implemented, and the patchwork stitched together, through small local stewardship actions to bring people together in novel constellations. Collaboration can in fact "emerge" from such small-scale collective actions (Church andProkopy 2017, Patterson 2017), even if the social preconditions or enablers of collaboration do not exist in the first place (Babin et al 2016). Practitioners facilitating collaboration in multistakeholder, multiple-objective, contested landscapes should simultaneously support bottom-up collective action while developing mechanisms to support collaborative stewardship at the higher landscape level (Minang et al 2014b).…”

Section: Contested Landscapes Call For Patchwork Of Collaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: toward relational, pluralistic approaches

Cockburn¹,

Cundill²,

Shackleton³

et al. 2019

E&S

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Landscape stewardship offers a means to put social-ecological approaches to stewardship into practice. The growing interest in landscape stewardship has led to a focus on multistakeholder collaboration. Although there is a significant body of literature on collaborative management and governance of natural resources, the particular challenges posed by multifunctional landscapes, in which there are often contested interests, require closer attention. We present a case study from South Africa to investigate how collaborative stewardship can be fostered in contested multifunctional landscapes. We conducted this research through an engaged transdisciplinary research partnership in which we integrated social-ecological practitioner and academic knowledge to gain an indepth understanding of the challenges of fostering collaboration. We identified five overarching factors that influence collaboration: contextual, institutional, social-relational, individual, and political-historical. Collaborative stewardship approaches focused on the development of formal governance institutions appear to be most successful if enabling individual and social-relational conditions are in place. Our case study, characterized by high social diversity, inequity, and contestation, suggests that consensus-driven approaches to collaboration are unlikely to result in equitable and sustainable landscape stewardship in such contexts. We therefore suggest an approach that focuses on enhancing individual and social-relational enablers. Moreover, we propose a bottom-up patchwork approach to collaborative stewardship premised on the notion of pluralism. This would focus on building new interpersonal relationships and collaborative capacity through small collective actions. Taking a relational, pluralistic approach to fostering collaborative stewardship is particularly important in contested, socially heterogeneous landscapes. Drawing on our study and the literature, we propose guiding principles for implementing relational, pluralistic approaches to collaborative stewardship and suggest future research directions for supporting such approaches.

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Section: Contested Landscapes Call For Patchwork Of Collaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: toward relational, pluralistic approaches

Cockburn¹,

Cundill²,

Shackleton³

et al. 2019

E&S

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“…The Beargrass Creek Watershed was selected in part because it met key social criteria (e.g., funding availability, funded watershed group with paid staff, project interest, problem salience, and stakeholder collaboration and trust). Research had shown that such social criteria can contribute to eventual watershed project success (Babin et al 2016; Church and Prokopy 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Beargrass Story: Utilizing Social Science to Evaluate and Learn from the “Watershed Approach”

Church

Babin

Bentlage³

et al. 2019

Contemporary Water Research

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This paper presents the case of a voluntary watershed project that addressed the need for improving water quality by reducing agricultural nutrient loss. The Beargrass Creek Watershed Approach Project in Wabash County, Indiana aimed to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve ambitious water quality goals and maximize the effectiveness of conservation funding through locally‐led efforts that bring together multiple stakeholders throughout the process. The project focused on implementing the “right practices” in the “right places” through a goal‐oriented, science‐based, and locally‐adapted approach to voluntary conservation. We examine and evaluate all three phases of the project and discuss successes and lessons learned from the point of view of both agricultural producers and agency staff from the local Soil and Water Conservation District and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

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“…Our selection of the HUC-12 scale is in part an effort to bridge the fieldlevel focus of traditional conservation efforts with the community and regional scales (HUC-8 and above) at which drinking water impairments and downstream eutrophication must be solved. Research suggests that the HUC-12 scale is typical of the scale of rural social networks (Babin et al 2016). When landowners and operators know each other as neighbors, support for collective action to address water quality problems can become an issue of community pride (Magner 2011).…”

Section: Right Practice Right Place: Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, we caution that using the tools effectively to guide water quality improvement efforts requires equal attention to the history and culture of the watershed and to prevailing attitudes and beliefs about water quality and the role of conservation. For example, Babin et al (2016) describe the importance of understanding the social capacity of a watershed to undertake water quality improvement efforts, and Reimer et al (2012) describe how perception of various conservation practices influences practice adoption. Thus, some level of socioeconomic understanding is key to successful use of the RPRP Toolbox and becomes increasingly important moving from regional to local scales.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Right practice, right place: A conservation planning toolbox for meeting water quality goals in the Corn Belt

McLellan

Schilling²,

Wolter³

et al. 2018

Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

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Using social criteria to select watersheds for non-point source agricultural pollution abatement projects

Cited by 21 publications

References 36 publications

Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: toward relational, pluralistic approaches

Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: toward relational, pluralistic approaches

The Beargrass Story: Utilizing Social Science to Evaluate and Learn from the “Watershed Approach”

Right practice, right place: A conservation planning toolbox for meeting water quality goals in the Corn Belt

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