The Arizona Water for All program works with Arizona’s most water-insecure households and communities to improve water security and engagement in water decision-making using community-based participatory approaches. To achieve water security, Arizona Water for All is working to promote empowerment and participation in community water decision-making, deploy proven water security solutions such as fit-to-purpose technologies and advance measurement and monitoring of household water insecurity.
Arizona Water for All unites community engagement with household water monitoring and building necessary water infrastructure in communities across the state. This program is providing opportunities for ASU social scientists to leverage location by doing use-inspired research and building community partnerships to transform society. This program is advancing ASU’s social embeddedness and measurably advancing water security in Arizona’s most water-insecure households and communities, while also enhancing Arizona’s reputation for strong and successful stewardship under climate change.
The Arizona Water for All team originally formed with the goal of finding innovative ways to advance water security in communities along the US-Mexico border. Working across engineering, data science, anthropology, economics and law and policy, the Arizona Water for All initiative is converging to form a new field of study and designing innovative approaches to water security. Not only are our academic disciplines converging, but we have created new methods to intersect with communities as co-researchers and partners.
Our work asks the innovative question: how can we, as scientists, build trust and converge with water-insecure communities around solutions?
Retrieved from: https://azwaterinnovation.asu.edu/pillars/arizona-water-all
Resolving environmental and social challenges like water sustainability requires participatory governance. This argument has been posed by scientists whose research suggests that public participation can both secure democracy and contribute to more sustainable use, allocation, and distribution of water. Participatory forums?spaces where state- and non-state actors come together to discuss public issues?are powerful governance platforms for negotiating societal change and can support positive environmental policy outcomes. Bureaucrats are key actors in participatory forums, and their unique position at the intersection of government and civil society means that their work often involves translating the ideas of others into policy. However, when governments decide to involve non-governmental actors in public decision-making, new and unexpected challenges emerge that can undermine the intended goals of public participation. This doctoral dissertation project uses tools for social network analysis and models of organizational fatigue to advance the theory and practice of participatory modes of natural resources governance by developing a better understanding of why and how frontline water managers?natural resource bureaucrats who make decisions about water? experience and navigate participation fatigue, intensified frustration and overwhelm that sometimes accompanies participatory water governance. The findings of this project will be disseminated to research participants and diverse governmental and non-governmental organizations involved in designing and implementing participatory water governance.
The overarching goal of this project is to understand how bureaucrats understand participation fatigue within the context of participatory water governance (PWG) and why they experience it the way that do using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies that
progresses from an exploratory (Phase I) to a confirmatory (Phase II) phase of data collection and analysis. These methods include active participant observation, semi-structured interviews, social network analysis and cultural consensus analysis. Because participation is a key challenge that government actors face when implementing participatory water management, developing a more formative understanding of this phenomenon can inform the design of participatory governance spaces that mitigate fatigue and lead to better water policy outcomes. The findings of this work hold global significance as participatory water governance models become an increasingly popular strategy among nations interested in addressing emerging environmental challenges.
Retrieved from: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2214135&HistoricalAwards=false
Six highly motivated doctoral-degree students began working collaboratively in fall 2017 within this interdisciplinary team of student Fellows and their faculty advisors. The focus project takes a comprehensive systems approach to analysis of interbasin transfer of surface water into the Tempisque River watershed in Costa Rica. This water transfer has altered hydrology, land use, economic structure, and health of the downstream Palo Verde wetland in the Tempisque watershed.
The student’s dissertation research will collectively contribute to identifying strategies to achieve watershed resilience by addressing hydrology, ecology and climate as well as social, cultural and legal aspects of the system. Examples of individual research questions include:
What are key factors determining resilience of the watershed?, How do climate fluctuations affect watershed resilience?, How should ecological health be included in determining watershed resilience?, What policies (restrictions and incentives) can be put in place to induce watershed resilience?, How do political, social, cultural and legal contexts influence the policy framework for inducing watershed resilience?, How should a watershed be comprehensively assessed to determine its resilience and hidden trade-offs?
Outcomes: Up to date, the 2017 WIGF Cohort has obtained over $5 M in external funding via collective and individual research and travel grants.The cohort has established a strong working relationship with the Ramsar Regional Center for Training and Research for the Western Hemisphere (CREHO) headquartered in Panama. As a result in 2020 a collaborative agreement was signed between UF and CREHO. Four international webinars were co-sponsored between the Water Institute, UF Levin College of Law, UF Center for Latin American Studies, Florida Sea Grant, CREHO, and nine governmental and non-governmental institutions of Costa Rica and Panama. In response to a request from park managers and decision makers, a workshop to present the highlights of the cohort’s research and explore future collaborations was held in May 2021.
Retrieved from: https://waterinstitute.ufl.edu/education/wigf/2017-cohort/