Browsing by Author "Murtinho, Felipe"

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Governance and Adaptation in Watershed Management
(2008) Murtinho, Felipe
"In the lead essay, Dr. Brunckhorst comments on the importance of implementing new community governance approaches for resource management to deal with environmental degradation. I want to discuss two salient points in his essay, first the importance of a multi-scale approach in environmental governance; and second, the importance of understanding how to build knowledge to increase the adaptive capacity for environmental resources management. I'll use a case study of managing flood risk in a Mexico watershed to deal with these topics."
Insights from the Field for Measuring and Analyzing Adaptation in Common-Pool Resource Management
(2008) Murtinho, Felipe; Hayes, Tanya M.
"This paper will analyze how adaptation has been defined and measured in fieldwork studies of common-pool resource systems. Changing climate, land uses, demographics and markets all highlight how resource managers need to be capable of responding to and appropriately addressing change. In recent years, a growing body of literature on social-ecological systems has assessed adaptation and identified factors that determine a community's adaptive capacity. This is an exciting discussion, particularly given the dynamic conditions in many commons. Nonetheless, in order to fully understand how adaptation can be applied to commonpool resource management, it is imperative that we step back and examine how we identify and assess adaptation in the field. "This paper is an initial intent to examine how scholarly discussions of adaptation in social-ecological systems have been defined, applied, and measured in field studies of common-pool resource management. Our analysis is based upon a literature review of fieldwork studies conducted by geographers, anthropologists, political scientists and others that specifically look at community adaptation processes and outcomes in local common-pool resource systems. In the analysis we compare similarities and differences in how adaptation is defined and measured and discuss the empirical foundations for understanding adaptation. We hope that the findings will point to successful techniques for conducting empirical studies of adaptation, as well as suggest areas where our empirical understanding of adaptation and adaptive capacity might be improved."
Institutional analysis to assess inclusive decision-making in community resource management: A diagnostic review of barriers and interventions in participatory processes.
(2024) Hayes, Tanya M.; Murtinho, Felipe
Scholars and practitioners frequently cite participatory governance arrangements as critical for successful resource management. While recognizing the rights of local and indigenous communities in their own development and resource management is fundamental for sustainability, centering communal decision-making in resource management does not guarantee that said decisions will be democratic, inclusive, or equitable. A critical question for community leaders and practitioners alike, is not whether communities should have rights to manage their resource systems, but rather, how to identify and support communal decision-making processes that are inclusive of diverse voices, transparent, and just. Here, we tackle one piece of this question by using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to diagnose how communal governance characteristics shape inclusion in local decision-making process, namely who and how distinct community members participate in resource management decision-making forums. While the IAD framework has frequently been applied to assess how local rule-making rights are linked to successful resource management outcomes, relatively few studies have used the IAD framework to diagnose participation within communal decision-making arrangements. The objectives of our paper are to identify relatively malleable local governance elements that can be tweaked to facilitate more inclusive collective decision-making in community resource management. To do so, we apply the IAD framework in conjunction with Agarwal’s participation typology to a systematic review of 59 case studies to map out the barriers to, and interventions to support, participatory decision-making in community resource management (forests, water, fisheries). Our study focuses specifically on how local governance factors influence who participates (e.g., individual attributes based on socioeconomic status; gender, race, ethnicity) and how they participate (leadership roles, voice, and influence). In our analysis, we pay particular attention to how local governance conditions (e.g., decision-making rules, leader attributes, organization) and external interventions serve to thwart or support inclusion in communal decision-making processes. In mapping out the barriers and interventions along the IAD framework, our analysis points to the need to pay more attention to how local rules arrangements shape participation, and in turn, offers specific entry points to promote more inclusive decision-making processes.
Is External Assistance Needed for Adaptation? An Assessment of Government Intervention in Local Water Management in the Colombian Andes
(2010) Murtinho, Felipe; Eakin, H.; Lopez-Carr, D.
"This article explores the impacts of different financial strategies on Water User Associations' ability to adapt to water source degradation. The article addresses the debate regarding whether and in what form communities need external support for adaptation to environmental change. In the Andean region of South America, understanding how communities fund their projects is particularly important for water management as many rural communities must decide by themselves if and how they will protect their watersheds and distribute their water. In many cases, communities depend on government financial support to implement their adaptation strategies, requiring them to participate in clientelist political systems that can crowd-out their efforts to adapt. In the Fúquene watershed in the Andes of Colombia, there is evidence that communities have invested time and financial resources to implement adaptation strategies. Local governments in the region have also invested in these strategies by supporting communities' projects requests and through a top-down investment approach. In this article, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to assess how different financial strategies influence communities' initiative to adapt. Findings suggest that despite communities’ efforts to use their own internal resources, in the long term, external support is needed to finance their adaptation strategies. However, a key aspect for the sustainability of communities' initiatives to adapt is the nature of the external financial intervention. Results show that government unsolicited help increases the likelihood of crowding out their efforts to adapt. In the other hand, in cases where communities request government help to fund their own project initiatives, external intervention crowds in communities' efforts to adapt."
Sustained governance of community-based water management in the context of socioeconomic changes: Lessons from Costa Rica
(2024) Murtinho, Felipe; Hayes, Tanya; Madrigal-Ballesteros, Roger; Viguera, Barbara
This paper aims to understand the conditions that facilitate inclusive and sustained governance of local common-pool resource management systems in the context of social and economic change. In Costa Rica, many community-based water associations have a rich history of governing their water systems. Changing environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic conditions, however, raise concerns about their abilities to foster participation, recruit new leaders, and address management concerns. Our exploratory analysis examines individual participation (n=530) in community-based water management decisions in six rural communities in Costa Rica that face increasing pressure to modernize their service and distribute clean water. As part of this modernization process, some water associations have hired professional administrators to manage their water systems with the hope of improving the water service. We use the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to structure regression models to identify the individual attributes and community governance conditions that make it more likely that an individual participates in community meetings and if they are willing to participate in leadership positions. Preliminary analysis indicates that although “modern” water associations provide better water service, households in these communities are more likely to perceive that the water association is less transparent, are less likely to agree to hiring professional administrators, they are less likely to participate in meetings (especially women) and have less desire to assume leadership positions in the water association. These findings highlight new challenges for community-based management, where many communities are overburden with social and environmental problems, including the uncertainty of climate change and increasing economic needs to improve their aqueducts and water service. Future research is needed to explore different management models that can improve water provision while considering new ways to create participation spaces for decision-making that are inclusive and respect households limited time and resources.
What Facilitates Adaptation? An Analysis of Community-Based Adaptation to Environmental Change in the Andes
(2016) Murtinho, Felipe
"This study analyses the environmental, socio-economic and institutional factors that influence community-based adaptation strategies in 16 municipalities in the rural Andes of Colombia. The study focuses specifically on the factors that influence whether communities decide to take measures to manage their water and micro-watersheds in response to water scarcity caused by climate variability and land-use changes. The research uses quantitative and qualitative methods incorporating data from surveys to 104 water user associations, precipitation and land-use data, municipal socio-economic information, and semistructured interviews with key informants. The results reveal 1) the links between environmental change and the type of adaptation that communities implement, and 2) how, in face of water scarcity changes, external funding facilitates adaptation. The findings of this study contributes to the common-pool resource and adaptation literatures by highlighting the important role that external actors may have in shaping collective action to adapt to environmental change."