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"Between 1940 and 1995, the Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of irrigation water underlying eight U.S. states in the semi-arid Great Plains, declined in some areas by as much as 50%. Depletion of the High Plains aquifer exemplifies a specific class of common pool resource (CPR) problems which are characterized by cross-scale interactions--those in which events or phenomena at one level influence phenomena at other levels. Commons problems of this nature have historically posed unique problems and pitfalls for management, particularly when scales of biogeophysical and human systems are mismatched, or when linkages across scales are ignored by decision makers. Moreover, the challenges and pitfalls of such problems are becoming more apparent with the increasing political and scientific focus on international and global commons. Examples of such pitfalls include: appropriations, enforcement and conflict resolution rules imposed by higher-level jurisdictions that are incompatible with local conditions; scientific and technical information produced at one level that is not relevant, usable or credible at other levels; high costs of monitoring changes in large-scale commons that are influenced by local activities; and difficulties in assessing local impacts of large-scale phenomena.
"Despite the existence of these pitfalls, relatively little research has focused on how the multi-level nature of commons problems can contribute to management challenges, and what mechanisms exist to avoid such pitfalls.
"This research investigates what kinds of responses to a cross-scale problem--in this case, irrigation-induced depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer--result in effective and sustainable management strategies, focusing on how information and decision- making systems can be structured to support such management of a CPR. In this effort groundwater management regimes are compared in Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas. Findings suggest that effective cross-scale management of a CPR is associated with polycentric and distributed systems of information and decision making characterized by:
1) the use of boundary organizations to coordinate across levels. Boundary organizations are institutions which mediate between decision makers and scientists across different levels and are characterized by systems of accountability on both sides of the boundary, multi-directional communication (e.g., users' needs, producers products), multi-level participation, and information brokering/translation.
2) capitalizing on scale-dependent comparative advantages including technical capacity (e.g., modeling, data collection, etc.), functional specialization (local tailoring of regulations, option creation, monitoring, enforcement, funding, education, etc.), and enabling rule-making which decreases constraints and provides opportunities (economic, institutional, boundary crossing/translation, educational, etc.)
3) establishing an adaptive process which is long term, iterative, flexible (designed to accommodate and address both endogenous and exogenous technical, political and environmental changes), and provides technical means of addressing scale mismatches through policy and assessment experimentation.
"While the in-depth case presented in this paper focuses on a CPR in the U.S., the implications of this research for international and global CPR management are addressed as well through the examination of climate change and climate variability, transboundary air pollution, and biodiversity." |
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