Watershed Institutions and Collaborative Environmental Management: Linking Self- Governance to Existing Governmental Institutions (A Research Proposal)

Abstract

"A rich body of theoretical and empirical knowledge has been building about common pool resource management. From the work of Olson and Hardin providing models of collective action, we have moved to empirically-grounded theories from Ostrom and others. Much of this emphasis has been on the question of self-governance, and on the local scale. But increasingly scholarship aims to develop understanding of larger scale issues, including those with many resource users whose livelihood may not depend significantly on the resource in question. Moreover, self-governance by an isolated community is often less prevalent than is interconnected, multi-jurisdictional decision making for managing common pool resources. In the proposed research I am interested in the interface between stakeholders and government officials with jurisdiction over common pool resource management. In particular, my focus is on watershed management, which typically crosses multiple jurisdictional boundaries and involves a wide range of stakeholders with varying levels of concern about the resource."