Tracing the Evolution of Water Governance in the Colorado River Basin

• In Event: The Politics of Collaborative Governance

Abstract

Understanding how a polycentric governance system evolves over time can provide critical insight into the institutional configurations that most effectively solve different types of problems at various geographical scales. Yet, most analyses of polycentric systems are either cross-sectional, meaning they observe the system at one point in time, or they aggregate institutions from various time periods and sub-regions into one model without considering important temporal and spatial aspects. In this paper, we reconstruct the multi-decadal development of the large-scale polycentric system that has emerged to govern water in the Colorado River Basin (CRB), located in arid western North America. Through a longitudinal analysis of the system’s structure and function in response to changing conditions, we advance theory on the evolution of polycentric governance systems and draw lessons about the suitability of different institutional configurations for addressing both past and future water sustainability challenges.

The CRB is both highly complex and geographically large in scope, spanning seven states in the United States, two states in Mexico, and 29 sovereign tribal nations. It also includes various infrastructural components that divert water outside of the basin’s hydrologic boundaries to serve growing cities and large agricultural operations in Southern California, Colorado, and Utah. Due to climatic and socio-political factors, the Colorado River has become over-allocated, meaning rights have been granted to use more water than actually exists in most years. Moreover, the CRB has experienced an increasingly severe megadrought – and a broader trend toward aridificaion – over the past two decades, further exacerbating pressures on available water supplies.

Despite these challenges, the CRB’s governance system is often praised for growing increasingly collaborative in recent decades, as policymakers have worked together to experiment with and refine new water management approaches. We thus focus our reconstruction of the CRB’s polycentric water governance system around various collaborative decision-making processes that emerged between 2000-present to cope with the drought and related issues. By definition, these processes have been designed to enhance coordination among stakeholders from diverse sectors and jurisdictions to solve common problems – a key tenet of effective polycentric governance. Even with these efforts, however, the first federal water shortage was declared in the CRB in August 2021, which will reduce water deliveries to users in Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico in 2022 as system reservoir levels continue to drop. This shortage declaration is a clear signal of on-going basin-scale water sustainability issues, regardless of apparent progress on a multitude of specific, localized problems through collaborative efforts.

Our study draws insights from the Ecology of Games Theory to inform a content analysis of hundreds of documents related to the collaborative decision-making processes that emerged in the CRB from 2000-present. Specifically, we document each process’s geographical scope, temporal legacy, management goals, use of science, policy outputs, and broader social and physical outcomes. In addition to assessing the processes individually, we pay special attention to interconnections among them in order to trace and model the evolution of the CRB’s polycentric water governance system over time. From this, we analyze how collaboration has influenced the polycentric system’s ability to solve problems at different scales, where it has fallen short, and how it can be better leveraged to address current and future challenges.

Authors

• Elizabeth Koebele, University of Nevada, Reno

• Max Robinson, University Nevada - Reno