Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governanance: Linking Law to Social-Ecological Resilience

This volume explores the role of law and society in achieving governance of regional social-ecological systems that is capable of management, adaptation and transformation in the face of change. The initial chapters set the theoretical stage for understanding resilience of social-ecological systems and, in particular, the relations among governance, society and resilience. From a synthesis of seven water basin assessments included in the volume, two primary findings emerge.

First, the value of an historical approach to assessment to understand both the change in general resilience and governance attributes through time and their legacy effect today, including the key roles of both governance and built infrastructure in facilitating and hindering adaptation. Second, the role of law in establishing boundaries, that once crossed, signal approaching thresholds; in creating conditions for establishment of rights that alter expectations sufficiently to open a window to new and sometimes collaborative approaches to water governance; in providing an avenue for the development of new process tools to facilitate emergence of adaptive forms of governance; and in presenting barriers to adaptation as a result of rigid and fragmented authority. The basin assessments help point the reader toward steps that may lead to more adaptive forms of governance in the face of change and uncertainty through a qualitative approach to assessment.

The volume also uses the assessments to take a cautionary view. It is clear that the ability of those benefiting from the status quo to stall change through litigation and political channels and to obtain federal level subsidy for continued optimization may be moving some basins perilously close to a threshold (e.g. Everglades). Re-analysis of the role of federal investment in water development away from engineered optimization and toward increased resilience latitude will be a key factor in adaptive capacity going forward. In addition, the legacy impact of engineered infrastructure is apparent in each of the seven basin assessments. In other words, once major investment occurs in water infrastructure, it is highly resistant to change. There is strong incentive to shore up rather than alter infrastructure once built. There are legal, economic and cultural dependencies on the built environment. Thus, while the massive investment in water infrastructure of the 20th Century vastly improved the lives of several generations of North Americans, the legacy effect is to lock in future generations to infrastructure that is obsolete in terms of the water supply and demand of the coming century, the values of the people who live in these basins, and thus the future economic stability of water dependent communities. Nothing short of major investment in re-engineering these systems to modernize them for the 21st Century and a process that recognizes this will be needed every few generations will suffice.