Abstract
Baltutis, W. J., and M.-L. Moore. 2019. Degrees of change toward polycentric transboundary water governance: exploring the Columbia River and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Ecology and Society 24(2):6. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10852-240206
Highlights
There is a growing trend in the governance of international transboundary waters, i.e., waters that cross nation-state borders, toward greater levels of participation by local, regional, and Indigenous governments, as well as nongovernmental actors (Lemos and Agrawal 2006, Norman and Bakker 2009, Chen et al 2013, Norman 2014)
The emergence of polycentric governance systems appears limited in the cases we examine, existing state-centric governance regimes have become increasingly contested by the expansion of actors and initiatives at multiple levels into the realm of transboundary water governance and management
We found that authority remains locked-in with state-based agencies and actors focused on economic benefits from the rivers, hydroelectric production, which have defined the conventional and centralized approaches to transboundary water governance in the two basins
Summary
There is a growing trend in the governance of international transboundary waters, i.e., waters that cross nation-state borders, toward greater levels of participation by local, regional, and Indigenous governments, as well as nongovernmental actors (Lemos and Agrawal 2006, Norman and Bakker 2009, Chen et al 2013, Norman 2014). Conceived by Polanyi (Polanyi 1951, as cited in Aligica and Tarko 2012), and further developed by Ostrom et al (1961), the concept of polycentric governance has been used as a lens and guiding principle to analyze a diversity of management and governance issues, including common-pool resources (Ostrom 1990, McGinnis 1999, Mostert 2012), urban and regional planning (Salet and Savini 2015), decentralized regulatory regimes (Black 2008), forest governance (Nagendra and Ostrom 2012), and climate governance (Ostrom 2010, Jordan et al 2015) Within this body of scholarship, polycentric governance systems are understood to involve dispersed authority to separate and autonomous bodies or governing units with overlapping jurisdictions that operate under an overarching set of rules and that function in a coherent manner through self-organization (Ostrom et al 1961, McGinnis 1999, Folke et al 2005, Huitema et al 2009, Ostrom 2009, Aligica and Tarko 2012, Cosens et al 2017). It reflects the evolution of governance in a complex, globalized, and multiscaled world (Scholte 2005)
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