Abstract
Freshwater is essential to human communities and stream ecosystems, and governments strive to manage water to meet the needs of both people and ecosystems. Balancing competing water demands is challenging, as freshwater resources are limited and their availability varies through time and space. One approach to maintain this balance is to legally mandate that a specified amount of stream flow be maintained for stream ecosystems, known as an environmental flow. But laws and regulations do not necessarily reflect what happens in practice, potentially to the detriment of communities and natural systems. Through a case study of Puerto Rico, we investigated whether water management in practice matches legislative mandates and explored potential mismatch drivers. We focused on two governance targets—equitable allocation and water use efficiency—and assessed whether they are enshrined in the law (de jure) and how they manifest in practice (de facto). We also explored agency accountability through identifying agency structure and whether consequences are enforced for failing to carry out responsibilities. Our results indicate there are mismatches between how freshwater is governed by law and what occurs in practice. This study suggests that agency accountability may be necessary to consider when developing environmental flow legislation that will effectively achieve ecological outcomes.
Highlights
Water management via dams and withdrawals reduces river flow and creates cascading effects such as altered ecological function, decreased biodiversity, and loss of ecosystem services [1,2].Over 750 scientists from 50 countries have articulated the need to maintain river flows for environmental protection in the Brisbane Declaration, which defines environmental flows as “the quantity, timing, and quality of water flows required to sustain freshwater and estuarine ecosystems and the human livelihoods and well-being that depend on these ecosystems” [3]
We explored mismatches in de jure and de facto water governance to better understand how environmental flows are managed in Puerto Rico, where high water variability resulting from annual dry seasons and periodic drought conditions limits the amount of available freshwater to meet human and ecological needs
We explored the accountability of water management agencies at the state level and whether agency accountability influences environmental flow legislation implementation
Summary
Water management via dams and withdrawals reduces river flow and creates cascading effects such as altered ecological function, decreased biodiversity, and loss of ecosystem services [1,2]. Water 2020, 12, 2135 legally in place, there is often little evidence of enforcement (see Baer and Ingle (2016) for an example from the southeastern U.S.) [11] This misalignment between governance targets enshrined in the law (a de jure perspective) and whether and how they manifest in practice (a de facto perspective) is a recognized factor affecting governance outcomes [12,13]. Governance research has revealed that environmental management in practice often departs from formal governance systems established by law [14], and more complex legislation is generally less tractable to those responsible for implementation [15]. Though multiple mechanisms for identifying accountability exist [21,23], we identified agency accountability through the existence of consequences for not following through with responsibilities [22]
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