Seeking Common Ground in Dryland Systems: Steps Towards Adaptive Water Governance

Gabriel Lopez Porras,Lindsay C Stringer,Claire H Quinn

doi:10.3390/w12020498

Abstract

Drylands are exposed to climate stressors, such as water scarcity, as well as societal stressors, including conflicts, which can make water governance unsuitable for the system’s context. The emergence of adaptive water governance often takes places in these challenging contexts, but the process of achieving this style of governance requires a better consideration of system complexities. Using the Rio del Carmen watershed in Mexico as a case study, with primary data obtained through a questionnaire survey carried out with 217 farmers, this paper aims to identify the main complexities and needs to enable the emergence of adaptive water governance. We found that different groups of farmers converge in identifying system stressors and the main needs regarding water governance; yet, the ways these stressors are perceived differ between groups. The results indicate that contrasting perceptions are shaped by the different cultural roots and environmental conditions in the upper and lower parts of the watershed. This variation increases the difficulty in achieving collaboration and compromise when conflicts ensue. Reducing inequalities in the awareness of system stressors has the potential to enable adaptive water governance. This could be achieved through a peacebuilding technique with an appropriate cultural approach for the watershed’s context in the early stages of a stakeholder engagement process.

Highlights

Drylands cover approximately 45% of the world’s land surface [1,2]
Understanding system stressors through stakeholders’ perceptions is appropriate since societal influence over social-ecological system (SES) is shaped by how humans interact with the environment and understand ecological functioning [9,19]. Cognition of such SES complexities is important when facing uncertainty [18,20]. Addressing this challenge, we focus on understanding and differentiating between opposing perceptions and cultural constraints that undermine dryland adaptation, and the potential that stakeholders have to overcome their differences and enable Adaptive water governance (AWG), using the Rio del Carmen watershed in Mexico as a case study
We consider only the exposure to environmental stressors identified in the survey that can be supported by secondary data

Summary

Introduction

Drylands cover approximately 45% of the world’s land surface [1,2] Their human populations, consisting of the poorest and most marginalised people in the world [3] number 2.8 billion [2], with projections suggesting increases to 4 billion in the 30 years [4]. Drylands are highly conflict-prone areas [3] often exposed to environmental stressors like droughts and high temperatures [5]. This is a challenging context, as drylands’ high climate variability can trigger larger impacts over the whole social-ecological system (SES), beyond the direct area of drought occurrence [6]. Looking to the near future, as drylands and their inhabitants are predicted to increase [4,8], so will other major issues such as poverty, migration, conflicts, and political instability [1]

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