‘We’re managing a different river now’: a political ecology of nature-based recreation in the Dolores River Watershed

Abstract

The Dolores River is fed primarily by snowmelt from the western San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado. It travels 241 miles across the Colorado Plateau to its confluence with the Colorado River, near Moab, Utah, a major nature-based tourism destination in the U.S west. Water usage and climate change projections in the Dolores River Watershed, as well as throughout the Colorado River Basin, complicate transboundary planning and management related to vital ecosystem services. As dynamic pressures alter this complex social-ecological system, disparities in resource allocation are magnified. In this study, we leverage reflections from recreation, conservation, and land management stakeholders (n = 18) to understand their perceptions of water allocation within the Dolores River Watershed. We frame this conversation using Rawls’s (A theory of justice. Harvard University Press; JSTOR, 1971) theory of justice to explore perceived incompatibilities present within the existing watershed management and discuss recreational and environmental stakeholders’ perceptions of the inequitable distribution of resources. A combination of deductive coding processes using Rawls’s principles and inductive open coding processes help identify linkages between the Rawlsian framework and interviewees’ experiences of the salient political ecologies of the watershed. We conclude by illustrating challenges with the current water regime within the Dolores River Watershed and potential improvements to the distribution of resources through policy and management consistent with Rawls’s theory of justice.