Can we take the pulse of environmental governance the way we take the pulse of nature? Applying the Freshwater Health In
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Can we take the pulse of environmental governance the way we take the pulse of nature? Applying the Freshwater Health Index in Latin America Derek Vollmer , Maı´ra Ometto Bezerra, Natalia Acero Martı´nez, Octavio Rodrı´guez Ortiz, Ivo Encomenderos, Maria Clara Marques, Lina Serrano-Dura´n, Isabelle Fauconnier, Raymond Yu Wang
Received: 16 July 2020 / Revised: 4 September 2020 / Accepted: 3 October 2020
Abstract Quantitative assessments have long been used to evaluate the condition of the natural environment, providing information for standard setting, adaptive management, and monitoring. Similar approaches have been developed to measure environmental governance, however, the end result (e.g., numeric indicators) belies the subjective and normative judgments that are involved in evaluating governance. We demonstrate a framework that makes this information transparent, through an application of the Freshwater Health Index in three different river basins in Latin America. Water Governance is measured on a 0–100 scale, using data derived from perception-based surveys administered to stakeholders. Results suggest that water governance is a primary area of concern in all three places, with low overall scores (Guandu-26, Alto Mayo-38, Bogota´-43). We conclude that this approach to measuring governance at the river basin scale provides valuable information to support monitoring and decision making, and we offer suggestions on how it can be improved. Keywords Governance Indicators Latin America Rivers Stakeholders Water resource management
INTRODUCTION Water security rightly ranks as a top environmental concern, and has spurred numerous efforts to accurately measure the quantity, quality, and ecological integrity of freshwater supplies at multiple spatial scales, and for a variety of audiences (Vollmer et al. 2016). But there has Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01407-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
also been increasing recognition that issues of water insecurity are generally crises of governance, not just problems of inadequate supply or climate variability (Rogers and Hall 2003; McDonnell 2008; Tortajada 2010; Bakker and Morinville 2013; Akhmouch 2014). Water resource management increasingly refers to managing relations among stakeholders, rather than a single institution managing a physical resource (Falkenmark 2004). Where the underlying governance system is weak, stakeholders are unable to efficiently and effectively respond to pressures like pollution, increasing water demand, and freshwater ecosystem degradation. Yet prevailing assessments of sustainability have typically focused on the technical and biophysical factors that readily lend themselves to quantification— these could be viewed as the ‘‘outcomes’’ of water governance (Wiek and Larson 2012; Schneider et al. 2014) but by themselves do not offer insights into the impact of different aspects of governance. Quantit
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