Path Dependence, Evolution of a Mandate and the Road to Statewide Sustainable Groundwater Management

Dennis, Evan M.; Blomquist, William; Milman, Anita; Moran, Tara

doi:10.1080/08941920.2020.1772926

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The difference in approach regarding state and local control between California, France, and Spain is likely due to a combination of cultural, political and historical factors. For instance, California has an unique historical commitment to local control in an effort to keep groundwater out of state control, as opposed to surface water (Dennis et al., 2020). Thus, prior to 2014, the State has limited its support for groundwater management to providing scientific and technical assistance, granting powers for local action, and facilitating groundwater management planning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, prior to 2014, the State has limited its support for groundwater management to providing scientific and technical assistance, granting powers for local action, and facilitating groundwater management planning. With SGMA, it has moved from enabling and incentivizing local groundwater management, to a position of “mandating” local action (Dennis et al., 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Transitioning out of Open Access: A Closer Look at Institutions for Management of Groundwater Rights in France, California, and Spain

Rouillard

Babbitt

Pulido-Velázquez

et al. 2021

Water Resources Research

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Groundwater forms the invisible, subsurface part of the hydrological cycle, playing a vital role for maintaining base flows of rivers during the dry seasons. It is also a vital source of water for modern economies, accounting for 25% of total water extraction worldwide and a quarter of the irrigation water used to grow the world's food (Aquastat, 2016). Yet, aquifers are being over-exploited at an alarming rate in many regions around the world-a situation that is expected to worsen under climate change as recharge rates will be increasingly affected (Famiglietti, 2014;Taylor et al., 2013). Groundwater depletion contributes to the decisions by water managers to "close" access to water resources in aquifers and river basins (Molle et al., 2010). As societal and environmental needs cannot be met for at least part of the year, water managers must deal with complex trade-offs between economic interests, livelihoods, and environmental priorities.To tackle overexploitation, groundwater management is progressively shifting from an open-access regime of water resource extraction to one of regulated access all over the world (Giordano et al., 2009;Shah, 2009). Regulated access typically relies on setting a sustainable flow rate or volumetric cap on total water extraction, and reducing and maintaining extractions at or below that cap (Rinaudo et al., 2020). It can also rely on a pigouvian tax or restrictions imposed when sustainability limits are reached (for example, groundwater threshold levels). The core issue when closing access to water resources becomes how to best allocate limited water supplies between competing users, and between users and the environment. It involves setting up processes and mechanisms which enable social actors to share water according to a recognized set of values and priorities.Much academic debate has focused on the question of who should control or supervise allocation decision-making, with no conclusive outcome as to whether state or community approaches are preferable (Bruns et al., 2005;Rinaudo et al., 2019). On the one hand, state approaches appear more accountable, but they have usually failed to effectively reduce groundwater use to sustainable levels (Molle & Closas, 2020b). On the other hand, community approaches appear more legitimate, at least to the regulated. They have been most effective where the community had a social basis for collective action, for example a common

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transitioning out of Open Access: A Closer Look at Institutions for Management of Groundwater Rights in France, California, and Spain

Rouillard

Babbitt

Pulido-Velázquez

et al. 2021

Water Resources Research

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show abstract

“…In other settings, such as California, the state government has taken on the dominant role in driving the evolution of groundwater governance through statewide mandates and top-down design of new local institutions (e.g. groundwater management districts) (Dennis et al, 2020). In California's case, the state government took responsibility for overcoming the inertia and feedback effects of historical pathdependent policies to reorient the State's groundwater Our results depict how Colorado groundwater users work collectively in several ways to respond to, or enact, new groundwater governance policies.…”

Section: Collective Resistance Collective Compliance and Collective S...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual to collective adaptation through incremental change in Colorado groundwater governance

Loos

Andersson

Bulger

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Designing adaptive institutions for achieving sustainable groundwater use is a central challenge to local and state governments. This challenge is exacerbated by the growing impacts and uncertainty of climate change on water resources. Calls to reform water governance systems are often made in the context of these challenges, and reform efforts increasingly emphasize the need for solutions that are locally designed and administered. Such reforms often require fundamental institutional change that is difficult to achieve amid the myriad forces that stabilize and reproduce existing institutional structures and functions. In practice, governance change is instead overwhelmingly incremental and tends to be punctuated by periods of adjustment in response to social or environmental shocks and disturbances. We present a comparative study of four major Colorado river basins and examine how each has evolved distinct arrangements of groundwater governance in response to regulatory and drought disturbances over the past century. We interrogate concepts of path-dependence and apply a historical lens to understand why locally designed institutions for self-regulation emerge in some Colorado groundwater basins but not in others. We uncover a pattern of collective action by groundwater users that first seeks to oppose state regulation, followed by acceptance and efforts to comply, and eventual attempts to get ahead of state regulation by enacting local institutions for self-regulation. We report these findings and discuss the insights they offer for understanding how adaptive natural resources institutions are shaped through time by the constraints and opportunities of path-dependence and local contexts.

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“…This body of research includes legal and historical analyses (Scharf 2016; Dyble 2017; Dennis et al. 2020), and empirical case studies examining issues such as GSA formation (Conrad et al. 2016), stakeholder participation (Dobbin 2020), and the particular challenges faced by Special Act Districts in SGMA implementation (Langridge and Sepaniak 2016).…”

Section: Evaluating Sgma: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To encourage each phase of local collective action described above, SGMA builds upon California’s history of using a combination of carrots and sticks in state water policy (Hanak 2007; Dennis et al. 2020). As a carrot, the state subsidizes some of the costs of local groundwater governance primarily by providing professional facilitation services and technical assistance — either directly or through grants to local agencies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: The First Five Years of Governance and Planning

Leach

Tang

2021

J American Water Resour Assoc

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California’s landmark 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requires local officials to form new Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) and to write new groundwater sustainability plans capable of eliminating overdraft within 20 years. To assess progress achieved during SGMA’s first five years of implementation, we surveyed officials who manage or participate in GSA governance. The most common obstacles to GSA formation have involved horizontal and network governance issues such as too many diverse interests or lack of trust among stakeholders. The most common obstacles to groundwater planning include a lack of financial resources and the requirement to coordinate plans among GSAs in the same basin. Respondents usually report that their own GSA performs well on seven measures of good governance, such as representing all major stakeholders, granting members sufficient power, and generating trusted data for decision making. On the other hand, many GSA managers acknowledge that some types of stakeholders remain underrepresented in the governing structure despite SGMA’s mandate to “consider the interests of all beneficial uses and users of groundwater.” Overall, most respondents are optimistic that SGMA will enhance groundwater sustainability locally and statewide. If successfully implemented and fully funded, SGMA could become a model worldwide for sustainable resource governance that combines top‐down mandates and local incentives.

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Path Dependence, Evolution of a Mandate and the Road to Statewide Sustainable Groundwater Management

Cited by 8 publications

References 11 publications

Transitioning out of Open Access: A Closer Look at Institutions for Management of Groundwater Rights in France, California, and Spain

Transitioning out of Open Access: A Closer Look at Institutions for Management of Groundwater Rights in France, California, and Spain

Individual to collective adaptation through incremental change in Colorado groundwater governance

Evaluating California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: The First Five Years of Governance and Planning

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