Emergence Of Collective Action In A Groundwater Commons: Irrigators In The San Luis Valley Of Colorado
Cody, Kelsey C 1 ; Smith, Steven M 2 ; Cox, Michael 3 ; Andersson, Krister 4
1 , Environmental Studies Program
2 , Department of Economics
3 Dartmouth College
4 , Department of Political Science
Scientists agree that most irrigated agricultural systems face a dire outlook in light of changing climates coupled with population growth. With water supply decreasing and demand increasing it is very likely that snowmelt-driven systems will come under extreme stress in the decades to come. Meanwhile, human responses to these challenges are not well understood; under what conditions are irrigators able to develop governance arrangements that can withstand the existing and future water stress?
We addresses this question in a snowmelt-driven groundwater commons by developing an empirically-grounded theory of self-governance based on a longitudinal analysis of irrigation management in the San Luis Valley (SLV) of Colorado since the 1950s. The governance challenges associated with people’s shared access to groundwater are common throughout the Western United States and around the globe. Yet, the documented existence of a variety of exogenous shocks, the evolution of governance arrangements in response to these shocks, as well as mixed levels of success in collective-action make the SLV an excellent case for testing and refining a theoretical argument about the emergence of CPR self-governance.
A large literature has addressed CPR governance, positing conditions that facilitate collective action, e.g. small groups, well-defined resource boundaries, homogenous interests, and multiple collective choice venues (Ostrom, 2005). Drawing on institutional adaptation literature (North, 1990), we develop an argument that explicitly incorporates dynamic feedbacks over time, recognizing that past decisions alter the resource, its salience, and shared user perceptions about the probability of being able to salvage it (Oldekop et al., 2012).
The contribution of this argument is that it has the potential to explain more completely than existing CPR governance theory why a single set of irrigators act collectively in one instance but not in another. Because the more studied demographic and institutional variables (Ostrom, 1990) (e.g. population size, economic heterogeneity, property rights, collective choice arrangements, etc.) are relatively constant in our setting, we can test our main variables of interest for their effects on collective action.
While self-regulation of the groundwater commons is framed by historical adaptations and biophysical constraints, we argue that the likelihood of collective action is further regulated by a set of conditioning factors: broader governance arrangements, vested interests, techno-institutional complementarities, relative prices, and transaction costs. By identifying such elements and exploring their associated mechanisms, we can better accumulate knowledge regarding the development of adaptive resource governance.
North, D.C. 1990, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York.
Oldekop, J., Bebbington, A., Truelove, N., Holmes, G., Villamarín, S. & Preziosi, R. 2012, “Environmental Impacts and Scarcity Perception Influence Local Institutions in Indigenous Amazonian Kichwa Communities”, Human Ecology, vol. 40, no. 1, pp 101-115.
Ostrom, E. 2005, Understanding Institutional Diversity, Princeton University Press, Princeton; New Jersey.
Ostrom, E. 1990, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York.