Repository logo

Browsing by Author "Bruce, Lily Appleby Calfee, author"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Scaling up collaborative governance for better fit and flexibility: a case study of the Two-Rivers Three-Watersheds Two-States (2-3-2) partnership
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Bruce, Lily Appleby Calfee, author; Schultz, Courtney, advisor; Cheng, Tony, committee member; Scott, Ryan, committee member
    Over the past ten years, multiple place-based collaborative groups have partnered across jurisdictional divides to form a unique structure of nested collaborative groups, but little is known about what drives the formation of these umbrella collaborative groups or how they function. Due to the changing climate and a legacy of fire suppression, the United States Forest Services (USFS) and academic scholars have promoted the planning and implementation of forest restoration activities at larger geographic scales than has been typical in forest management. To achieve landscape-level restoration, efforts must be coordinated across jurisdictional boundaries. Collaborative governance arose as an alternative to the centralized and adversarial approaches that had dominated environmental policy since the passage of core environmental statutes in the 1970s. Collaborative groups seek to overcome conflict by facilitating cooperative decision-making between government and non-government actors to achieve ecological and community benefits, reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfires, and addressing watershed function. Collaborative groups that are focused on forest restoration operate at larger scales than ever before, filling gaps resulting from limited government capacity and addressing complex and multi-jurisdictional environmental challenges. In the last fifteen years, federal and state policies emerged to support landscape-level collaboration, including the 2009 Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). An important question is how collaborative groups operate in response to such drivers that require scaling up when they typically have existed at smaller spatial extents of individual national forests or communities. In this thesis, I explore the formation of an umbrella collaborative group and the opportunities and challenges associated with collaborating at the multiple-watershed level. I use qualitative analysis of a series of interviews with partners of the Two Watershed-Three Rivers-Two States Cohesive Strategy Partnership (2-3-2), an umbrella collaborative, to understand opportunities for adaptation and adapting to a variety of scale-fit needs that arise for collaborative governance regimes. In forest policy, scale mismatch is the lack of fit between the temporal or spatial scales of policy mechanisms, collective action, and ecosystem processes. Scale mismatch is prevalent in natural resource management; perhaps a better way to conceive of this issue is the need to have flexibility to adapt to drivers or concerns that operate and vary across scales. Collaborative governance may improve scale fit, especially for ecological processes and federal-level policies that require restoration work across huge acreages, but we also know from research that the trust- and relationship-building required by collaborative processes work best at smaller scales. This thesis consists of four interrelated but independent chapters. Chapter 1 introduces my research and provides foundational concepts to understand collaborative and adaptive governance. Chapter 2 summarizes interview results and is intended as a practitioner paper for partners and leaders of the 2-3-2. I describe interviewee perspectives on the current priorities of the 2-3-2, the advantages and challenges of collaboration at the multi-watershed scale, and recommendations for further strengthening the efficacy of the 2-3-2. Chapter 3, intended for a peer-reviewed journal, discusses these results in the context of collaborative and adaptive governance theory to understand factors that drive the formation of umbrella collaborative groups, as well as how umbrella collaboratives allow for greater adaptiveness to different scale dynamics. Finally, in Chapter 4, I summarize and draw overarching conclusions from my separate analyses of the interview data and address the limitations of this research with a view to future research.