From the contributors to The Conversation, a compelling essay collection on the world's water crises and the necessary steps to build a more sustainable and equitable water future for all. Water-related crises are affecting more and more communities, both in the United States and internationally. If we continue to delay upgrading our infrastructure and addressing rising environmental concerns, we risk further destabilizing already strained systems—or, worse, causing a catastrophic collapse. In The Conversation on Water, water scholar and professor Andrea K. Gerlak collects essays from The Conversation U.S. on critical issues related to water from leading experts in everything from public policy to environmental engineering. Gerlak pays special attention to the threats facing our water systems today—covering insufficient infrastructure, climate change, and pollution—and integrates them with essays on technologies for harvesting water and Indigenous knowledge in governing the oceans. She then proposes solutions that present opportunities for hope and reform. From new partnerships and collaborative efforts to alternative governance practices and new scientific tools and community approaches, readers will learn about viable pathways forward and will understand the deep social and political dimensions of water governance. Understanding these challenges is the first step toward building a more sustainable and equitable water future for all. The Critical Conversations series collects essays from top scholars on timely topics, including water, biotechnology, gender diversity, gun culture, and more, originally published on the independent news site The Conversation U.S. Contributors: Roger Bales, Kevin Befus, Robert Blasiak, Ellen Bruno, Bethany Caruso, Sebastien Chastin, Craig E. Colten, Joseph Cook, Michelle DiBenedetto, Farshid Felfelani, Gabriel Filippelli, Michail Georgiou, Burke Griggs, Gary Griggs, Drew Gronewold, Marissa Grunes, Danielle Hare, Brian Haus, Dan Johnson, Carol Kwiatkowski, Rosalyn R. LaPier, Katharine Mach, Amahia Mallea, Daniel McCool, Jacob Miller-Klugesherz, Nobuhito Mori, Thomas Mortlock, Suzanne O'Connell, Itxaso Odériz, Joseph D. Ortiz, Meg Parsons, Raquel Partelli-Feltrin, Yadu Pokhrel, Manzoor Qadir, Julie Reimer, Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos, Richard Rood, Asher Rosinger, Matthew R. Sanderson, Heidi Schweizer, Alan Seltzer, A. R. Siders, Rodolfo Silva-Casarín, Vladimir Smakhtin, Bruce Sutherland, Lara Taylor, Emily Ury, Ton Van den Bremer, Andrew J. Whelton

Whether the goal is building a local park or developing disaster response models, collaborative governance is changing the way public agencies at the local, regional, and national levels are working with each other and with key partners in the nonprofit and private sectors. While the academic literature has spawned numerous case studies and context- or policy-specific models for collaboration, the growth of these innovative collaborative governance systems has outpaced the scholarship needed to define it. Collaborative Governance Regimes breaks new conceptual and practical ground by presenting an integrative framework for working across boundaries to solve shared problems, a typology for understanding variations among collaborative governance regimes, and an approach for assessing both process and productivity performance. This book draws on diverse literatures and uses rich case illustrations to inform scholars and practitioners about collaborative governance regimes and to provide guidance for designing, managing, and studying such endeavors in the future. Collaborative Governance Regimes will be of special interest to scholars and researchers in public administration, public policy, and political science who want a framework for theory building, yet the book is also accessible enough for students and practitioners.

Whether the goal is building a local park or developing disaster response models, collaborative governance is changing the way public agencies at the local, regional, and national levels are working with each other and with key partners in the nonprofit and private sectors. While the academic literature has spawned numerous case studies and context- or policy-specific models for collaboration, the growth of these innovative collaborative governance systems has outpaced the scholarship needed to define it. Collaborative Governance Regimes breaks new conceptual and practical ground by presenting an integrative framework for working across boundaries to solve shared problems, a typology for understanding variations among collaborative governance regimes, and an approach for assessing both process and productivity performance. This book draws on diverse literatures and uses rich case illustrations to inform scholars and practitioners about collaborative governance regimes and to provide guidance for designing, managing, and studying such endeavors in the future. Collaborative Governance Regimes will be of special interest to scholars and researchers in public administration, public policy, and political science who want a framework for theory building, yet the book is also accessible enough for students and practitioners.

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legitimate and equitable Earth system governance. Actors from the global to the local level are considered, including governments, international organizations and corporations. Chapters cover how state and non-state actors engage with decision-making processes, the relationship between agency and structure, and the variations in governance and agency across different spheres and tiers of society. Providing an overview of the major questions, issues and debates, as well as the theories and methods used in studies of agency in earth system governance, this book provides a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in environmental governance. This is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legitimate and equitable Earth system governance. Actors from the global to the local level are considered, including governments, international organizations and corporations. Chapters cover how state and non-state actors engage with decision-making processes, the relationship between agency and structure, and the variations in governance and agency across different spheres and tiers of society. Providing an overview of the major questions, issues and debates, as well as the theories and methods used in studies of agency in earth system governance, this book provides a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in environmental governance. This is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.