Kelly Mott Lacroix, ALRS Alumna published a new paper in Water-Open Access Journal

July 27, 2016

Kelly has a new paper published in the in Water- the Open Access Journal on June 29, 2016

Water 2016, 8(7), 273; doi:10.3390/w8070273

Article: "Public Participation in Water Planning in the Ebro River Basin (Spain) and Tucson Basin (U.S., Arizona): Impact on Water Policy and Adaptive Capacity Building"

Alba Ballester 1,*  and Kelly E. Mott Lacroix 2

1 Institut de Govern i Polítiques Públiques, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus UAB-Edifici MRA, Bellaterra 08193, Spain 2 Water Resources Research Center, University of Arizona, 350 N Campbell Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Academic Editors: Eylon Shamir, Sharon B. Megdal and Susanna Eden

Received: 21 February 2016 / Revised: 18 June 2016 / Accepted: 20 June 2016 / Published: 29 June 2016

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Governance, Stakeholder Engagement, and Sustainable Water Resources Management)

To view full text: http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/7/273/htm

Abstract

The benefits of public participation in water management are recognized by governments, scholars, and stakeholders. These benefits, however, do not result from all engagement endeavors. This leads to the question: What are the determinants for effective public participation? Given a list of criteria for achieving the transformational capacity of participation, we analyze the benefits (including the influence on public policies) gained through public participation and the determinant factors for obtaining these benefits in the Ebro River Basin in Spain and in the Tucson Basin in Arizona (U.S.). Furthermore, and considering that droughts and floods are major water management challenges in both case studies, we focus on the potential of participation to build adaptive capacity. Our analysis of these case studies concludes that influence on public policies is determined more by the context of the participatory process, i.e., legal framework, political leadership, and social awareness, whereas influence on adaptive capacity building depends more on the characteristics of the participatory process, particularly the existence of active on-site consultation and deliberation.

Keywords: water management; public participation; stakeholder engagement; adaptive capacity water management; public participation; stakeholder engagement; adaptive capacity

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).