OUR PROJECTS

We work across disciplines, the divide between research and practice, multiple different networks and communities, specializing in synthesis and bridging. Our projects can therefore be explored by their themes as follows:

  • We use a collective action lens to examine conflict and cooperation over water at multiple scales. Our work in this area has focused on competition for water between cities and agriculture, people and ecosystems, and multiple jurisdictions. Although much work on conflict and cooperation has focused on a transboundary level, we focus on the hidden spaces and scales. Current examples of our work in this area includes ongoing research on Thirsty Cities and emerging work on groundwater governance in agricultural landscapes.

  • We examine the political economy of water and use comparative institutional analysis to assess the effectiveness and equity implications associated with different ways of allocating water. We track the evolution and performance of water rights reforms and water markets, drawing on historical data and understandings of incentive and financial flows. Our work in this area includes ongoing research about the institutional diversity of water markets (Academic Book- Uncommon Markets) and emerging work about the role of philanthropy in freshwater conservation and governance. These strands of work contribute to a broader project of rethinking the economics of water.

  • We focus on adaptive water governance in the context of global challenges, such as rapid urbanization, biodiversity loss and climate change. We use a human-water systems perspective to examine institutional fit, the match between institutions and local conditions, and explore the type and sequences of interventions that can build resilience and adaptive capacity. We rely on diverse datasets generated through citizen science, case study databases, earth observation networks, and large-scale surveys. Our approach also seeks to harness advances in data science through formal methods of institutional analysis, such as agent-based modelling and machine learning techniques. We engage with partners in this process through a range of approaches, including co-production, applied policy and economic analysis, and decision support tools. Our work in this area includes the Global Water Futures project on water governance indicators, and a range of database development projects on water conflict, water allocation reform, and water markets.

  • Over the past 30 years there has been an explosion of research and evidence on sustainability and the commons. There is a growing need for evidence synthesis methods to take stock on the status and trends on key questions about institutional fit and sustainable development. These methods include everything from diagnostic tools for assessing the governance of social-ecological systems to systematic reviews and indicator development. Our work in this area includes Global Water Futures and Thirsty Cities.

CURRENT PROJECTS

ANCHOR LINK

GLOBAL WATER FUTURES: ADAPTIVE WATER GOVERNANCE

The aim of the project is to identify, validate and map focal indicators of water governance capacity, building upon the state of the art globally and leveraging existing governance frameworks which have identified attributes of good governance. This indicator system will advance our understanding and measurement of the adaptive capacity of water governance at multiple scales within Canada, and across a set of transboundary lakes and river basins shared across multiple provinces and with the USA. Additionally, it will include alignments and linkages to the integrated modelling program, water and health group, and core modelling team developed within the wider framework of activities across Global Water Futures.

The research activities will generate several project outputs. Three peer reviewed papers (systematic review; mapping of Canada’s water governance capacity; and ground-truthed case study), policy briefs (on the indicator framework and mapping outputs), and a spatially explicit database that can be used for storing information and generating the relevant data products.  

STATUS: On-going, Summer 2022 - 2024

ANCHOR LINK

Academic Book • Under contract with Oxford University Press • Funded by Philomatha Foundation (Philomathia Award) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science

UNCOMMON MARKETS

Do markets lead to prosperity or plunder of the commons? Climate change, water shortages, and biodiversity loss suggest the answer is clear – that these environmental crises are symptoms of free markets run amok. Yet the evidence has long pointed to a more complex story: markets and collective action go hand in hand. In some cases, markets can foster a virtuous cycle of private property rights and shared prosperity, aligning individual and collective interests. Yet without proper steering they often accelerate a vicious spiral of deprivation and depletion that favours private rights over public interests and neglects externalities. Ultimately, the outcome is shaped by institutions and politics, which in turn are shaped by people. If markets are servants of their governance, when and how will people work together to master them?

Uncommon Markets explores how people work together to confront two connected trends: the growing pressure on natural resources from trade and development and the experimentation with tradable property rights to address these pressures. Strengthening institutions for collective action in the context of these experiments can result in better governance of fisheries, freshwater, and biodiversity, three quintessential common pool resources that evade capture and commodification. From the ancient water sharing system of Oman and tanker water markets in sub-Saharan Africa to the enshrinement of market principles through constitutional reforms from Chile to China, global experimentation reveals the diversity of ways markets shape access to shared resources. Hidden in this diversity are recurring patterns and distinct archetypes of collective action in markets for natural resources. The synthesis of global evidence and the in-depth cases explored in the book demonstrate that uncommon markets – defined by patterns of cooperation and conflict, not just competition – are more common than we think.

STATUS: On-going

NEWAVE: PATTERNS OF WATER GOVERNANCE

NEWAVE is an Innovative Training Network funded by the European Commission. The network supports 15 early-stage researchers examining water governance. The aims of this project are trilateral, (1) to amalgamate not only a trans-national but a trans-disciplinary network of water governance organisations, (2) develop and implement an innovative, actionable research agenda on the key water governance priorities along with providing insights for future directions and (3) train a new generation of water governance early stage researchers, ensuring they are equipped with the trans/interdisciplinary skills to make significant contributions to both the academic and extra-academic water governance world.

We attempt to create our own distinct window on the water governance debate by utilizing a three “P” system.  P — problématiques — which allows the team to intensely examine the nature of contemporary water problems, diagnose them and develop an understanding of the socio-hydrological conditions. The second P — paradigms — engages with the ideational foundations of water governance, allowing us to understand why aspects of certain approaches have been accepted and embraced, why they are propagated, and how the global circulation of ideas about governance works. The third P — patterns — explicitly uncovers the socio-environmental impacts of various patterns and modes of governance, allowing us to assess their performance.

STATUS: On-going

DESIGNING CLIMATE AND WATER SMART AGRICULTURAL SOLUTIONS IN COMPLEX WORKING LANDSCAPES

SOLUTIONSCAPES

Solutionscapes seeks to design climate and water smart agricultural solutions in complex working landscapes across Canada. This project will develop a pan-Canadian, spatially explicit solution portfolios in an effort to move Canada towards a net-zero GHG future while also prioritizing water quality and other ecosystem service outcomes. Utilizing a synergistic method, SOLUTIONSCAPES brings together multiple bioenergy (manure to biogas) and nature-based approaches (e.g., cover crops, wetland restoration) in agricultural landscapes. Our aims extend past quantifying not just the outcomes for carbon, but additionally, the effects on water quality, food-provisioning, and a range of other ecosystem services.

The focus of Blue Range Labs is to map stakeholders, networks, and incentives to inform the development of integrated solutions across conservation agriculture, bioenergy, and wetland conservation.

STATUS: On-going, September 1st, 2022 - September 1st, 2027

ANCHOR FOR LINK

THE HIDDEN WEALTH OF NATIONS: GROUNDWATER GOVERNANCE

This project responds to the The World Bank’s flagship findings in High and Dry, which highlighted the need for a paradigm shift in water allocation and governance to alleviate poverty, sustain growth and build resilience. Our objectives are twofold, we aim to supplement Institutional innovations in groundwater management and present several case studies.

The former will be completed with regional and rapid reviews of institutional innovations for groundwater management, leveraging ongoing work and rapid reviews of groundwater markets with trends across 40-50 studies in the past 10 years, focused in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Additionally, with lessons about institutional design and strengthening from the common pool resource governance literature in four areas: (1) setting extraction limits, (2) reforming groundwater rights, (3) community approaches to groundwater monitoring, and (4) external policy interventions, with a focus on agricultural supports and energy pricing.

STATUS: On-going, November 2022 - May 2023

ANCHOR TIE

Thirsty Cities pushes the frontiers of theory, advances new data and methods, and seeks to uncover policy insights about the principles and pathways for more effective and equitable collective action across rural-urban commons. Urbanization is an important context for examining these relationships, particularly in relation to water and development as competition for freshwater between cities and agriculture is projected to rapidly grow over the next 50 years. Our first initiative advancing this project was a high-impact systematic review examining the status and trends of water reallocation from rural to urban regions based on academic literature and policy documents. This systematic review laid the foundation for the Global Reallocation Database (GRaD) and identified 69 urban agglomerations receiving water through 103 reallocation projects. Together, these projects move roughly 16 billion m3 of water per year across 13,000 kilometers from rural to urban regions. These results were also published in a World Bank policy document.


PUBLICATIONS

Garrick et al. (2019). Rural water for thirsty cities: a systematic review of water reallocation from rural to urban regions. Environmental Research Letters, 14. E043003. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab0db7

Garrick et al. (2019). Dividing the Water, Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Rural-to-Urban Water Reallocation. World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/32050

THIRSTY CITIES