NCDC221: Causes and Consequences of Individual and Collective Actions to Protect Water Resources
(Multistate Research Coordinating Committee and Information Exchange Group)
Status: Inactive/Terminating
NCDC221: Causes and Consequences of Individual and Collective Actions to Protect Water Resources
Duration: 12/02/2009 to 12/02/2011
Administrative Advisor(s):
NIFA Reps:
Non-Technical Summary
Statement of Issues and Justification
Individual and collective actions, intended and unintended, have consequences that put the quality of our water resources at risk. Non-point source (NPS) pollutants delivered across the landscape are a primary source of impairment of US waters (National Water Quality Inventory Report to Congress http:www.epa.gov/305b). Although NPS pollution is diffuse, its ultimate source is readily understood as rooted in the day-to-day actions and management decisions of all citizens, urban and rural (Morton and Brown, in press).
The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) reports that siltation, nutrients, bacteria, metals, and oxygen-depleting substances are among the top contributors to water impairment in the nation (http:www.epa.gov/305b). USEPA estimates that the agricultural sector is the largest source of impairment affecting nearly half of all streams and rivers that have water quality problems and the source of more than 45% of damage to lakes and 18% of damage to estuaries (Ribaudo and Johansson 2006). Further, agriculture accounts for most of the drained wetlands in the contiguous 48 states (Hansen 2006) and a majority of threatened or endangered species listed (Cox 2007; Batie 2009). When an excess of contaminants such as phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment loss from human activities in agriculture, industries and urban areas leak into water bodies upstream the result is often downstream hypoxia (Gulf Hypoxia 2008 Action Plan).
Hypoxia, areas in water bodies with low oxygen, has continued to form in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay and other bays and river outlets throughout the US. As a result most marine life is absent and the biology of the Gulf and bays is changed significantly threatening economic as well as ecological conditions of these coastal regions. These nutrients cause extensive growth of algae that deplete the oxygen in the water when they die, sink to the bottom and decompose (Gulf Hypoxia 2008 Action Plan).
Two water bodies with significant hypoxic zones are the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay. The Gulf of Mexico is fed by the Mississippi River, which drains a land mass comprising 41 percent of the contiguous United States. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, and the third largest in the world. The watershed covers approximately 64,000 square miles of the northeast and mid-Atlantic states (New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, and Washington DC. Of particular concern in the Mississippi River Basin and the Chesapeake Bay region are the sediments, nitrogen, and phosphorous that derive from a combination of nonpoint sources (agriculture, development, and urban runoff) and point sources (wastewater treatment plants).
Central to solving the problem of impaired waters is recognition of the role of humans, individually and collectively. Current land use decisions, identification of water resource problems, beliefs that the environment is at risk, perceptions of the need to act and willingness to engage in finding solutions are all factors that influence how water resources are managed. The importance of wide public involvement in solving the complex problems of water quality and NPS was a common theme in 2000 reports to USEPA by 39 states, tribes and territories submitting drinking water use data and reporting on the condition of their water bodies. A multi-state random sample water issue survey completed in 36 of the U.S. states (2002 through 2009) conducted by Dr. Robert Mahler, University of Idaho under a USDA Integrated Water Quality project reveals that the overall average perception for surface water quality is fair. The overall average perception of ground water quality is midway between fair and good/excellent, although higher than that of surface water (Hu and Morton in press).
Although these findings suggest modest public awareness of water resources issues, key social, economic and ecological events and the mechanisms by which these conditions are translated into individual and collective actions and lead to changes in behaviors are not well understood. Similarly, the draft strategies on the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River Basin Task Force include many efforts to assist with land management at the local level technical assistance, education, and resources to help land owners, local governments, and watershed-based organizations to make better decisions about land use and management. Public education campaigns can provide information to residents about the impacts of the land management activities on their nearby waterways. What is lacking, however, is an understanding of the decision-making process between awareness and action, or how other non-educational events might trigger awareness and action.
The gap in knowledge/importance of proposed work
Policy tools designed to provide incentives, fines, and technical support for voluntary and cost effective actions by citizens and communities have been the dominant framework applied by agencies with NPS oversight. This has meant using existing programs and encouraging adaptive management, sometimes successfully, other times not. The social sciences have not been systematically applied to discover which policy tools are most effective in changing behaviors and practices and to build a body of knowledge as to why they are effective, and how they might be modeled to guide future interventions. Yet programs are being created and implemented at multiple levels of government as well as by nonprofit organizations that attempt to change land management behavior without a clear social science knowledge base from which to create those interventions.
Although much of the biological science and technological solutions have been tested, the social and human science understanding of barriers and motivations for implementing/not implementing actions that reduce water resource impairments are not well understood. If we do not develop a clear, scientifically-sound understanding of human behaviors related to water management, we will continue to spend public money ineffectively on educational and voluntary programs without significant impact on water quality. Lack of adequate progress on water quality criteria could trigger regulatory actions in the Mississippi River Basin and the Chesapeake Bay under the Clean Water Act (Perez, Cox and Cook, 2009). This move towards tighter regulations and punitive sanctions could put increasing pressure on both social and natural scientists to ensure that the science behind programs and policies is sound; currently, we do not have the social science knowledge we need to undergird such policy directions.
We propose this multistate research technical committee to begin to fill the gap in the knowledge base of social-human interactions with water resource management. This project proposes to address the following research questions
1. What are the key events/conditions leading to change in conservation behaviors and resource management/land use decisions by stakeholders (land owners/managers) and organizations (non-profit, governmental)?
2. What are the mechanisms by which these events/conditions are translated into actions?
3. What role do social, economic, political, demographic, geographic, and natural resource conditions play in influencing these mechanisms?
4. What types of key events/conditions lead to which types of outcomes?
5. What is the interaction between individual and collective actions to protect water resources?
Technical feasibility of the research
We intend to use methods and techniques with significant research support within the social sciences, covering both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Advantages of doing the work as a multistate effort
Current team members represent two key basins Mississippi River and Chesapeake Bay that contribute to the development of significant hypoxic zones in major national water bodies. These two areas are also currently the focus of major federal and state efforts to remediate and prevent pollution. Multi-state efforts create openings for quasi-experimental designs and comparative analysis. Working through a multistate team will enable the researchers to develop and test knowledge about the individual and collective actions to improve water quality across multiple ecological, cultural, political, and social contexts. In other words, working across regions will allow the researchers to more accurately identify triggers of behavioral change and under what conditions those triggers effect change. Further, many of the social scientists participating in this research have excellent case study data that are specific to their states or regions. Working across multiple states will allow for comparisons of these cases to identify key variables.
To date, the opportunities and funding for across state collaboration have been limited.
Likely outcomes and impacts from successfully completing the work
We see two broad types of impacts of this work, enhanced knowledge for academics and improved programs and decision-making for policy-makers. First, we envision enhanced knowledge about the triggers of behavioral change related to water resources. To do this, we will initially synthesize past and current case studies across states to identify common and unique social patterns that influence individual and collective actions. We will then develop a typology of these key events and conditions, and develop models of the mechanisms by which these events/conditions lead to both individual and collective actions related to local water resource management. Using this research, we will develop formal individual, collective and multi-level models of behavior related to water resource management that can then be tested across multiple scales and regions.
The second major area of impact of this research will be to provide information and guidance for resource management agencies (such as EPA and state level agencies) so that they have an enhanced understanding of the contribution of the social sciences to solving impaired water issues. These agencies will be better poised to develop tools for encouraging conservation behaviors that supplement and enhance current educational efforts. We also expect to develop adaptive management strategy guidelines that can be used to guide community development interventions, such as those used by nonprofit natural resource organizations (e.g., local watershed groups) and local government agencies to effectively mobilize resources for consistent water quality outcomes.