Watershed management networks and the necessary role of collaboration

Excerpt

An interesting paradox is raised in the classic article written by Garrett Hardin entitled The Tragedy of the Commons. The paradox is a helpful model/metaphor in trying to understand the need to actively collaborate in environmental policy and implementation due to its grounding in a natural resource. In Hardin's essay, everyone is free to graze their cattle on the commons at will as much as they want. Driven by individual interest and short-term gain, everyone overgrazes the commons, leading ultimately to the destruction of the commons. Each was behaving in an individually rational way, but their lack of collaboration led to the collective ruin of all. It highlights the divergence between being rational at the individual level and being rational for the collective good (Hardin 1968). In many ways, watersheds and the institutions that manage them can create something of an institutional tragedy of the commons if they do not effectively collaborate.

Watershed management is not a new idea—it was first proposed in the United States by John Powell in the 1880s, as he envisioned organizing and governing according to watershed boundaries rather than political boundaries in the expanding west (McGinnis et al. 1999). In the modern era of watershed…