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11 The Future of Collaboration During my year as a visiting researcher in Brisbane, I sat at a desk overlooking a courtyard lined with palm trees. This subtropical climate has been one of the factors leading to more than twenty years of substantial growth in South East Queensland. Yet the climate in the region didn’t seem very subtropical during my stay. I was amazed to learn that the region had not had a significant tropical storm since I moved away from Brisbane seven years earlier. Years of drought combined with the addition of thousands of new residents led to dramatic water restrictions. Furthermore , urbanization and recreation increased environmental pressures on the region. The policy response trends typify the kinds of environmental management approaches that are likely to compete with each other in the future. One approach has been highly collaborative. The South East Queensland Healthy Waterways Partnership has been working for over a decade to improve water quality in the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay. It has produced a partnership among state agencies, local governments, private partners, and the community through a range of actions, including regulations, restoration efforts, infrastructure investments, education and outreach, and volunteer efforts. The work in the basin has been recognized through national awards as it struggles to address increasing demands from population growth along with dramatic cycles of drought and flood. The other approach involved little collaboration. The extended drought created a water supply crisis. In response, the Queensland Water Commission imposed Level 6 water restrictions that severely limited the use of water for things like landscaping, pools, and car washing. Residents were installing rain tanks, diverting shower water to gardens, and having water trucked in from outside the region. In 2007, the state of Queensland unilaterally announced it would construct a new reservoir on the Mary River north of Brisbane to increase supply for the region. The controversial project would have dammed a free-flowing river that is home to Mary River cod and turtle, which are both listed by the Queensland government as endangered species.1 290 Chapter 11 These cases represent two water resource management issues in the same region under the same administration, but with different approaches. They each offer characteristics about the problems, process, and context that may help explain the Queensland government’s response. For example, if the government is determined to build a dam somewhere, there is little room for a negotiated agreement. Rather than analyzing why the government took this approach, I use this case to illustrate that interactive and discursive approaches to decision making may take place side by side traditional, top-down decision making. This example raises the question of how future pressures such as drought, floods, and catastrophic weather will affect the way we govern environmental issues. It also remains to be seen how complex problems, such as urban sprawl, deforestation, overfishing, and greenhouse gas emissions will play out in terms of governance. This chapter considers the future of collaboration through several different lenses. It looks at some of the broader trends affecting environmental management and governance. It then reviews the trends specific to action, organizational, and policy collaboratives. Finally, it explores some of the key questions for government, community , and researchers. Contextual Trends Collaboration has been described by some as a “movement” or a “new management paradigm,” which implies that it is being driven by collective action or management thinking. While these factors have played a part in advancing the role of collaboration , I believe there are also some broader contextual trends that suggest a continued need for some version of a collaborative governance approach. First, as noted throughout this book, the increased importance of diffuse environmental problems is one reason for the increased use of collaboration. In developed countries like the United States, water pollution control is continuing to shift its focus to runoff from urban and rural areas, thereby requiring many changes in individual behaviors and practices. Similarly, there is increasing attention in air pollution control around travel behavior, urban form, and attitudes toward alternative transportation. This will not replace the need for ongoing regulatory controls on point water and air source pollution. As the incremental benefits of these controls become smaller and increasingly more expensive, however, there will be increasing concentration on diffuse sources. Second, there is more concern about complex and difficult (or wicked) problems, such as greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, natural hazards, and endangered species. Each of these issues requires signi...

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