The importance of participation in environmental decision making has been long recognised at the international and local scale (UN, 1992; UNECE, 1998). This has been identified as both a democratic right and key to identifying successful management decisions (Reed, 2008; Rault and Jeffrey, 2008; UNESCO-WWAP, 2006). Proponents of partnership approaches argue that they offer multiple social, economic and environmental benefits over traditional ‘top-down’ approaches. First, stakeholder participation in partnership approaches can integrate different interests, perspectives and values (Muro and Jeffrey, 2008; Pahl-Wostl et al., 2007), essential for fully understanding and defining problems (Mysiak et al., 2005). Second, decisions made through a transparent and collaborative process that includes different stakeholders’ perspectives and knowledge will be more legitimate and are expected to be of higher quality (Carr, 2015). Third, partnerships help to bring together different types of knowledge (i.e. scientific and local) which can generate innovative solutions to adequately address local environmental issues. From an economic perspective, partnerships can also promote more flexible and cost-effective strategies (Carr, 2015; Lubell et al., 2002).
Within water management participation and collaboration is considered particularly necessary due to the high levels of complexity, uncertainty and conflicting interests, as well as the fact that a highly interconnected web of land, water, biota, vegetation and human activities affect water, requiring coordinated responses.
Despite the acknowledgement of the need for participatory approaches to environmental management there is often little evaluation to provide evidence of the benefits, furthermore collaborative resource management and governance has had mixed successes (Benson et al., 2015; Ruiz-Villaverde & García-Rubio, 2017). Within water governance there are often concerns about tokenism and the legitimacy of non-government stakeholders in decision making, adequate levels of funding and how to sustain levels of engagement within partnerships (Collins et al., 2020). Therefore, there is a need to understand the factors which contribute to improving partnership working and what can be done to support successful outcomes.
In 2013 the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) adopted the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA), which aims to take a collaborative and participatory approach to water management across 106 catchments in England. Since 2017 a national monitoring and evaluation reporting framework for CaBA partnerships has been in place (Collins et al., 2020). The latest reporting period has found that for every £1 government invested Catchment Partnerships have raised £3.5 from non-government sources. However, there is variation within the partnerships and so more work is needed to understand the enabling factors which support successful partnership working. Therefore, this PhD project, working with CaBA, will investigate the development of an evaluation approach that can be used to identify the environmental, social and financial outcomes of the approach and crucially the factors that influence their emergence. This will not only be of use to UK Government and the agencies tasked with implementing CaBA, as it will identify how to support greater benefits from collaboration but will also contribute to wider international debates on how to monitor, evaluate and encourage participatory approaches to environmental management.
How to apply:
- Details on how to apply can be found in here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy/study/phd/how-to-apply/
- Applicants should also complete the online LISS-DTP Diversity Monitoring Form
- The closing date for applications is: 1st March 2025
- Interviews will be held on: to be confirmed
- This project is offered as full-time only
- For any queries contact alexandra.collins@imperial.ac.uk