Waterclimate Project
Collaborative environmental governance organizations in the face of climate change
The cases of Spanish and French river basins
Environmental management research shows that governance and regulatory organizations can be very slow at engaging with a new biophysical issue, losing precious time to fight key issues such as climate change. This is surprising given that experts working in these organizations are exposed to scientific research and responsible for developing the frameworks and plans that guide the management of natural resources and ecosystems. Deliberations within and around these organizations are a necessary and vital step in the development of strategies and action plans to address environmental problems.
This project aims to explain how and why new biophysical topics emerge in the deliberations of collaborative environmental governance organizations, and extend prior research on environmental governance. The project will analyse the emergence of environmental topics in river basin governance organizations and society using topic modeling techniques, and investigate the mechanisms that cause changes in river basin governance organizations discourse using econometrics and word embeddings techniques. More specifically, the project, aims at investigating the following questions:
- How and when do new biophysical issues emerge as topics in the deliberations of collaborative governance organizations?
- Does discourse at a broader social level precedes or follow deliberations in river basin organizations?
- What is the role of participants from different constituencies in the emergence of these topics?
- What is the influence of international, national, regional political, economic, social and ecological factors in the evolution of discourse?
- What can explain differences in discourse evolution observed across different collaborative governance organizations and countries?
The research results will advance our knowledge of processes that drive environmental topics emergence in collaborative environmental governance organizations; processes which affect whether society can respond in a timely manner to climate change emergencies.
Project PID2021-127560NB-I00
Team
François Collet
Professor at the Esade Department of People Management and Organisation
Director of the Master of Research in Management Sciences
Funded by:
MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and “FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa”