Evaluating the effectiveness of land and water integrative practices for achieving water sustainability within the Colorado River Basin: perceptions and indicators

ABSTRACT

Principle 12 of the OECD Principles on Water Governance calls for the evaluation of sustainable water policies, which to be effective must be salient, credible and legitimate. Using a 2021 survey of land and water managers within the Colorado River Basin, we examine the salience, credibility and legitimacy of two approaches to evaluate policies that integrate water and land management: using practitioners’ perceptions of policies effectiveness to achieve water sustainability goals, and the importance of indicators to assess the water sustainability of a community. Results show perceptions of policy effectiveness and indicator importance vary with the context of organization and place.

KEYWORDS:

• Land and water integration
• water management
• land planning
• water sustainability indicators
• policy evaluation
• Colorado River Basin

Acknowledgments

This work was funded, in part, by the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and by the National Science Foundation SES-0951366.

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Author contribution statement

The Land Wager Survey (LWS) project was initiated in 2019. RQ was the project manager for ASU and FS was the project manager for Lincoln. The project was conceived in a workshop with RQ, FS, RA, DW, JH, ZS, and ER2. Questions were initially developed by RA and finalized in a workshop with RQ, FS, RA, DW, JH, ZS, and ER2. ER2 and RQ developed the list of practices, RQ and ZS developed the list of indicators, AB and ER1 developed the secondary data. RQ, ER1 and AB developed the list of targeted survey cohorts and managed the survey deployment. RQ, ER1, and DW designed and conducted the statistical analysis. RQ, FS, RA, ER1, AB, DW, JH, ZS, and ER2 reviewed results. RQ and FS created the initial article draft which was reviewed by ER1, RA, AB, DW, JH, ZS, and ER2 before submission, RQ and FS managed the submission and peer and editor review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation

This research focused on the Colorado River Basin states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming within the United States of America.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy [V10R010-VAS050720]; NSF [SES 0951366].