How Collaborative Governance Practitioners Can Assess the Effectiveness of Collaborative Environmental Governance, While Also Evaluating Their Own Services

Abstract

Collaborative governance applied to environmental issues is becoming more common, and evaluation of such efforts can provide useful information for multiple audiences. However, due to a variety of challenges, collaborative governance practitioners rarely evaluate the outcomes of collaboration and their contributions to these efforts. With these challenges in mind, the William D. Ruckelshaus Center designed an evaluation framework that can meet multiple parties’ objectives, be integrated into practitioners’ existing services, and balance flexibility and practicality with rigor and replicability. The Center conducted a pilot of this framework on a collaborative watershed management effort in southeastern Washington State, where the Center had previously assisted with organizational development. The resulting evaluation highlights a variety of social, knowledge-based, and economic outcomes for the collaborative, as well as lessons for practitioners and evaluators of collaborative governance. We suggest that this methodology can be useful for practitioners interested in evaluating similar collaborative efforts.

Keywords:

• Collaborative governance
• conflict resolution
• conservation
• evaluation
• natural resources
• water management

Acknowledgements

Portions of this article are drawn from a report entitled Revisiting Many Waters: An Evaluation of the Walla Walla Water Management Initiative, written by Trevor Robinson and published by the William D. Ruckelshaus Center in December 2016.