Episode 12: Water Reform in California Institutional Ecosystems
“Previously, we might have said all collaborative processes are a better way to go about this; we always want multiple voices heard. SGMA has pointed out that we need to think critically about what types of collaborative processes actually facilitate engagement…Just to give you some context— only 12% of the 260 GSAs have representation from tribal groups, disadvantaged communities, or small farmers not affiliated with an irrigation district. When we talk about disparities in procedural justice in these collaborative processes, this is what we are talking about.”
Jess Rudnick & linda estelí méndez barrientos
A conversation with UC Davis doctoral researchers Linda Estelí Méndez Barrientos and Jess Rudnick about water governance, institutional reforms, equity, and participation in California. Note: The CA Water Code referenced in this episode is § 10721, (j). Recorded July 7, 2020
guests on the show
Dr. Linda Estelí Méndez Barrientos
Linda Estelí Méndez Barrientos received her doctorate in Ecology at UC Davis, specializing in environmental governance and computational social science. Her research seeks to improve our understanding of power asymmetries among actors, and how it shapes institutional change and policy implementation as new institutions are deliberated and co-created. Méndez-Barrientos combines participant observation, in-depth interviews, ethnographic methods, as well as survey, archival and network analysis. She enjoys teaching, mentoring and serve in various committees to improve diversity and access to higher education. Learn more here and follow her on Twitter @riodesangre.
Dr. Jess Rudnick
Jess Rudnick received her doctorate Ecology at UC Davis. Her research interests focus around the human dimension of agricultural-environmental issues. For her dissertation work, Rudnick has been closely studying farmer decision-making on nitrogen management for its importance to water quality, soil health and greenhouse gas emissions in California. I am passionate about science communication, scientist engagement with public policy, and expanding equitable access and opportunity to science education, from youth to higher ed. Learn more here and follow her on Twitter @jess_rudnick.
TRANSCRIPT
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to water talk from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. I'm Dr. Mallika Nocco, a cooperative extension specialist in soil plant water relations and irrigation management.
Sam Sandoval
Hi, I'm Sam Sandoval. I'm faculty and an extension specialist in water resources.
Faith Kearns
And I'm Faith Kearns, the academic coordinator for the California Institute for Water Resources.
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water Talk. Thank you so much for joining us. Today we are talking about water and governance in California. And we're speaking with Linda Esteli Mendez Barrientos and Jess Rudnick. Both of them are doctoral candidates at UC Davis and they broadly work on issues related to water governance. Jess is currently focused on issues related to farmer behavior and agricultural environmental governance, and Linda is focused on institutional change and reform in the water sector. Both Linda and Jess are stellar water scholars studying these issues that are critical in California, and really have some wonderful and unique perspectives, as well as expertise. And we're just really excited to have them here and looking forward to speaking more with them.
Sam Sandoval
Definitely super excited. And so let's actually, I mean, I know a lot of your work, but it will be good if you can explain that to our audience. So let's actually start with you, Jess. Could you tell us what do you do?
Jess Rudnick
Sure. And thank you all for having us. It's really exciting to be here. So like Sam said, I am a fifth year PhD student in the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior. And most of my work is focused around understanding farmer behavior on environmental issues. Specifically I've focused around nitrogen fertilizer management in California. And we know farmers use fertilizer to enhance their crop yields and production. But the problem is when too much fertilizer is applied to the land, excess can leave the farm and end up in our freshwater resources, through runoff or leaching into groundwater. And this has caused a lot of public health challenges with contaminating drinking water, and ecosystem damage across the state. In fact, there's more than a million people in California that are drinking nitrogen contaminated drinking water.
The state has developed sort of an interesting, unique approach to addressing this problem, which is called the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program. It's sort of a one of a kind nonpoint source pollution regulation approach in the U.S. There's an outreach and education component that requires farmers participate in ongoing continuing education. And then there's a reporting requirement where farmers have to actually report how much nitrogen fertilizer they're applying, how much might be removed in their crop yields, and then we can tell what’s leftover. And then what types of best management practices they're implementing on their land to try to reduce what nitrogen might be able to leave the land. So in that context, my research is really focused on trying to understand what the barriers and motivations to farmers adopting best management practices are, and how those differ across different types of farms and farmers across the state. We know that California agriculture is incredibly diverse. And so the types of practices that might be applicable to different types of farms and farmers can really vary.
We're also interested in understanding who influences these decisions. There's a bunch of actors that engage with agriculture information exchange in California. Obviously, we have UC Cooperative Extension. We have private industry actors and commodity boards. We have governing agencies like the water boards and water coalitions, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Department of Pesticide Regulation. So we have all of these players who might be able to shape and teach farmers how to engage with these issues. And so we're interested in better understanding who influences the way farmers think about nitrogen. And then finally, we've looked a little bit at this regulatory policy and trying to understand what aspects of it really motivate behavior change. How do farmers learn through this regulatory program? Where are these sort of positive social norms coming from and how might that be replicated in other places? I'm happy to dig into more of any of that and share more of what we've found, but it's been really awesome fieldwork. And we've worked with a huge collaborative team and a bunch of partners across the state to do this nitrogen fertilizer management challenge.
Mallika Nocco
Super exciting and fascinating work, Jess. We are definitely going to dig in more, but before we do that I want to ask Linda a similar question, which is, you know, Linda, can you tell us a little bit more about the work that you do looking at institutional change and governance and water?
Linda Mendez Barrientos
Sure, yeah. And thanks again, as well for the opportunity to share our work here with you guys and a broader audience. So basically over the past decade, I've been studying institutional reforms in the water sector, both internationally in South Africa and Ecuador, but also here in California. And I have a focus on racial and environmental justice. And I've learned two main things from these very different places on different continents with different histories. And the first one is that when we introduce and try to implement change, it oftentimes is very difficult. People question it, people resist it, and even circumvent it in various ways, and at the core of that human behavior lies a question of who wins and loses when we introduce new rules of management practice, or new policies, or even, you know, new management regimes. And so since I have yet to meet someone that likes losing, whoever has the access and capacity to control their policy processes, where all of these discussions and decisions are being made, then typically controls the distribution of harms and goods in society.
And the second thing, very related to that, is that are the heart of the challenge of implementing a policy and taking a policy from the design all the way to implementing it lies in the power asymmetries that we have, that we see, inherent in policy processes. And more broadly, the inequality that exists in access and capacity to be able to benefit, to be able to engage and participate and actually use resources, such as water. And so those two things, acknowledging that implementing policy, implementing change, is difficult and one of the reasons why, or the missing piece, of why we have such a difficulty in bringing about social and environmental change is power. And so acknowledging power, power differences and power asymmetries has been like this almost taboo question or taboo subject among policymakers.
We have not, you know, in the institutional theory, but also in the policymaking world, we have not acknowledged that there are these disparities, inherent disparities that are the result of, you know, they're socially constructed through our history, and that precludes the very goal of implementing successfully, you know, whatever policies. And so I've chosen to study that in the water world and in the water sector. But this is something I just wanted to frame, that goes beyond the issues of all, you know, different water issues that we have both in surface and groundwater. It permeates all policymaking in society. And so, I will leave it at that. I can talk more about my work on SGMA and my dissertation, or my work in South Africa as well. But that's kind of like that unifying thread I see and the motivation I see for my work.
Sam Sandoval
Linda, following on that is a recent publication that you that have, the two of you, Alyssa, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard wrote that was related to this. The ability of small farmers to participate in this new groundwater regulation. So, this question is to both of you, could you explain us what motivated you, and it seems that you have already explained some of it...
Linda Mendez Barrientos
We recently published -- like a couple weeks ago -- a paper that studies farmer participation in this big water law in California you may be familiar with, which is called the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, also known as SGMA. And SGMA is an effort to basically break with lack of management -- this free-for-all wrong water that we had before 2015 and it changes that to common pool resource management, meaning multiple actors in multiple areas, overlaying a groundwater aquifer can come together to negotiate and decide, you know, the vision of management for their groundwater basin. And so within that policy context, a group of colleagues Jessica Rudnick, Alyssa DeVincentis -- pretty much the three of us with our other, we were part of this like NSF IGERT program. So it was a group of interdisciplinary grad students that in 2016 planned this conference.
I would like to say it was one of the first conferences in the state dedicated exclusively to the study of SGMA. And so we planned that conference in April 2016. And we had a farmer panel that Jessica and Alyssa led and in the panel, we had three different farmers of different scales. We have you know, very big industrial farmer, a medium size farmer, and an organic small farmer being represented at the farmer table and that led to many conversations and these questions that we explore in the paper. And it led to a first publication that Jessica led in California Agriculture in November of that year. And subsequently, we expanded the work from those three interviews that Alyssa and Jess started. And we interviewed 27 farmers distributed across the state, of different sizes, to really try to get at that question of like, do they even know about SGMA? How are they engaging and participating with a policy? You know, what motivates their participation? What precludes their participation and engagement?
Through that process, we basically found -- there are three main findings of the paper now published in the last couple weeks in Society and Natural Resources. The first one is that the institutional setup, the institutional ecosystem that existed before SGMA was passed. So SGMA is like the change that is introduced in 2014, but it doesn't mean that there was nothing there before, right? California was built centuries ago with water in mind and agriculture. The irrigation districts and the water districts that are in place are basically the vehicle through which SGMA gets implemented. So that social, economic, and political context shaped the axis of who is managing the new groundwater management agencies, who is being represented in those new governing institutions, basically, who has access. So that's the first one of the first big takeaways that we see in who has access and who doesn't in SGMA. The second thing that we found out that is super important is that we saw that all the farmers across it, whether they're small, big, or medium size, they had this discourse of you know, local management and aversion to the state intervention. And that was also a big motivator for them to be able to participate in SGMA. So it's different to the first finding that differentiates farmers in terms of their access to water and irrigation districts, this other situation, you know, basically brings all the farmers together in trying to participate, but then the defining factor in whether they are able to engage in SGMA or not is the capacity to basically overcome the transaction costs of participation.
What this means is that we found that farmers had larger agricultural properties, land size basically, they have more labor, they have people that were able to go to the meetings and represent them. You know, in some cases, the agency people, they're basically paying their salary. They basically pay to go to these meetings. Well, small farmers with less land, less human resources, time constraints in their operations, preclude them to actively, you know, participate in SGMA and be adequately represented. And with our engagement with Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, who is at UC Cooperative Extension, an expert in the Fresno office, we also tried to reach out to a smaller Hmong farmers. And another thing that she brought into the paper and that I think was an amazing contribution to the depth of our findings, was that even ethnicity and language access also play an important factor in who has access to SGMA and who can pull benefit from SGMA as well. Did you want to add anything, Jess?
Jess Rudnick
That was great. I'll just on top of that, sort of highlight that what Linda was saying that these small farmers are less able to engage for many reasons. We sort of expanded on that to even look at what these Groundwater Sustainability Plans that have now emerged in the last six months are doing and how they're representing small farmers and diversified agriculture in the new management plans going forward. And the flip side of that is how might these small farms be impacted by the plans that are being put forth , particularly in the Fresno and Tulare counties and Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in that region. We've looked at how the small, socially disadvantaged farmers there who are mostly Hmong and Laotian, Mien, refugee immigrant farming families are being represented and potentially impacted by these new management plans.
The findings are a little grim right now, We're working a lot with these agencies to suggest how to do better outreach into these communities that are less connected to mainstream agriculture information networks. But we also know these folks rely on small, shallower groundwater wells. And those wells are most likely to go dry under these new types of management plans. So just connecting from everything that Linda summarized in terms of who is able to participate and engage and then what that looks like down the line when these new management plans are being written by the folks in the room participating and advocating for their needs. We're seeing that the small farms who are less represented in these processes might be more impacted in the management plans going forward.
Mallika Nocco
The two of you just now, and actually for those who, we just heard that Ruth Dahlquist-Willard was mentioned, she had done a previous episode just focusing on small farms. So if you want to revisit some of those issues, that would be a good one to listen to, to kind of catch up and get the foundation for this conversation. First of all, the two of you that study that you had led and published, Jess, and then this second study, Linda, that you've led and published, as well as the work that you just described you're doing looking at these GSA plans that are now coming out.
This is creating just so much additional richness and analyses that I think all of us who are interested in how water governance and how SGMA is going to be working in California need to really take a hard look at and think about, especially those of us who are in the position to act based on this new information. And I guess what my question is for the two of you is we're, you know, in a pickle. What can we do, what can different actors do at this point in the game to try to address some of the problems and issues that have that have been highlighted, I guess, by SGMA.
Linda Mendez Barrientos
So the problem is that a lot of processes are path dependent, meaning once they're set up in place, it's more difficult to change them, right? So there's definitely going to be many friction -- or what I call different forces -- are going to come to play now that things have been set up. So already these communities, they were at a disadvantage before. Now, SGMA has basically formalized they're disadvantaged to participate in groundwater governance. And now it will take, I think it will take the State Water Control Board and DWR to really take a more aggressive approach and draw the line on, and question, are these institutions are they really democratic, who are they benefiting or representing? Do we need to take a more top down approach, a combination of like, yes, you have your GSA at the local level, but there are all these communities who are not being represented in your GSA. So, you know, maybe it will require some states -- I don't want to call it a state intervention because that's like, local policy, they don't like that word.
But I think to ensure that there is some adequate representation from everyone in the agencies that are supposed to manage groundwater, it will require at this point that the state -- whether it's DWR or the State Board to come in and revise the plans, revise the very structures of the GSAs and say, you know what, you need to broaden your representation and your access. So I think that's something that will be very difficult to do. We would -- like Jess mentioned the political will, we have a governor that has the political will and environmental justice and the current administration is supposed to be very, at least responding to these type of issues. So now the question is how to translate that very performative, top down image of support for environmental justice and translate that to the agencies and to trickle down all the way to the GSAs. To me, that's the most logical way in which we can ensure, you know, more equity in SGMA, but Jess, you want to add anything else?
Jess Rudnick
Sure. I'll just add the extension perspective. I think that there's a huge role for everything Linda was saying in terms of how does the state intervene and think and review about these plans that have been submitted? But then there's what we all can do in our everyday and our work with these communities already. And I think our partnership with Ruth Dahlquist-Willard really highlighted this -- she has shifted her focus from the ecological biophysical questions she was originally working on to how do I engage with these communities and equip them with the tools they need to know where the meeting is happening, know how to participate, what to be looking for in a plan, how to submit a public comment? How can we use our technical and scientific backgrounds to help the communities that we're serving and working with ask the questions and reflect and review on the plans in a way that highlights where their needs are or are not being met? And then providing the technical support, the toolbox of how to engage in these policy processes, which frankly a lot of folks just maybe have other things to do.
It takes time, it takes know how of where to go and fish through the many government websites to know how and where to submit a public comment and when it's due, and what that should look like. So that is where we as the extension and land grant university and advisors in working with these communities can, you know, today start interjecting and thinking about how to facilitate and empower these groups to be present and active in the process. You know, SGMA really points out how do collaborative processes allow for or enable certain voices to be heard? Where previously we might have said, oh, all collaborative approaches are a better way to go about this, we always want to have multiple voices heard. And really all of this work has pointed out that we need to think very critically about what types of collaborative process really does facilitate engagement.
Linda Mendez Barrientos
I just want to add a little bit of context for everyone, to what Jess said, just to give you a context for how the numbers look like. Only 12% of the 260 GSAs that have been formed have representation from tribal groups, disadvantaged communities, or small farmers who are not affiliated with water or irrigation district -- only 12%. So the numbers are, you know, when we talk about the disparities in the procedural justice and the disparities of representation in these agencies, this is what we're talking about.
Mallika Nocco
That was a very rousing call to action, I think. And I don't know if I'm just new to some of these terms, or if all are, but I think they're really fascinating. And one of the things that we've kind of tried to do on this program is inspire those to think about careers and water. And the two of you are really aspirational for what some of these careers could look like. And, Linda, I think I heard you say, the term "institutional ecosystem" was brought up? And I wonder, I know that both of you are in the ecology field. Do you think of yourselves as institutional ecologists? Or like how would you describe your field?
Linda Mendez Barrientos
I guess at the end of the day, my PhD will be in ecology. Institutional ecosystem a word I just came up on the fly right now. Because ecosystem -- we think about ecosystems as all the different pieces that form an ecosystem. So what I meant by institutional ecosystem, in the context of that conversation was that SGMA gets passed in 2014 and gets enacted in in January 2015. But it doesn't happen in a vacuum. There is a social, political, ecological, context in which that law is passed. And it doesn't mean that institutional ecosystem goes away, the act has to be implemented within it. And that's where the forces of play come in, right? The forces that want to protect the status quo and the forces that are looking for, you know, change in how groundwater access and use, and protection gets negotiated on the local level. Does that make more sense?
Mallika Nocco
That's super interesting. And I think I'm going to try to perpetuate the term. I'm just going to start using it and I feel like all of our listeners should just try to make institutional ecosystem happen.
Sam Sandoval
You know, one of the things we also do here is try to provide some plain words for describing certain concepts. And I think, besides the institutional ecosystem, we've been talking also a lot about water governance. So, could you explain Water Governance 101, what it is, and how does it look like, what are the pieces?
Jess Rudnick
Sure, when we talk about governance, or environmental governance broadly, we're looking at the many different pieces that go about shaping the rules for using a resource. And so these can be formal law as well as informal social norms. There can be institutions, actors working at different levels within federal, state, local, and regional governments, or nonprofit sector, private industry actors. And these are the many players that are involved in resource management and decision making. Water governance is a great example of where this happens, especially in California where we have many different points of decision making for water quantity and quality management. California is sort of this -- like Linda was saying -- this crazy institutional ecosystem that has many different actors involved, many different connections between those actors, and feedbacks and relationships that go into shaping what the outcomes that we see on the land are.
Linda Mendez Barrientos
Following all those different actors and different actions, and interactions with them and with the resource is what makes, you know, can make water governance.
Sam Sandoval
It's coming to the end of the podcast, but there is always this question -- how can we, what should you tell our listeners so we can support you? And let's start with you, Jess.
Jess Rudnick
Yeah, thanks for, again for having us and also for asking this question. For me, I think it's really important that we all take the moment to think about where our water, and related especially to my work, where our food comes from. And so, really having a better understanding of how far those resources are traveling, who has access to them, who are the people behind producing these food products and making the decisions of where our water flow is important for reaching this broad representation and ensuring that the public voice is heard through these issues. And I think on top of that, it's important to know local policies and politics. Get involved in your local groundwater basin. Know your county board of supervisors, they're probably a chair on the Groundwater Sustainability Agency.
Think about local elections and what types of questions to ask to the people who are on these ballots and supposed to be representing the community's needs, to push them in terms of thinking about the way that we're using new local institutions to make really important decisions that will shape our communities going forward. Eligible voters, go vote. There's many ways for people to engage in these processes, there are public meetings, there are public comment opportunities. There are, you know, county level farm extension advisors that could and should be engaging more in these processes. So let's try to work with the folks who know what's going on and get more input there. So I would say those are my hopes for everyone to engage on these issues.
Linda Mendez Barrientos
So I was just seeing who was connected and I think probably, I'm not sure but I think, a lot of scientists and other universities listen to this podcast. And so if I were to, in an ideal world, if I were to like say how can you help our work will be to basically do two things. The first one is it would be great if all our water experts that do physical modeling and other things that we don't do, think about, assess, think about who is their science benefiting? Their results or their modeling efforts, you know, who is going to benefit from what you're doing? And if in that reckoning on that question, they find that they're not really serving the communities that they would like to serve, I think that will be a starting point. Have more physical scientists, more lawyers, more water lawyers critically looking at these issues and supporting the communities that have not historically been supported in our institutions.
The second thing that I will ask for other people that do this work is to engage social scientists earlier. Engages our, let's collaborate, but I don't want to be called for collaboration at the last minute just because you needed a grant. You know, get the funding and you need a social scientist and, oh, now you're calling me. I want to be engaged earlier, I want to be engaged in the research questions, I want to define the work and great, you're really good with modeling how all these groundwater basins are going to effect and whom and we can see that and I can bring in the institutional, the social aspect, and I think a lot of really cool collaborations can happen. But, it will be better if we all assume that I don't know how to model a groundwater basin, but you don't know about the social ecosystem or institutional ecosystem that I bring in. And so having that equity, even in the collaborations that we develop, will really help I think, both the science and the water expertise that we have, at least in UC Davis.
Mallika Nocco
I really appreciate that answer, and I am hopeful that they will not only be heard, but they will also be listened to. So for other states out there, let's just say we have a time machine and we can go back in history. How would you change the SGMA process? Like if you could rewrite the process because I mean, the world is watching, several other states are watching. If you could rewrite the process to you know, make it more equitable, how would you do it?
Linda Mendez Barrientos
I would erase a statute. There's a statute in SGMA, I think it's 1027J. I would erase that.
Mallika Nocco
Looking at you, 1027J! Jess, how about you?
Jess Rudnick
To me, one of the key missing pieces is what this goal of sustainability is, and allowing that to be locally defined and defined through institutions that we know are going to be dominated by certain actors was a potential flaw to reaching a sustainability that's widely accepted and representative of the diverse public in California. So I think clarifying and sort of setting what that normative goal is a bold ask for the state, but it's something that is pretty important to reaching equity in the process.
Mallika Nocco
I think that that's a fantastic idea is just that we should incorporate equity as a part of the definition of sustainability. And that's something I actually made a note of while the two of you were talking. I was just like, were the definitions of sustainability just physically based, you know, and I think kind to some extent that they were and that's why we're seeing so many of these issues. Thank you so much for joining us. Again, we really appreciated having the two of you here. Selfishly, I hope that both of you, after you complete your dissertations and defend, that you are able to stay in our communities, because we need you and your expertise. So thank you.
Thanks for listening and join us next time on Water Talk.