Engaging stakeholders across a socio-environmentally diverse network of water research sites in North and South America

SMYTH, ROBYN L.; FATIMA, UROOSA; SEGARRA, MONIQUE; BORRE, LISA; ZILIO, MARIANA I.; REID, BRIAN; PINCETL, STEPHANIE; ASTORGA, ANNA; HUAMANTINCO CISNEROS, M. ANDREA; CONDE, DANIEL; HARMON, THOMAS; HOYOS, NATALIA; ESCOBAR, JAIME; LOZOYA, JUAN PABLO; PERILLO, GERARDO M.E.; PICCOLO, M. CINTIA; RUSAK, JAMES A.; VELEZ, MARIA I.

Environmental Development

ELSEVIER

Año: 2020

2211-4645

Maintaining and restoring freshwater ecosystem services in the face of local and global change Requires adaptive research that effectively engages stakeholders. However, there is a lack of understanding and consensus in the research community regarding where, when, and which stakeholders should be engaged and what kind of researcher should do the engaging (e.g., physical, ecological, or social scientists). This paper explores stakeholder engagement across adeveloping a network of aquatic research sites in North and South America with wide-rangingcultural norms, social values, resource management paradigms, and eco-physical conditions.With seven sites in six countries, we found different degrees of engagement were explained bydifferences in the interests of the stakeholders given the history and perceived urgency of waterresource problems and differences in the capacities of the site teams to effectively engage giventheir expertise and resources. We categorized engagement activities and applied Hurlbert andGupta?s split ladder of participation to better understand site differences and distil lessonslearned for planning comparative socio-hydrological research and systemic evaluationsengagement approaches. We recommend research networks practice deliberate engagement ofstakeholders that adaptively accounts for variations and changes in local conditions. This, in turn,requires further efforts to foster the development of well-integrated research teams that attractand retain researchers from multiple social science disciplines and enable training on effectiveengagement strategies for diverse conditions.