Andrea Gerlak

The University of Arizona | UA · School of Geography & Development

Governing and managing the allocation and use of freshwater has always been a complex and fraught undertaking. The challenges to effective and equitable management have been exacerbated by rising pressures on supplies caused by such drivers as population growth, urbanization and climate change. Moreover, vast quantities of water straddle internatio...

Water security has emerged as a leading framework for water governance that integrates socio-politico-economic and physical attributes and is readily operationalized. Yet, in transboundary river basins it is unclear to what extent water-security framings have any resonance. We examine how water security has been employed in transboundary water rese...

University–community partnerships can play an important role in this green infrastructure (GI) maintenance issue and provide a valuable mechanism to support socio-ecological practice to address complex urban water issues and build urban resilience. In this Perspective Essay, we draw from our experience in a university–community partnership to creat...

The complex and globally influential mosaic of institutional frameworks, organizations, events, declarations, professional societies, organizations, and networks that focus on water-resources governance collectively known as "global water initiatives" (GWIs) remains starkly under-studied. We address this knowledge gap by means of a robust examinati...

As dams age and values shift, communities face dam removal decisions that involve navigating complex social, economic and ecological interactions. Sometimes, this results in decades-long conflicts, such as that over the removal of the four lower Snake River dams (LSRD) in Washington State, USA – the focus of this study. We apply a broad analytical...

Knowledge systems are mechanisms that can drive climate adaptation through the pursuits of enhancing resource sharing, collaboration, and learning, while at the same time helping to develop trust and credibility among individuals and intuitions. While these goals are widely discussed, less is known about the activities and strategies that knowledge...

Transboundary collaboration between the United States (US) and Mexico in the Colorado River Basin has heightened in recent years, as climate change, population growth, and overallocation threaten the long-term stability of the region. Through a combination of document analysis and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, we examine pattern...

Knowledge is widely considered a key ingredient for effective and sustainable water governance. In the Colorado River basin, collaborative programs have been established over the past 50 years to inform decision-making in the basin on a range of concerns from water quality to endangered species recovery and ecosystem restoration. We embrace a knowl...

Many cities are turning to greening efforts to increase resilience, but such efforts often favor privileged groups, thereby resulting in injustices. In this systematic review, we analyze 71 place-based studies of green infrastructure (GI) justice in cities worldwide. We draw from environmental justice scholarship, as well as climate and water justi...

Blue and Green Infrastructure (BGI) is increasingly viewed as a promising solution to promoting a shift beyond traditionally engineered “grey” approaches towards more socially and environmentally sustainable infrastructure systems. The specific insights geographical scholarship on how to address issues of processes, scale and place in BGI design, i...

El lago Mead, que abastece a siete estados de Estados Unidos y dos de México, se está secando. Ethan Miller/Getty Images July 27, 2021 9.12am EDT Estados Unidos y México están luchando por sus menguantes suministros de agua compartidos después de años de calor sin precedentes y lluvias insuficientes. La sequía sostenida en el medio-bajo del Río Bra...

The Uruguay River Basin (URB) that extends along Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay has been the hub of increasing pressures caused by the expansion of industrial agriculture, forestry and infrastructure projects in hydroenergy and transportation. There are growing concerns that the fragmented institutional framework is inadequate to address the growing...

Green Infrastructure (GI) is being adopted in cities all around the world as a key piece of climate change adaptation and water management for local governments. Recognizing that there is increasingly a diversity of actors engaged in designing, implementing, and fostering GI policies, we aim to better understand how urban GI policies take shape ove...

Scenario planning (SP) has been increasingly utilized by water managers and planners in the 21st century as climate and other uncertainties have challenged traditional planning approaches. This paper discusses the potential for scenario planning processes in the Colorado River Basin in the southwestern United States to build collective understandin...

Workshops exploring environmental, social, and political scenarios to prepare for negotiating new Colorado River water management guidelines took on added realism when the COVID-19 pandemic started.

The United States and Mexico have engaged in hydrodiplomacy—a practice of transboundary water management that blends water diplomacy and science diplomacy--for more than 75 years, since the adoption of the Treaty of 1944 and the creation of the International Boundary and Water Commission. We examine six major turning points in U.S.-Mexico hydrodipl...

Researchers struggle to understand the relationship between science and policy positions, especially the complicated interplay among the various factors that might affect the acceptance or rejection of scientific information. This paper presents a typology that simplifies and guides research linking scientific information to policy positions. We us...

Knowledge is widely considered a key ingredient for the effective and sustainable governance of the environment. In transboundary settings – i.e., where political boundaries cross natural resource system boundaries – there are considerable barriers to knowledge production and use. Resulting knowledge gaps can be barriers to governance. This researc...

Societies across the globe strive to achieve water security—that is, assure access to sufficient water of acceptable quality for humans and the environment for changing, sustainable societies and ecosystems. But rapid and significant changes in environmental and social systems complicate attempts to assure water-secure conditions. This challenge is...

Climate change is posing emerging threats to people and the environment, particularly in arid regions. However, some groups are more vulnerable than others, depending on their levels of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, which are determined by climatic and non-climatic factors. In water-scarce environments, water policies become key non-...

Multifunctional and connected green infrastructure (GI) systems have been linked to urban resilience. Although there have been significant scholarly efforts to assess resilience and to evaluate the benefits of GI, it remains unclear the degree in which GI efforts enhance resilience. Following theoretical frameworks that study coupled infrastructure...

Environmental governance is characterized by complex dynamic issues where new knowledge is constantly emerging that can shape how we understand the system and what kinds of policies and strategies are most effective. As a result, targeted mechanisms to acquire, translate, and disseminate knowledge into new policies are critical for adaptive environ...

University–community partnerships provide a valuable mechanism to support socio-ecological practice to address complex urban water issues. University–community partnerships have the potential to become a model for engagement that can be replicated to enhance participation around green infrastructure (GI), to expand access to GI in disadvantaged com...

Climate risks pose a particular set of challenges to electrical utilities, who must manage the direct impacts of climate and weather, as well as how related effects might propagate through networks of interconnected social and environmental risks. In this paper, we present a case study example of climate services development, co-produced between a...

As key venues for interaction and cooperation, international river basin organizations (IRBOs) are significant contributors to hydrodiplomacy in transboundary river basins. As part of their efforts to support hydrodiplomacy, IRBOs engage in the production and use of science. The manner in which that science is produced, and how it contributes to hy...

The political economy of dam development in South America is changing as a result of a resurgence in water infrastructure investments. The arrival of Chinese-funded projects in the region has altered a context traditionally dominated by multilateral development banks. Tensions are escalating around new dam projects and the environmental impact asse...

Little has been documented about the benefits and impacts of the recent growth in climate services, despite a growing call to justify their value and stimulate investment. Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs), an integral part of the public and private enterprise of climate services, have been implemented over the last 20 years with the objectiv...

The year 2019 marked a significant milestone in U.S.-Mexico hydrodiplomacy: seventy-five years since the two countries adopted the Treaty of 1944, which apportioned between them the waters of the Rio Grande, Colorado River, and Tijuana River. Although the treaty is the countries' most notable and enduring act of hydrodiplomacy,[1] numerous cooperat...

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legiti...

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legiti...

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legiti...

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legiti...

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legiti...

The year 2019 marked a significant milestone in U.S.-Mexico hydrodiplomacy: seventy-five years since the two countries adopted the Treaty of 1944, which apportioned between them the waters of the Rio Grande, Colorado River, and Tijuana River. Although the treaty is the countries' most notable and enduring act of hydrodiplomacy, numerous cooperative...

Over the past decade, the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) has emerged as a major influence on the practice of and discourse about climate services, which aim to reduce the vulnerability of society to climate-related hazards through better provision of climate information and engagement of users of climate services. Yet, there is little...

The vulnerabilities of our food, energy and water systems to projected climatic change make building resilience in renewable energy and food production a fundamental challenge. We investigate a novel approach to solve this problem by creating a hybrid of colocated agriculture and solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure. We take an integrative approa...

For the first time in history, the global population is more concentrated in urban spaces than in rural areas. Population growth, climate change, and increasing stress on water resources evidence the urgency of adopting more sustainable urban water management practices. Drawing on contributions from the literature on informality, Do-It-Yourself (DI...

Urban resilience emerges not only from 'what' is done in relation to critical infrastructure systems, but in the 'how' of their conception, co-creation and integration into complex socio-ecological-technical systems. For green infrastructure, where ownership and agency may be distributed amongst organisations and diverse communities, inclusiveness...

Green infrastructure (GI) has been identified as a promising approach to help cities adapt to climate change through the provision of multiple ecosystem services. However, GI contributions to urban resilience will not be realized until it is more fully mainstreamed in the built environment and design professions. Here, we interrogate five key chall...

Greenspace can alleviate many of the negative effects of urbanization and help enhance human well-being yet, in most cities in the world, greenspace is inequitably distributed. In western societies, wealthy white neighborhoods typically have more access to greenspace, constituting an environmental and social justice issue. Although scholars from mu...

The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth...

This Commentary reflects on the state of the scholarship on learning for environmental and natural resource policy and governance. How have we been learning about learning? We highlight theoretical and empirical advancements related to learning, as well as areas of divergence between learning theories and frameworks, and underdeveloped knowledge ar...

Climate services are becoming an important strategy for delivering climate information to users around the world. In many countries, National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) are charged with providing climate services to diverse audiences. Climate services are important to foster adaptation to climate risks and in reducing vulnerab...

Transboundary waters are characterized by diverse and complex socio-politico-economic obstacles to effective water management. We examine five distinct cases in the arid Americas – in locations from the US–Mexico border to the Andes mountains – employing water security as a conceptual prism to unravel the multiple and varied attributes of transboun...

The Social-Ecological Systems framework serves as a valuable framework to explore and understand social and ecological interactions, and pathways in water governance. However, it lacks a robust understanding of change. We argue an analytical and methodological approach to engaging global changes in SES is critical to strengthening the scope and rel...

The Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework serves as a valuable framework to explore and understand social and ecological interactions, and pathways in water governance. Yet, it lacks a robust understanding of change. We argue an analytical and methodological approach to engaging global changes in SES is critical to strengthening the scope and r...

In acknowledgement of the complexity of environmental challenges, research on learning in environmental policy has grown substantially over the past two decades across a range of disciplines. Despite this growth, there are few comprehensive assessments of the literature on learning in environmental policy. This article fills this gap by providing i...

After briefly reviewing key resilience engineering perspectives and summarising some green infrastructure (GI) tools, we present the contributions that GI can make to enhancing urban resilience and maintaining critical system functionality across complex integrated social–ecological and technical systems. We then examine five key challenges for the...

Learning among actors engaged in environmental governance can be a critical pathway toward institutional change. Learning, however, is often unintentional or idiosyncratic in environmental governance. This paper considers how the rules structuring an environmental governance process can enable or constrain the institutional work of learning. We dra...

Groundwater is increasingly important for meeting water demand across the United States (U.S.). Forward thinking governance and effective management are necessary for its sustainable use. In the U.S., state governments are primarily responsible for groundwater governance (i.e., making laws, policies, and regulations) and management (i.e., implement...

Water security has emerged as a major framing template in environmental governance and resource management. The term and underlying concepts have attracted the attention of governmental and nongovernmental organizations, private industry, and the academy in policy and practice. Notwithstanding the palpable rise in its use, a comprehensive understan...

Introduction: Policy Analysis for “Better” Public Policy There is a common article of faith in the multi-disciplinary field of policy analysis: a belief that the quality of policy-making increases in proportion to available policy knowledge, and that the policy analyst’s role is to generate and transmit relevant policy information and evaluation. W...

The electric utility industry is an important player in the climate change arena, both as a significant emitter of global emissions and as an industry vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A climate risk management approach uses risk assessments and decision analyses to identify potential adaptation options. We review the existing literature...

Globally, groundwater is by far the largest store of liquid freshwater, making it a key component of a secure water supply. However, over the past few decades the amount of usable groundwater available around the world has rapidly decreased. This depletion is caused primarily by mismanagement (e.g., overpumping, contamination, and under-regulation)...

In many regions around the world, Regional Climate Forums (RCOFs) provide seasonal climate information and forecasts to decision-makers at regional and national levels. Despite the two decades of experience, the forums have not been systematically monitored or evaluated. To address this gap, and to better inform nascent and widespread efforts in cl...