Transboundary collaborations related to international freshwater resources play an integral role in society, as they establish frameworks for shared access to our planet’s most fundamental resources. Maps, diagrams, and... [ view full abstract ]
Transboundary collaborations related to international freshwater resources play an integral role in society, as they establish frameworks for shared access to our planet’s most fundamental resources. Maps, diagrams, and other constructed visual elements, functioning as boundary objects, are used in transboundary collaboration documents to convey understandings and facilitate discussion across scales about challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives. Such focal points for discussion are valuable in creating shared, socially-negotiated priorities and integrating diverse and often disparate cultural perspectives that naturally exist in transboundary water resource contexts. They can also promote alignment of mental models related to complex hydro-social cycles and encourage non-linear systems thinking in decision-making, which has been suggested as more appropriate for tackling complex wicked socio-ecological problems in a variety of fields, such as political ecology, engineering, and natural resource management. The La Plata River Basin is a unique case for multi-scale collaboration among the represented states of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, as the socio-economic, political, and biophysical landscapes represent interdependencies at all levels within the over three million square kilometer area. Although early agreements related to water use and governance in the Basin began to be developed over a century ago, the 1969 La Plata Treaty ultimately created the current framework, which is unlike that of other large international transboundary river basins. Instead of a highly centralized management body that may be be heavily influenced by upstream or more hegemonic states, the 1969 Treaty established mechanisms for additional bi-lateral and multi-lateral treaties at the regional level within the Basin, and included objectives now recognized in international law, such as reasonable and equitable use, environmental protection, and socio-economic development. Despite the ubiquitous presence of systems thinking boundary objects (STBOs) in transboundary water collaboration documents and their potential for improving decision-making and stakeholder inclusion in development, scientific understanding of their use in this context is limited. In order to address this gap, the specific focus of this research is to identify visual STBOs and how they are being used in transboundary river documents at multiple scales toward inclusive collaboration, conflict resolution, discussion, and understanding across disciplinary, social, cultural, and organizational boundaries within the La Plata Basin. Over 1000 documents were reviewed on the websites of the primary national, bi-national, and multi-national entities formally involved in La Plata River Basin and Sub-Basin collaborations in order to identify 100 data visuals that richly represented hydro-social cycles for further analysis. A mixed-methods approach was developed from the peer-reviewed field literature and applied to analyze the visuals based on the strength of representation of elements of systems thinking and boundary objects, as well as contextual use in the documents. Initial results indicate a range from weak to strong for both systems thinking and boundary object elements and the analyses are currently ongoing.
Keywords: Water Governance, Boundary Objects, Systems Thinking, Mental Models, Collaboration
