Adopting a place-based approach: community waterway adoption as an iterative approach to the collaborative governance of inland waterways

This paper examines the role of community ‘adoption’ initiatives as a means to stimulating and sustaining local engagement in the multi-level governance of natural resources. Guided by a critical review of the meaning of... [ view full abstract ]

This paper examines the role of community ‘adoption’ initiatives as a means to stimulating and sustaining local engagement in the multi-level governance of natural resources. Guided by a critical review of the meaning of community resource adoption in both a public resource setting, and neoliberalist governing context, particular attention is given to the process of learning to govern and care for natural resources as place-specific community assets. The paper takes as its empirical focus the case of inland waterways in England and Wales. It considers how the recent launch of community adoption schemes by the managing authority (the Canal & River Trust) impacts upon and serves to shape the collaborative governance of a national public resource. This includes facilitating the practices of repeat place-based volunteering and inclusive decision-making that community adoptions seemingly have the potential to motivate. However, it also requires sensitivity towards the feelings of local ownership that such initiatives can stimulate, as well as co-ordination of the shared, and on occasion 'bounded', practices of care upon which they depend. The paper reports findings from semi-structured interviews and focus groups undertaken with relevant Trust employees and with a sample of community adoptees. The research suggests that the localized, place-based and participatory nature of waterway adoptions present both challenges and opportunities to existing forms of resource management. Conclusions are drawn on the contribution of adoption schemes to enabling a shared sense of ownership and authority to take root at a local level, but also the challenge of learning to accommodate specifically place-based forms of community interest within the collaborative governance of national environmental resources.

Key words: Governance; community; water; shared practice; adoption