Leveraging Social Governance to Achieve Watershed Success

Few watershed topics seem more awkward to discuss and strategize about than governance.  We understand the technical, scientific, and political issues of watersheds,  but governance is like the invisible elephant in the room.  It is looming but difficult to describe.   But that can change. 

After two decades of multi-sector experience as both a practitioner and policy analyst, Tim Gieseke has developed a unique framework to assess the governance mix of multi-stakeholder programs, projects and policies. 

Taking a practical and novel approach, Tim created a governance compass© describing governance sectors and their roles and then applied this to established governance knowledge.  Each watershed component and task has a unique governance footprint that becomes transparent and manageable.

This framework provides new insights for civic engagement,  identifies areas prone to conflict and which sectors are best suited for certain tasks.   Overall, it gives a new context to multi-stakeholder efforts and offers a more inclusive approach to achieving watershed objectives and success.

Using new governance knowledge, watershed leaders and planners can effectively leverage existing technical, scientific and political resources.    It enables a new style of leadership to bridge the efforts among the many stakeholders involved in addressing these complex natural resource issues.