Dear COR community,

Please join us for a discussion on collaboration, governance and uncertainty.

COR Faculty Paper Development Workshop with Prof. Nicola Ulibarri (Social Ecology)

“Managing Scientific, Administrative, and Physical Uncertainties with Collaborative Governance” (abstract below)

Discussants: Martha Feldman (Social Ecology) and TBC Maritza Salazar (Merage)

Friday, April 13
SBSG 1321
12:00-1:30pm

RSVP by April 8 to cor@uci.edu
Lunch will be provided

Once you RSVP you will receive Prof. Ulibarri’s paper to read ahead of the workshop.

We look forward to seeing you for our first Spring Quarter event!

Best wishes,

Nina Bandelj
Melissa Mazmanian
COR Co-Directors

“Managing Scientific, Administrative, and Physical Uncertainties with Collaborative Governance”

Abstract

While uncertainty is a fundamental feature and challenge of environmental governance, the literature on how policy makers and resource managers can act effectively under that uncertainty is scarce. The focus is on managing scientific uncertainty—a lack of knowledge about the causes or consequences of an environmental decision—when many other types of uncertainty can have drastic effects on decision-makers’ ability to make timely, rational, or even satisficing decisions. Moreover, while suggestions on how to manage these uncertainties often revolve around collaborative governance—engaging scientists, decision-makers, communities, and other stakeholders in joint decision-making—collaboration is often framed as one-size-fits-all approach. This paper aims to broaden the conversation about collaboration as a tool for managing uncertainty, using a four-year ethnographic study of a collaborative process to develop the operating license for a hydropower dam in California. By exploring the many types of uncertainty that arose during negotiations, whether and how collaboration served to address these varieties of uncertainty, and how uncertainty affected the collaborative process, I aim to add nuance to our understanding of when and where collaboration is a helpful tool for environmental decision- makers.

Biography

Nicola Ulibarri is an interdisciplinary scholar who uses political, social, and technical perspectives to evaluate the sustainability of environmental planning and decision-making practices. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine, she investigates the interaction between people, infrastructure, and the environment, with a focus on redesigning planning, permitting, and operations to meet more diverse social and environmental needs. Prof. Ulibarri earned her PhD through the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment & Resources at Stanford University, and spent a year as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. Her professional life has spanned the public and non-profit sectors, including work with the US Department of the Interior (Region IX), the World Bank, and Amigos Bravos, a grassroots river-protection nonprofit in New Mexico.