Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the Western United States, the expansion of the urban interface often involves disruption of agricultural production, water resources, and amenity based ecosystem services that contribute to  the region’s growth. These changes are coupled with shifts in societal demand for services and values. Landscape transformations also occur against a backdrop of climate change, adding further stress and uncertainty about the future. An exemplar of this situation in the American West, can be seen in Idaho’s Boise River Basin.

The Boise River, flowing westward from its headwaters in the Sawtooth Mountains to the Snake River, travels through wilderness areas, prime agricultural land, as well as urban environments, including Boise, the capitol of Idaho in a vibrant metropolitan region of the inland West. As such, the river is managed, controlled, monitored, used and valued by a large group of stakeholders, including many non-profit and advocacy groups. These groups are often at odds with the traditional decision-making institutions such as the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management, agricultural users, and irrigators. Previous and ongoing research has identified a clear need to engage community stakeholders and evaluate the extent to which advocacy groups and others are integrating science into their respective campaigns, decision making, and agenda setting in response to proposed policy decision. This aspect of understanding the policy making process associated with river basin management, although important, has not been considered at the same level as the engineering, natural and biophysical aspects of river basin governance. This suggests a viable opportunity for assessment and analysis of regional advocacy campaigns’ use of science in river policy and decision making.

As part of a broader interdisciplinary research effort focused on the Boise River, elite interviews were conducted with 501c(3) non-profits organizations in the Boise River Basin engaged in efforts to protect and enhance the ecosystem services associated with the Boise River. Researchers used NVivo, a qualitative analytics software, for analysis of the interviews. The coded data were then used to develop inferences about the organizations and their activities. Preliminary results show that both biophysical and social science are recognized as important tools in the toolbox of non-profit organizations, but rarely are they the primary tools used to influence or make decisions. Rather, science is used to help position an organization into a niche in the community where the nonprofit organization can better serve a specific constituency of community members (donors, politicians and other interest groups). 

The research presented here provides insight into the use of science in agenda-setting by nonprofit organizations in the context of a river basin and its management. It also focuses on the collaborative and competitive relationships between and among nonprofit organizations working to protect, enhance, and restore a watershed. These findings specifically address the APPAM policy area of Natural Resource Security, Energy, and Environmental Policy