Collaborative Governance For Wetland Management:A Comparative Case Study Of China And The U.S.A.

We live in a world that is undeniably more interconnected than it has ever been before.Current studies on how to deal with this arena have fallen heavily on the ability for governance agents are able to effectively and successfully come together to provide proper policies,projects,and continued monitoring to the status of wetlands and their associated network.Not commonly known as being one of the most vital hydrological feature wetlands contain important characteristics and contain some of the world's biggest breeding grounds for migratory birds.Wetlands has been on a global decline by 50%since the early 1900s.The 20^th and 21^st centuries have suffered a loss of wetlands by 3.7 times faster than the previous centuries meaning the rate of loss of these important ecosystems at a continuing rate of increase.Because they are more vulnerable to climate change and land use impacts,as well as their direct impact to other wetland ecosystems and the well-being of humans and animals,these areas require multiple forms of governance structures that can exist in the continued interconnected countries,cultures,political structures,and new strategies for governance mechanism structures.The current dissertation is intended to look at how collaborative governance is able to apply the most important components of a collaborative governance framework can be used to manage,monitor,and successfully conserve wetlands in countries that share opposite forms of government,political ideals,culture,and societal norms.This is to show that the six components of the Collaborative Governance?CG?theoretical framework can be used in all different forms of political and cultural environments peacefully and successfully when creating and revising new policies and projects for the successful conservation of wetlands.The six components chosen for this dissertation are as follows:?1?Transparency,?2?Common Interests/Incentives,?3?Accountability,?4?Defined Leadership,?5?Communication?Face-to-Face Dialogue?,?6?Flexible Guidelines.These six components were taken from previous scholar's research,such as Ansell and Gash,and among other academic studies on collaborative governance.This dissertation focuses on looking at and analyzing two case studies in the Prairie Pothole Region of the U.S.A and comparing them with two case studies in China's Heilongjiang Province.Because of lack of a large amount of scientific basis and quantitative limitations of wetlands and complete governance strategies,qualitative analysis of the current methods,policies,and project design by the varying partners,stakeholders,actors,and other various participants is used as the method of comparing the effectiveness and successful components of the CG model in relation to the management of wetlands in each of these countries which is discussed in greater detail in later chapters.In the context of the final comparative analysis of the Collaborative Governance framework and its successes and limitation of the wetland management processes.The analysis explains the components of the applied Collaborative Governance framework that were either successful or unsuccessful for both sets of case studies and provides further reasoning and analysis as to the reasoning of those successful and unsuccessful components.This analysis takes into account these extra factors as limitations of the study and how these issues affected the overall CG framework relation to the thesis study topic and design.The application of the discussion and findings adds greater understanding of the topic and CG forms of management as well as the status of which management is able to properly conserve wetlands on a greater scale.