Sustainable Groundwater Management in California: A Grand Experiment in Environmental Governance

Abstract

California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is a grand policy experiment that provides an unprecedented opportunity to analyze five core concepts in environmental governance: cooperation, institutional diversity, environmental justice, state oversight, and leadership. This article summarizes the research questions associated with these core concepts and the contributions of the other articles in this special issue, which emerged from ongoing interactions between a community of SGMA researchers and practitioners. The lessons learned from the special issue provide guideposts for SGMA research going forward, as well as research on environmental and water governance in other contexts.