Facilitating Multiple Ways of Knowing in the Chewaucan Basin.

Henry Pitts

Scholars of conflict and collaboration have long recognized the importance of values in framing dialogue and capturing diverse perspectives on management and governance of natural resources. This is particularly true for water, which has been recognized as a unique natural resource due to people’s deep emotional and cultural connections to their local water sources, as well as the temporal urgency associated with its use and associated needs. The US West, specifically the Pacific Northwest, has a rich history of both conflict and institutionalized collaboration around water resources. This project assesses the implications of identifying and articulating diverse values for positive transformative change in facilitated water-focused multi-stakeholder collaboratives in the Pacific Northwest. Facilitated water collaboratives are considered from two perspectives: the practitioners/facilitators (Phase 1) and partners engaged in an existing collaborative effort in central Oregon (Phase 2). Though facilitators throughout the Pacific Northwest broadly include considerations of values in their practices, the findings of Phase 1 & 2 suggest that facilitators’ abilities to manage power dynamics, behavior, and expression are potentially critical for embedding equitable expressions of values from diverse perspectives throughout a facilitated process, rather than simply capturing them in an initial assessment. To support the potential for values-based transformative change in water governance and management, facilitators should ensure collaborative environments are conducive for expression and articulation of diverse values, and that those values permeate their facilitation practice.