The CALFED Bay-Delta Program: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of a Large-Scale Ecosystem Management Network

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Ecosystem management, especially at the large/regional scale, typifies the public sector organizational environment of interconnectedness. Networks as complex organizational models can have significant advantages for intricate joint planning and management. There are, however, considerable challenges to establishing and sustaining such organizations in an institutional environment. The complex case study of CALFED, formed to integrate water management for the hub of California's water supply system, examines issues of network formation and survival in a high-stakes, high-conflict task environment. The lessons regarding conditions and events that led to CALFED's collapse should be of interest to policy makers, practitioners and scholars.