Collaboration Assessment: Water Projects in the Texas Rio Grande Valley
Date
2007-06
Authors
Estaville, Lawrence
Caldwell, Sally
Brown, Brock
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Abstract
Collaboration is a process of people, groups, or organizations working together to reach agreed upon goals. It is a concept about which public and private organizations with a wide diversity of objectives wish to aspire to, undertake, or write about. Many research studies have searched for the essential techniques, characteristics, or keys of successful collaborations. Such specific keys to rewarding collaborations in water resources, however, are difficult to discern (Nielsen 2006; Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000; Borden and Perkins 1999, 2007; Gray 1989).
Typing these keywords—collaboration, Texas, Rio Grande, water—into the Google search engine produces 208,000 entries at this time. A variety of other keyword online searches also indicate that there have been and continue to be many collaborative efforts in confronting the critical water resources challenges of the Texas Rio Grande Valley, that is, the part of the valley on the Texas side of the border that stretches nearly one thousand miles from El Paso in the west to Brownsville in the east. However, the indications of the success of these collaborative efforts are only anecdotal, almost all from public relations spokespersons of the organizations engaged in the collaborations. An essential need, therefore, is to use hard data, both qualitative and quantitative, to assess the success of collaborations of governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) regarding water resources projects in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Description
Keywords
water quality, Rio Grande, water resources, government agencies
Citation
Estaville, L., Caldwell, S., & Brown, B. (2007). Collaboration assessment: Water projects in the Texas Rio Grande Valley (Report No. 2007-01). Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas.