Environmental law research team receives $5,000 grant to study water governance

A grant from the International Council for Canadian Studies will assist Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law professor Eric Dannenmaier and a student research team in their work on transboundary water resource governance.

The $5,000 grant from the Canadian government will help underwrite work by Dannenmaier and his team as they conduct a comparative assessment of community involvement in the negotiation and implementation of transboundary agreements between Canada and the United States concerning the Columbia River and the Great Lakes. Their research seeks to assess the effectiveness of these negotiation processes in facilitating participation among stakeholders across borders.

Dannenmaier, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, has been working with students on the project since last summer, and he is leading an Advanced Field Research course this spring semester that will continue the work with the support of the new grant. The grant will be used, in part, to fund student travel to research areas in the Great Lakes and Columbia River basins to conduct interviews and gather information.

“This as an important confluence of research and experiential learning,” Dannenmaier said. “It means that our students will have the benefit of externally-funded field travel to support their education, and our faculty’s contribution to scholarship on water resource governance will be even stronger. We are very grateful to the International Council for Canadian Studies for supporting our analysis of democratic institutions in the conservation of transboundary water resources.”