Seminar Kyra Gmoser-Daskalakis: Implementation and Investment in California Wetland Restoration: A Network Governance Approach

Wetland restoration is increasingly promoted in the California Bay-Delta, and estuaries worldwide, to provide a range of benefits such as biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water quality, green space access, flood protection, and sea level rise adaptation. In California, regional policies set aggressive acreage targets and habitat requirements. However, actual achievement of these goals falls to a complex network of organizations making individual choices around partnerships and projects to pursue on the landscape. Network governance theory can help us understand how organizations strategically invest their limited resources into restoration projects, which ultimately determines estuary-wide outcomes. This presentation will showcase a project-organization investment network derived from publicly available habitat restoration data from 1982 to 2022. A Temporal Exponential Random Graph Model tests what aspects of organization capacity and project benefits drive restoration investment decisions in the Bay-Delta over time. Findings reveal that organization skills and resources are a key limiting factor in investment, suggesting collaborative governance strategies can increase the scale and pace of restoration to meet regional goals.