Can philanthropy enable collective action to conserve rivers? Insights from a decade of collaboration in the Colorado River Basin

Philanthropy plays an important but often invisible role in conserving rivers. We examine the influence of philanthropy on collective action and collaborative governance within the Colorado River Basin, a region where philanthropic support has been growing to achieve conservation objectives. Our short communication combines financial data, interviews, and documentary evidence to capture the opportunities and risks associated with philanthropy's increasing role. Financial expenditures are substantial, averaging $30.8 million USD per year from six large foundations (2013-2019). This funding has enabled collective action, particularly at the basin level, by strengthening or creating new forums for collaboration and investing in technical expertise to equip a broader range of voices in decision-making. It has also favoured market-based strategies and discourses, created dependencies for smaller organisations, and, in some instances, reinforced structural barriers to participation. We recommend transparent reporting of philanthropic spending related to collective action and conservation governance, and argue that foundations should explicitly consider and address legacies of exclusion for marginalised actors and groups.


INTRODUCTION
Philanthropy has a growing profile in conservation governance with multiple channels of influence that affect conservation priorities, public discourse, and policy choices (Farley 2018;Holmes 2012). However, the increasing role of non-governmental entities, such as philanthropic foundations, is often overlooked in research on natural resource governance (Burow et al. 2019). Our short communication examines the role of philanthropy in the Colorado River Basin (CRB), where a series of basin-level planning efforts have been shaped by philanthropic giving over the past decade. We focus specifically on philanthropy's role in large-scale collective action to achieve conservation goals that require basin-wide coordination.
The CRB has been described as "the most legislated, most debated, and most litigated river in the entire world" (Reisner 1993: 120). The basin is governed by a relatively decentralised and fragmented system, with a number of different authorities and institutions informing its management (Gerlak et al. 2013). Amidst sustained drought, climate change, and structural imbalances between supply and demand, "conflict has given way to collaboration as the strategy of choice in addressing water issues" (Karambelkar and Gerlak 2020: 1). In this period of unprecedented collaboration (Gerlak et al. 2013;Fleck 2016), the CRB has become a test bed for experiments in collaborative governance and benefit sharing (Koebele 2020).
These trends respond to system-wide, large-scale collective action challenges associated with upstream-downstream and inter-sectoral competition that require cooperation and conflict resolution at the basin level (Garrick 2015).
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3898707 examples like the Walton Family Foundation's (WFF) steering committee role for the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan (Central Arizona Project 2016). These philanthropic groups are focusing not just on collaboration within a single authority or coalition, but at the basin level (WFI 2020). Our case study explores the influence of philanthropic funding in the CRB, and its role in fostering collective action and collaborative governance amongst conservation actors.

METHODS
To understand the influence of philanthropy on large-scale collective action, we collected data on philanthropic expenditures and interviewed stakeholders affected by these funds. We

RESULTS: SUBSTANTIAL FLOWS INTO THE BASIN
Our results can be summarised by four key findings. First, there is a substantial amount of philanthropic funding flowing into the CRB. Second, philanthropy is enabling forms of basin-level collective action by strengthening coordination mechanisms (e.g. planning processes, joint modelling) and creating new avenues of collaboration and information sharing. Third, philanthropy is providing funds to facilitate collective action by building the on parallel and coordinated investments in policy and planning. One participant stated that funders support transactions, but also fund lobbying and advocacy to improve the chances of markets developing (NUW2). Funds have been used to respond to concerns from agricultural water users and cushion the risks of conservation strategies, such as protecting farmers experimenting with less water-intensive crops or safeguarding water users from forfeiting their water rights due to non-use.
Finally, though many grantees emphasised collaborative relationships with their funders, some voiced concerns of pitfalls related to exclusion and a lack of diversity in the funding community. As explained by NLXA2, "the influence from a foundation can promote collaboration and more efficiency, but at the same, it creates some obstacles [for those who do not receive funding]." Seven participants discussed the risk of frustration and conflict when non-grantees are excluded from collaborative discussions. Eleven participants recognised that philanthropy influences who is given a 'seat at the table,' with some noting concern that dominant funders are drowning out other voices (ULXN). Those who do receive foundation funding may also suffer from a lack of independence, as our extended financial analysis of grantees revealed that some recipients may rely heavily on a single funder. While the analysed subset of recipient organizations received a median of 7.26% of their annual non-governmental grants from the WFF, this ranged from 0.5% to 92% ( Figure   3).

DISCUSSION
Philanthropic giving in the Colorado River suggests two opportunities to harness the benefits of philanthropy while mitigating its risks. First, our analysis illustrates that reliable, comparable, and publicly available information on philanthropic expenditures, priorities, and behaviours is surprisingly scarce, echoing the OECD's (2018) analysis of private philanthropy for sustainable development. In the CRB, there has been growing scrutiny of philanthropic actors and their influence, seen in recent journalism that criticises the role of the WFF in setting policy agendas and questions their influence on research groups, nonprofits, and journalism (Marston 2021). Transparency about the nature, scale and trajectory of funding can help to assuage concerns. The OECD (2018) identified two strategies to improve transparency, which can lead to benefits such as more effective coordination, new partnerships, and increased legitimacy: first, leveraging existing platforms to produce comparable data, and second, ensuring accessibility by making such data a public good.
Further, we suggest that philanthropists should report on their own activities, including their participation in wider processes and roles played (e.g. amount spent for work on the Drought Contingency Plan, and how funders were involved in the process). The WFI could be an ideal forum to engage basin stakeholders in co-producing a standardised reporting framework that makes these suggestions concrete. Efforts to improve reporting of philanthropic expenditures and their influence on governance processes and outcomes is analogous to recent calls for subsidy accountability in the public sector (Dempsey et al. 2020).
Second, efforts to foster collective action at the basin-level can combat systemic barriers to participation and representation in decision-making. In the CRB, Tribal Nations were insufficiently consulted in the process of developing the Interim Guidelines for the Lower Basin (Bureau of Reclamation 2020), and were later incorporated into the Drought Contingency Plan process in a manner considered by some to be rushed and superficial (Sullivan et al. 2019). Funders are taking steps to improve representation, seen in examples such as the WFF's support of the Water and Tribes Initiative, which aims to build the capacity of Tribal Nations to meaningfully participate in decision-making (Snyder 2021).
Meeting the WFI's stated goal of raising up leaders who are "representative of, and Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3898707