Colorado River Challenge
Summary
Water scarcity in the Colorado River Basin is a chronic problem exacerbated by climate change. What makes this issue particularly vexing is the large number of stakeholders who don't always take each other's interests into consideration. In this role-playing exercise, the class is divided into 4 stakeholder groups (City of Las Vegas, Farmers, Native American Tribes, Raise the River Environmental Coalition). Through several discussion rounds, these 4 groups need to come to collective solutions. In this process, students learn about the complexity of this problem (and other environmental problems involving several stakeholders). Moreover, students experience how dialogue and compromise can help resolve such complex problems.
Context
Audience
Undergraduate course required for Environmental Studies majors (Introduction to Environmental Thinking)
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
Basic listening skills
Being able to explain one's point of view
Some background reading about Colorado River Basin water scarcity
How the activity is situated in the course
It is a stand-alone exercise in the last part of the course.
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
Problem of water scarcity in Southwestern US (origins, stakeholders, Colorado River Compact)
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
Synthesizing information from various different sources and stakeholders
Evaluating one's own and other's positions and arguments
Evaluating proposed solutions
Other skills goals for this activity
Working in groups
Dealing with clashing viewpoints and interests through dialogue
Dealing with open-ended problems
Description and Teaching Materials
This is a role-playing group exercise around water allocation in the Colorado River Basin. About 10 days before the start of the actual exercise, the class is divided into 4 different stakeholder groups (farmers, City of Las Vegas, Raise the River environmental coalition, and Colorado River Basin Tribes Partnership). Each stakeholder group is given reading/viewing materials to learn about their group's concerns relating to water allocation. In 5 alternating rounds of role-group meetings (each stakeholder group sitting together) and mixed-group meetings (members of different stakeholder groups having a dialogue), the students are discussing the water situation, the needs and concerns of their role groups, and possible solutions. Each of these 5 rounds takes one 50-minute lecture. I use students from the previous year as dialogue moderators. In the first lecture after these dialogues, each role group gives a short presentation focusing on:
1) Their position within the bigger picture. How is the dwindling Colorado River affecting them as a stakeholder?
2) Their role group's chosen top-3 of (directions toward) solutions
3) Any unanswered questions or unresolved differences
We use cumulative voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting) to determine which solutions have the most collective support across the different role groups. In practice, each role group gets 10 stickers that they divide among the proposals from the other role groups. The 3 proposals with the largest number of stickers are then the "collective yesses". In my 2024 Introduction to Environmental Thinking course, I also created Learning Trios consisting of students from different role groups that met outside class hours to reflect on the process. These Learning Trios gave short presentations in the lecture after the role-group presentations.
The process outline of the Colorado River Challenge from the spring of 2024 is included as Supporting Material. Furthermore, a transcript of key quotes from the Learning Trio presentations is included to give an idea of what the students learned from the exercise in their own perception. Finally, I have included spreadsheets of the role and mixed groups to give an idea of how I organize this in practice.
Process Outline Colorado River Challenge (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 14kB Aug27 24)
Learning Trios summary (Acrobat (PDF) 45kB Aug27 24)
Role Groups spreadsheet (Excel 2007 (.xlsx) 7kB Aug27 24)
Mixed groups spreadsheet (Excel 2007 (.xlsx) 8kB Aug27 24)
Teaching Notes and Tips
If a dialogue falls silent, then the moderator can ask the dialogue participants to make some notes of what has been said. This makes the participants reflect on the matter, which usually leads to new questions/thoughts, which then help get the dialogue going again.
Make sure to check in with the different groups during the dialogue rounds to clear up any confusion that may arise. After each meeting round, I send an announcement/e-mail to the class where I address common themes of confusion.
Assessment
The assessment is based on 2 components:
1) A collective grade for each role group based on their presentation. Criteria are:
Overall presentation (quality of slides, gestures, etc.) 50%
Logical structure of presentation 10%
Explanation of role group's place in bigger picture. 10%
Explanation of proposals 30%
2) An individual grade based on a personal reflection on the Colorado River Challenge and more generally on dialogue as a method to resolve conflicts. I used the following questions as prompts for this reflection:
-Which one of the proposals presented on Monday April 22 did you personally like the best? Explain why.
-Which barriers to implementation (political, financial, technological, etc.) do you see for the proposal you chose under question 1? Explain.
-Describe another situation with conflicting interests, which does not need to be environment-related. Do you think a dialogue process would be the most promising approach toward resolving this situation? If the answer is yes, describe how you would design the dialogue process. If the answer is no, describe an approach that could be more fruitful in your view.