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Self-directed working groups have become an increasingly important way for stakeholders of all types to explore, understand, become informed, share knowledge and work together to solve complex environmental issues. In the water resource management arena, such groups often include a diverse range of stakeholders in the community and beyond representing multiple interests or stakes often trying to manage a complex set of interrelated issues. Membership in such groups often ranges in expertise from scientific experts, to regulators, to natural resource managers and local and regional planners, to special interest group advocates to lay persons.
Groups exist because members want to share common activities, interests and knowledge. Since no one organizational entity can “manage” a community based natural resources issue alone, such groups become essential to members and the organizations they represent to network, navigate available resources and services and get information and communication out. Commonalities and distinguishing factors of three self directed working groups (the ACF Stakeholders, the Florida Water and Climate Alliance and the Seafood Management Assistance Resource and Recovery Team (SMARRT) operating in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin will be examined, with a view toward understanding how organizational structure, group dynamics and internal and external communications affect water resource policy and decision making in the region.
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