Exploring the Socio-Environmental Regulation of Water—A Systematic Review of Sustainable Watershed Management

Felipe Sáez-Ardura (), Matías Parra-Salazar, Arturo Vallejos-Romero, Ignacio Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Minerva Cordoves-Sánchez, César Cisternas-Irarrázabal, Loreto Arias-Lagos, Jaime Garrido-Castillo, Pablo Aznar-Crespo and Vinicius Genaro
Additional contact information
Felipe Sáez-Ardura: Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Postgrado, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
Matías Parra-Salazar: Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias de La Salud, Universidad Mayor, Temuco 4780000, Chile
Arturo Vallejos-Romero: Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
Ignacio Rodríguez-Rodríguez: Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
Minerva Cordoves-Sánchez: Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Postgrado, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
César Cisternas-Irarrázabal: Núcleo Científico Tecnológico en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
Loreto Arias-Lagos: Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
Jaime Garrido-Castillo: Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco 4811230, Chile
Pablo Aznar-Crespo: Departamento de Sociologia, Universidad de Alicante, 03690 San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain
Vinicius Genaro: Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS), Universidade Federal do Maranhão, São Luís 65080-805, Brazil

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 4, 1-24

Abstract: This article presents a systematic review of sustainable watershed management at the international level. Based on the risk regulation approach, this review approaches the specific gaps in the literature related to relevant issues outlining the international freshwater resources socio-environmental regulation issue, especially in regards to its sociological dimensions: the organizational capabilities of agents involved in regulatory efforts, issue-implicit challenges, and regulatory effort-generated socio-environmental risks. The study identifies the reflexive components of the involved institutions, outlines the deployment of organizational processes in normative regulatory components, and explores the modalities for addressing change and complexity in the regulatory field. A corpus of 64 articles published in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases between 2021 and 2024 was analyzed, and the following findings are demonstrated: (1) regulatory requirements emerge across the three dimensions due to sociological factors, with the need for broad-ranging coordination capacities and socio-technical improvements highlighted, (2) while high political–technical capacities are exhibited by regulatory agents in the field of study, significant regulatory challenges persist, complicating the sustainable management of watersheds, and (3) decision-making based on socio-environmental risks is deemed feasible within the field of study, enabling advancements in techno-scientific and socio-political areas, although achieving this is considered challenging. It is concluded that sustainable watershed management can be better understood when the risk-based approach is used as an explanatory framework, particularly in priority areas for addressing—and regulating—the global and local dilemmas involved in governing water resources. As this field has been scarcely examined from this perspective, a series of potential research avenues with substantial scope are faced by the social sciences. Socio-environmental challenges related to water should be rigorously analyzed in future studies through innovative approaches, with the social components of the issue prioritized.

Keywords: socio-environmental regulation; risk-based approach; sustainable management; watershed; water resources; socio-environmental risks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/4/1588/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/4/1588/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:4:p:1588-:d:1591502

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().