Knowledge Engagement in Collaborative Water Governance: A New Brunswick Example

ii Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iii Authoritative, top-down forms of environmental governance are presently giving way to more collaborative approaches in which decision making is an ongoing negotiation between government and non-government actors. There is growing consensus that critical environmental concerns—such as contamination of drinking water—relate as much to political, economic and social issues, as to technical and scientific issues. As the trend toward collaborative environmental governance continues, and as science-based knowledge increasingly shares a role in decision-making processes with more ―local‖, non-scientific knowledge, questions arise concerning how diverse knowledge contributions are understood and engaged in thes