About

Stefania Almazán-Casali (MS ’16, PhD ’22) joined the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) as a master’s student specializing in Environmental Policy and Planning, and later pursued a PhD to deepen her understanding of fostering adaptive and resilient water systems in the face of climate change disruptions. She did not initially intend to work in academia but found a fitting role with The Nature Conservancy’s global partnership Nature for Water, where she serves as an engagement consultant. In this role, she partners with local entities to implement nature-based solutions for water security and watershed protection, emphasizing the importance of governing natural resources in a way that considers human rights and complex social-ecological relationships. Her training at SEAS has been instrumental in her success, providing her with multidisciplinary perspectives and expertise from various specialists, which she applies in her work to make a meaningful impact.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Environmental planning
• Geography
• Political economy
• Management
• Environmental resource management
• Natural resource economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Who Governs at What Price? Technocratic Dominance, Ways of Knowing, and Long-Term Resilience of Brazil's Water System

  Frontiers in Water · 2021 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Technocratic decision making has been long criticized for dampening participation and limiting the range of adaptive choices through its overreliance on infrastructure-based solutions. There has been growing attention to how technocratic approaches shape long-term resilience of water systems, especially under the threat of climatic change impacts. In Brazil, even under its highly decentralized and participatory water management system, technical expertise and science-based decisions have been often promoted as a desirable mechanism to insulate governance outcomes from the country's prevailing clientelistic and rent-seeking politics. Yet, Brazilian river basins continue to struggle with long-standing problems (such as universal access to sanitation) and increasing challenges for guaranteeing water provision under recurrent drought. In this study, we examine how technocratic insulation, different ways of knowing (WoKs), and participatory governance shape long-term resilience in one of Brazil's most important river basins, the Piracicaba-Capivari-Jundiaí (PCJ). By taking an in-depth look at how the PCJ River Basin's governance system responded to the 2014 Brazilian water crisis, we seek to understand how planning decisions in the aftermath of the crisis were influenced by different actors, and how the outcomes of those decisions are likely to shape long term resilience. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with members of the PCJ River Basin Committees, we show how a distinct preference for infrastructure-based solutions to deal with on-going and upcoming challenges may be unsustainable under climate change as the basin's traditional technocratic approach failed both to insulate its decisions from politics and to explore adaptive water management solutions that might be key to shape long-term resilience.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring household willingness to participate in solid waste collection services in Liberia

  Habitat International · 2019-01-26 · 44 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Advancing Knowledge for Use in Coastal and Estuarine Management: Competitive Research in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System

  Coastal Management · 2019-04-14 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  Decades of research has generated new scientific understanding and technologies aimed at better managing environmental change in estuarine and coastal regions. Yet many across the communities of coastal and estuarine research, management, and funding believe that progress has been too slow in applying this research in practice. This essay reviews how the National Estuarine Research Reserve System’s funding program evolved over the past two decades to improve how researchers and users of research work together to increase the uptake of science to achieve resource management and conservation goals. Incremental innovation in the design of the NERRS funding program enabled more intensive and multiway engagement between funders, researchers, and users, which created new pathways for applying science in practice. Furthermore, these interactions stimulate reflection and adaptation within each separate institutional setting, supporting changes that may science to better support environmental problem solving.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dwight D. Trueblood

  NOAA Office for Coastal Management

  2 shared

• Maria Carmen Lemos

  2 shared

• James Arnott

  Aspen Global Change Institute

  2 shared

• Jennifer Read

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  1 shared

• Kalle Matso

  1 shared

• Julia M. Wondolleck

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  1 shared

• Steve Sikra

  Procter & Gamble (United States)

  1 shared

• Jose F. Alfaro

  1 shared

Labs

• StewardsPI