“A Kiss Here and a Kiss There”: Conflict and Collaboration in Environmental Partnerships

Multistakeholder collaboration in the environmental realm has been increasing steadily over the past decade. This trend is responding to several stimuli, including dissatisfaction with current regulatory regimes, a liberal economic climate emphasizing global competitiveness and short-term returns, and the growing roles of the business and nongovernmental organization sectors in the environmental policy arena. This paper grows out of ethnographic research conducted between 1994 and 1998 with four environmental partnerships in Europe and the United States. The research found all of these partnerships to be marked by practices of conflict minimization and diffusion. Drawing upon illustrative data from one of these case studies, a European Union level initiative aimed at enabling sustainable development in Europe, the paper asks why this was the case, especially given the diverse political and economic interests at stake and the history of contentious relations between the sectors in other venues. Employing a theoretical perspective highlighting the sociohistoric factors involved in these processes, the paper suggests that this proclivity toward nonconfrontational behavior stems in part from two sources: a prominent cultural model that conceptualizes the partnership process as fundamentally nonconflictual in nature, and the promotion of the discourse of ecological modernization over other competing discourses. The paper explores some of the implications of this finding and concludes that environmental partnerships characterized by such nonconfrontational practices risk inadvertently encouraging the delegitimization of conflictual approaches to environmental action and engendering a retreat from radical thinking and innovative environmental solutions.     

Building Trust in Natural Resource Management Within Local Communities: A Case Study of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Communities neighboring federally protected natural areas regularly weigh the costs and benefits of the administering agency’s programs and policies. While most agencies integrate public opinion into decision making, efforts to standardize and formalize public involvement have left many local communities feeling marginalized, spurring acrimony and opposition. A significant body of research has examined barriers to effective public participation as well as strategies for relationship building in planning processes; many of which point to trust as a key factor. Trust is especially tenuous in local communities. This paper explores perceptions of trust, expectations for management, as well as constraints to building trust. In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 community members and USDA Forest Service personnel at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in northeastern Illinois. The interviews revealed that trust is perceived as important to effective management. Distinct expectations for management outcomes and processes emerged, including the values, knowledge, and capacity demonstrated in management decisions and actions and opportunities provided for communication, collaboration, and cooperation within the agency-community relationship. The case study identified several constraints to building trust, including competing values, knowledge gaps, limited community engagement, and staff turnover.     

The typography of environmental impact statements: Criteria,evaluation, and public participation

Guidelines for implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act state that environmental impact statements (EISs) shall use “appropriate graphics.” We examined one component of graphics, typography, identifying applicable criteria from the literature and applying them to 150 EISs prepared by seven agencies. We found that the EISs ranged widely in typographic quality. The average EIS met fewer than seven of ten criteria; 12% were considered unreadable. The results suggest that weak typography may seriously limit public review of EISs. Agencies are encouraged to make typography a serious component of their public participation programs.     

Factors influencing private and public environmental protection behaviors: results from a survey of residents in Shaanxi, China

Currently one of the largest and most rapidly developing countries, China also has some of the world's most severe environmental problems. China will most likely need to use all of the potential major strategies currently available to solve the country's huge environmental challenges, including promoting individual conservation behavior through educational campaigns and encouraging public environmental advocacy. This paper summarized the findings of a survey of 347 residents of Shaanxi province on environmental attitudes and behaviors. The survey found generally high levels of environmental knowledge and high recognition of the seriousness of environmental issues, moderate levels of individual actions supporting environmental resource conservation and low levels of public environmental behaviors, particularly for organized public advocacy. Further analysis indicated that the perceived importance of environmental protection is the most important factor influencing individual environmental resource conservation, but not public advocacy behaviors. Implications for environmental campaigns are discussed.     

Conflicting energy and environmental policies: The portsmouth oil refinery

This case study presents the series of decision-making processes surrounding a current environmental issue—the Portsmouth oil refinery in Virginia. Crude oil must be refined before it can be used as fuel. Additionally, some oil must be desulfurized for use other than as gasoline. In 1977, the nation imported about one million barrels of oil a day. Although the US Department of Energy has emphasized the critical need for greater east coast refinery capability, the east coast is to supply only 25% of its refined oil needs. In the same year, the east coast met its demands for petroleum products from three sources: (a) refinery production, 22.7%, (b) product imports, 28.0%, and (c) products from the Gulf Coast, 49.3%.¹ The energy program after the Arab oil embargo has an objective of encouraging the construction of oil refineries and petrochemical plants in the United States rather than abroad. The tariff is higher on imports of refined oil products than of crude oil, and new refineries are allowed to import a large proportion of their requirements tarifffree.The US federal government does not directly regulate the locations for oil refineries or methods of desulfurization. The oil import program, however, does influence decisions concerning location of desulfurization facilities and refineries, and air and water pollution standards affect methods of refining, besides making desulfurization necessary.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of Defense.     

A system dynamics model to facilitate public understanding of water management options in Las Vegas,Nevada

Water managers increasingly are faced with the challenge of building public or stakeholder support for resource management strategies. Building support requires raising stakeholder awareness of resource problems and understanding about the consequences of different policy options. One approach that can help managers communicate with stakeholders is system dynamics modeling. Used interactively in a public forum, a system dynamics model can be used to explain the resource system and illustrate the effects of strategies proposed by managers or suggested by forum participants. This article illustrates the process of building a strategic-level system dynamics model using the case of water management in Las Vegas, Nevada. The purpose of the model was to increase public understanding of the value of water conservation in Las Vegas. The effects of policies on water supply and demand in the system are not straightforward because of the structure of the system. Multiple feedback relationships lead to the somewhat counterintuitive result that reducing residential outdoor water use has a much greater effect on water demand than reducing indoor water use by the same amount. The model output shows this effect clearly. This paper describes the use of the model in research workshops and discusses the potential of this kind of interactive model to stimulate stakeholder interest in the structure of the system, engage participant interest more deeply, and build stakeholder understanding of the basis for management decisions.     

Benchmark Criteria: A Tool for Selecting Appropriate Models in the Field of Water Management

A milestone in the field of European water protection policy is the European Union’s Water Framework Directive (WFD), which came into force in December 2000 and which integrates the management of European waters in many ways. In this study, we start by focusing on management issues connected to the implementation of the WFD and pose a question: “what type of models would be the most suitable for use in the context of the WFD?” With this question in mind, we aim to establish a set of operational and functional selection criteria for (computer) models whose application is intended to support decision-making related to a particular water management issue. These so-called “benchmark criteria” should help water managers and other model users in choosing appropriate models, e.g., for the WFD implementation purposes. We first describe models and their use in general and then propose an approach for setting the benchmark criteria for models, basing it on the concept of uncertainty management, while keeping firmly in mind the important role of citizens and citizen organizations in water management. The suggested benchmark criteria are in the form of 14 questions through which each model can be evaluated. Finally, the process for testing and refining the benchmark criteria is highlighted.     

The Decision Analysis Interview Approach in the Collaborative Management of a Large Regulated Water Course

There are always conflicting goals in the management of large water courses. However, by involving stakeholders actively in the planning and decision-making processes, it is possible to work together toward commonly acceptable solutions. In this article, we describe how we applied interactive multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) in a collaborative process which aimed at an ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable water course regulation policy. The stakeholders' opinions about the alternative regulation schemes and the relative importance of their impacts were elicited with the HIPRE software. Altogether, 20 personal interactive decision analysis interviews (DAIs) were carried out with the stakeholders. Our experience suggests that the DAIs can considerably improve the quality and efficiency of the collaborative planning process. By improving communication and understanding of the decision situation in the steering group, the approach helped to develop a consensus solution in a case having strong conflicts of interest. In order to gain the full benefits of the MCDA approach, interactive preference elicitation is vital. It is also essential to integrate the approach tightly into the planning and decision-making process. The project's home pages are available to the public at http://www.paijanne.hut.fi/.     

Toward Integrated Environmental Management for Challenges in Water Environmental Protection of Lake Taihu Basin in China

Lake Taihu is the third largest freshwater lake in China. It serves many social, economic, and ecological purposes in the drainage basin. Unfortunately, the water has been heavily polluted due to rapid industrialization and urbanization during the last two decades. Notwithstanding great efforts made so far to improve the water quality, the environmental situation is still far from being optimistic. The basin and the lake are facing a range of severe environmental challenges: rapid socio-economic development continues to place great pressures on the environment, current pollution control projects have many problems from the viewpoint of effectiveness and efficiency of their implementations, and the non-point sources of pollution such as agricultural fields, for which control is more difficult than for industrial point sources, have become the main contributors to serious eutrophication of the lake. Considering the characteristics of the environmental challenges and problems confronting the basin and the lake, we focus on integrated environmental management (IEM) as a promising and effective approach to overcome these predicaments. Current practices and problems of environmental management in the basin are examined, and potential future developments are discussed. Three aspects of the IEM are emphasized: institutional cooperation, public participation, and internalization of environmental externalities. We think these are the most critical for not only the basin but also for the whole of China to achieve a sustainable society.     

Participants and non-participants of place-based groups: an assessment of attitudes and implications for public participation in water resource management

Policy-makers and public participation analysts face the question of who should be involved in environmental decision-making. Participants are often representatives of organized groups who share similar demographic and other characteristics. This raises concerns about the degree to which the interests and opinions of others are represented. The research presented here investigates the nature and degree of differences in environmental attitudes, specifically those toward water resource management efforts, among people who do and do not participate in place-based groups in metropolitan Portland, Oregon. Neighborhood associations and a watershed council were the focus of this research due to their involvement in land-use planning and resource activities. Thirty-four individual attitudinal judgments were evaluated, along with four indices representing attitudes toward resource protection goals, government, regulations, and economic measures. Survey findings revealed watershed council participants were more supportive of resource protection compared to others on all attitudinal dimensions except anthropocentric goals. In contrast, neighborhood association participants are relatively representative of non-participants except for heightened support for economic strategies. Participants in both groups exhibited higher socioeconomic status than non-participants. Written survey comments highlighted the perceived value of on-the-ground projects incorporating local input and feedback while interviews provided insights on how to expand participation in place-based groups and resource protection efforts.     

Environmental Policy in Russia: Economic,Legal, and Organizational Issues

/ Despite the suspension and closing down of many pollutingindustrial facilities and corresponding expectations of positive change inthat field, it is argued that the environmental situation in Russia in thefirst half of the 1990s has not improved. To corroborate this point, thelatest available data are presented and the deep roots and complexities ofthe current socioeconomic and political situation in the country areanalyzed. Using analogies and "component accounting" approaches,the original economic assessments of environmental damage in the recent pastand current period in Russia are offered for comparison with similar datafrom a selection of developed countries. A model of a new environmentalstrategy and policy is developed and its economic, legal, and organizationaldimensions are examined.KEY WORDS: Damage; Environmental costs; Policy; Pollution; Publicparticipation; Risk; Strategy     

Managing Public Forests: Understanding the Role of Collaborative Planning

/ As federal land management agencies such as the USDA Forest Service increasingly choose to implement collaborative methods of public participation, research is needed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the technique, to identify barriers to effective implementation of collaborative processes, and to provide recommendations for increasing its effectiveness. This paper reports on the findings of two studies focused on the experiences of Forest Service employees and their external partners as they work to implement collaborative planning processes in national forest management. The studies show both similarities and differences between agency employees and their partners in terms of how they evaluate their collaborative experiences. The studies reveal that both Forest Service employees and external partners are supportive of collaborative planning and expect it to continue in the future, both see the trust and relationships built during the process as being its greatest benefit, and both see the Forest Service's organizational culture as the biggest barrier to effective collaborative efforts. The groups differed in terms of evaluating each other's motivation for participating in the process and in whether the process was a good use of time and resources, with external partners seeing it as too drawn out and expensive. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications and changes necessary to increase the effectiveness of collaborative efforts within the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies.KEY WORDS: Public land management; Collaborative planning; National forests; Public participation     

Design of an institutional decision-making process: the case of urban water management

Urban water infrastructure expenditures cause a major financial burden to municipalities. In the opinion of many policy-makers, public funds may alleviate this burden and facilitate environmental policies. However, practice has shown that despite ambitious policies, funding often follows traditional cost-dominated thinking. In Austria, national policy-makers were interested in new guidelines for funding that increase the transparency of the planning, ensure the adequate treatment of ecological problems, and foster stakeholder involvement, but keep the process as simple as possible, and require minimal changes of the current guidelines. An interdisciplinary project team conducted such a study. Its outcome was tested in two pilot projects. Based on these experiences, policy-makers finally implemented the recommended guidelines for the funding of communal urban water infrastructure projects. A general observation about the policy-making process was a conservative attitude of policy-makers. They prefer simple constraints (precautionary principle) and flexible negotiations (delegation) to complex assessment and decision-aid methodologies.     

Use of decision analysis interviews to support the sustainable use of the forests in Finnish Upper Lapland

Controversy between alternative uses of forests in Finnish Upper Lapland has been going on for decades, and in recent years it has been escalated to a serious conflict. The core of the conflict is the adverse impacts of forestry on old forests which are important grazing areas for reindeer and which are regarded as intact nature and wilderness areas. This paper describes the experiences of applying multi-criteria decision analysis interview approach on this conflict. The approach provides tools for structuring the problem and preferences of the stakeholders as well as for analyzing the effects of different alternatives in a common framework. We focus on the practical experiences gained from the application of this approach in this context. Multi-criteria decision analysis was found to be a useful approach to evaluate the economic, ecological and cultural aspects of this intense conflict. The obtained experiences also support the view that the approach works best when tightly integrated into the planning process.     

基于GIS的哈密地区旅游资源分析与评价

按国家标准(GB/T18972—2003)对哈密地区旅游资源进行普查,并结合前人所获得的资料,在地理信息系统(GIS)的支持下,从资源的丰度、品质、空间结构和空间分布等方面评价了哈密地区旅游资源,总结出哈密地区旅游资源具有类型较丰富、分布不均衡、资源品质一般、特品级旅游资源缺乏;人文旅游资源在数量上占有绝对优势且特色明显,但自然旅游资源仍有较大开发潜力等主要特征。该分析与评价结果可为该地区决策的制定提供战略参考。     

Determinants of Trust for Public Lands: Fire and Fuels Management on the Bitterroot National Forest

Management of public lands occurs today with high levels of scrutiny and controversy. To succeed, managers seek the support, involvement, and endorsement of the public. This study examines trust as an indicator of managerial success and attempts to identify and measure the components that most influence it. A review of trust literature yielded 14 attributes that were hypothesized to contribute to trust, grouped into the three dimensions of Shared Norms and Values, Willingness to Endorse, and Perceived Efficacy. Operationalizing these attributes and dimensions, a telephone survey was administered to a sample of Montana, USA, residents living adjacent to the Bitterroot National Forest (n = 1,152). Each of the attributes was measured in the context of federal lands fire and fuel management. Structural equation modeling showed that all 14 attributes were found to be influential contributors to levels of trust. Results suggest that if managers are to maintain or increase levels of public trust, they need to consider each of trust’s attributes as they make social, ecological, and economic resource decisions.     

Effect of Environmental Setting on Sediment, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus Concentrations in Albemarle-Pamlico Drainage Basin, North Carolina and Virginia, USA

/ Environmental settings were defined, through an overlay process, as areas of coincidence between categories of three mapped variablesMland use, surficial geology, and soil drainage characteristics. Expert judgment was used in selecting factors thought to influence sediment and nutrient concentrations in the Albemarle-Pamlico drainage area. This study's findings support the hypothesis that environmental settings defined using these three variables can explain variations in the concentration of certain sediment and nutrient constituents. This finding underscores the importance of developing watershed management plans that account for differences associated with the mosaic of natural and anthropogenic factors that define a basin's environmental setting. At least in the case of sediment and nutrients in the Albemarle-Pamlico region, a watershed management plan that focuses only on anthropogenic factors, such as point-source discharges, and does not account for natural characteristics of a watershed and the influences of these characteristics on water quality, may lead to water-quality goals that are over- or underprotective of key environmental features and to a misallocation of the resources available for environmental protection.KEY WORDS: Environmental setting; Water quality; Watershed management; Nutrients; Sediment     

Assessing the value of information for water quality management in the North Sea

Global Earth Observation (GEO) is one of the most important sources of information for environmental resource management and disaster prevention. With budgets for GEO increasingly under pressure, it is becoming important to be able to quantify the returns to informational investments. For this, a clear analytical framework is lacking. By combining Bayesian decision theory with an empirical, stakeholder-oriented approach, this paper attempts to develop such a framework. The analysis focuses on the use of satellite observations for Dutch water quality management in the North Sea. Dutch water quality management currently relies on information from 'in situ' measurements but is considering extending and deepening its information base with satellite observations. To estimate returns to additional investments in satellite observation, we analyze the added value of an extended monitoring system for the management of eutrophication, potentially harmful algal blooms and suspended sediment and turbidity in the North Sea. First, we develop a model to make the potential contribution of information to welfare explicit. Second, we use this model to develop a questionnaire and interpret the results. The results indicate that the expected welfare impact of investing in satellite observation is positive, but that outcomes strongly depend on the accuracy of the information system and the range of informational benefits perceived.     

Environmental and economic impacts of water scarcity and market reform on the Mooki catchment

Over-allocation of irrigation water has led to widespread environmental degradation in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) in Australia, prompting discussions of the water efficiency performance of irrigated industries. There is increasing pressure for irrigators to adopt water efficient practices in line with ecologically sustainable principles, especially with current drought conditions. However, there is great uncertainty surrounding the available practices to improve irrigation efficiency from both ecological and economic standpoints. This paper examines the economic and environmental impact of several possible water efficient practices and government policies, using an interdisciplinary approach combining biophysical modelling and economic modelling. This is done for the case-study of the Mooki catchment in the MDB, located in northern New South Wales, Australia.