New Strategies for America's Watersheds (1999) / Chapter Skim
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8 Planning and Decisionmaking
8 Planning and Decisionmaking
Pages 232-268
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From page 232... ...
Or they may oppose a particular land use based on their perceptions of the risk involved, which may or may not be accurate. Although public concerns are often justified, at times they are rooted in the lack of accurate knowledge and lack of involvement in the analysis and decisionmaking process.
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From page 233... ...
This chapter considers these broad issues, presents six critical points that should be considered in the conduct of watershed planning, and reviews the planning procedures of six federal agencies in terms of these critical points. RELATING SCIENCE AND DECISIONMAKING improving the interface between science and policy and between scientists and politicians remains one of the major challenges to watershed management.
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From page 234... ...
Watershed planning exercises sometimes can be described as the accumulation of agreements to support politically conceived projects. As a result there may be little interest in scientific analysis or in the systematic and critical assessment of tradeoffs and cost effectiveness in the utilization of limited resources.
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From page 235... ...
, lists examples of institutional barriers to the principles of adaptive management. There is increasing awareness of the need for adaptive strategies in the management in complex systems like watersheds.
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From page 236... ...
allocation or to mitigate environmental harm. Governing institutions or agencies fund projects and establish monitoring programs to determine project effectiveness.
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From page 237... ...
The advocates of adaptive management are likely to be staff, who have professional incentives to appreciate a complex process and a career situation in which longterm learning can be beneficial. Where there is tension between staff and policy leadership, experimentation can become the focus of an internal struggle for control.
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From page 238... ...
238 ~ ~ BEHAVIORS RESOURCES AND INFORMATION ARE DISTRIBUTED /77 ~ item TO AT / ship so that NEW STRATEGIES FOR AMERICA'S WATERSHEDS /~o~worics shin to: Active\ shin \ ~ ' SELE~VELY DEVELOP INFORMATION Behavior ~ shift ~ 1~ ~ _ SECURE ~ UNDING Arrangements FIGURE 8.2 Dynamics of organizational change and function. SOURCE: Reprinted, with permission, from Bella, 1997.
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From page 239... ...
Societies are diverse aggregations of individuals and groups representing a wide range of values. Experience has shown that watershed planning, and environmental management more generally, must take into account the values of all affected stakeholders.
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From page 240... ...
However, we also note that collaborative watershed planning will be most meaningful and effective if the public is educated about environmental issues and can play an informed role in the decisionmaking process. IDENTIFYING STAKEHOLDERS AND GIVING THEM VOICE Successful collaborative planning requires careful attention to the nature of public participation.
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From page 241... ...
Collaborative Planning, Democratic Decisionmaking, and Environmental Equity One approach to giving stakeholders voice is collaborative planning. A major focus of the next decade should be to design the institutions of collaboration.
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From page 242... ...
SOURCE: USDA Forest Service, 1993.
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From page 243... ...
More socially and ecologically informed accounting demands greater attention to the overlap between political and natural boundaries, and will encompass all relevant stakes and stakeholders to establish the basis for effective democratic decisionmaking. The expansion of the range of interests and values considered in watershed planning is the result of increasing integration of the decisionmaking process and environmental protection in public policy.
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From page 244... ...
In 1992, the EPA officially acknowledged environmental equity as a issue regarding the disproportionate distribution of environmental risk across population groups. This concern with the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens has further extended the range of stakeholder involvement relevant in watershed planning.
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From page 247... ...
. To ensure that watershed management decisions are broadly understood and considered legitimate, all interested parties must participate in choosing between tradeoffs.
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Gaining information through adaptive management means that there will be a watershed planning process that has a long time horizon in which actions will , Decision ~ FIGURE 8.4 Schematic view of an integrated and iterative planning process. SOURCE: Stern and Fineberg, 1996.
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From page 249... ...
With these general points in mind, there are several specific considerations that should be taken into account in any watershed planning process. Watershed planning should explicitly specify processes for identifying: the watershed problem and objectives for its resolution, the appropriate watershed scale, relevant stakeholders, tradeoffs among alternative solutions, shared values guiding selection of alternatives, and best actions to balance among tradeoffs.
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From page 250... ...
Substantively based critiques of top-down planning note that more extensive public involvement better captures the collective wisdom of society. Thus effective stakeholder involvement helps ensure that problems are addressed more comprehensively and that solutions better address the needs of affected parties.
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From page 251... ...
A number of such compensation mechanisms that may be useful in watershed context have been developed to deal with this barrier to positive changes in environmental behavior. Over the past two decades, environmental regulation has evolved to better recognize tradeoffs involved in the implementation of management plans.
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From page 252... ...
Finally, program administrators need to overcome transaction costs or other factors inhibiting free negotiations. For instance, the administrators might ensure the legal legitimacy of development credits or facilitate buyers' and sellers' contacts and subsequent negotiations through a central TDR bank.
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From page 253... ...
Even with the current explosion of local watershed management efforts, federal agencies continue to play an important role in these collaborative planning processes (Kenney and Rieke, 1997~. At least six federal agencies are likely to have a continuing involvement in watershed management (the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Tennessee Valley Authority)
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From page 254... ...
254 NEW STRATEGIES FOR AMERICA'S WATERSHEDS logical considerations, although the agency considers other factors such as political boundaries as well. Although EPA acknowledges that watersheds may be defined at different scales and that the scale identified has implications for the roles of political authorities and relationships between stakeholders, it does not explicitly link problem and scale identification.
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From page 255... ...
PLANNING AND DECISIONMAKING 255 with the identification of "geographic management units," that is spatial units within which watershed policies are implemented and monitored. The importance of broad stakeholder involvement in the planning process is heavily stressed by EPA, which urges that watershed planning and management partnerships include representatives from all levels of government within the watershed's boundaries as well as representatives of conservation districts, public
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From page 256... ...
Watersheds are considered one of the multiple uses of forests in addition to outdoor recreation, range, timber, wildlife and fish, and wilderness. Thus the identification of the watershed scale is a secondary consideration subsumed under the multiple-use goals and objectives of Forest Service administrative units, and there are no provisions for watershed scale
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From page 257... ...
The BOR planning process does not address the issue of appropriate watershed scale. BOR water management is centered around districts, not watersheds.
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From page 258... ...
The failure to directly address this issue might be because the National Planning Procedures Handbook is a generic document that was not written specifically for watershed management. It would seem that explicit consideration of the appropriate watershed scale could be incorporated into Step Four, "analysis," and into the problem reformulation emerging from the analysis.
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From page 259... ...
This element of the Corps' planning procedures recognizes that clear statement of objectives is essential to the formulation of alternative solutions. The Corps does not explicitly state procedures for identifying appropriate
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From page 260... ...
This alternative focuses on integrating local residents, businesses, and government agencies in watershed protection efforts. The key organizing feature of TVA's watershed planning approach is the River Action Team (RAT)
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From page 261... ...
Like the other agencies reviewed here, TWA has not specified mechanisms by which those adversely affected by watershed plans will be compensated (Ungate, 1996; Poppe and Hurst, 1997~. In concentrating this review of watershed planning guidelines on major governmental institutions, we have not addressed the most profound development in the past decade, the growing number of local, often voluntary watershed organizations.
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From page 262... ...
In any case, the critical points regarding the watershed planning procedures of the more formal agency efforts described above can serve as useful guidelines to more informally operating groups. And formal planning procedures are of direct relevance to watershed initiatives led by government agencies or working closely with them.
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From page 263... ...
While the agency planning procedures review did provide some mechanisms for identifying of shared values that might help select solutions, these mechanisms were weak and may not provide adequate guidance for determining the relative importance of different values in the decisionmaking process. Even if there is agreement on the relative importance of different values, and decisions are made based on such consensus, some stakeholders may still bear a disproportionate share of the costs.
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From page 264... ...
Effective collaboration in watershed planning acknowledges these disparities in order to reach just and equitable outcomes. Collaborative planning works best when all those affected have a reasonable understanding of watershed problems, alternative solutions, and the tradeoffs involved in choosing some solutions over others.
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From page 265... ...
By addressing these weaknesses, agencies could greatly strengthen their planning procedures and move watershed planning to a higher level of sophistication. REFERENCES Anderson, E
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From page 266... ...
1994. Watershed Planning What's New?
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From page 267... ...
1996. National Planning Procedures Handbook.
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From page 268... ...
Credit: USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service.
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