Improving Interactions Between Coastal Science and Policy Proceedings of the California Symposium (1995) / Chapter Skim
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STAGE SETTING PAPERS
STAGE SETTING PAPERS
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Douglas California Coastal Commission " The [egis/ature .
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To understand respective roles we need to define our terms and goals. We must be clear about our expectations and need to recognize the limitations of scientific knowledge, especially in the environmental sciences.
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And yet/ in the arena of public policy development and implementation, whether in health care, space exploration or environmental protection, the application of science to decisionmaking has a record of mixed results. Most of what drives the politics and decisionmaking within and among public institutions in societies of the world is based on values and beliefs, whether religious or secular.
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Our response depends on the nature of the problem, who is asking the question, who is affected by the answer, what the answer is, what is at stake, whether the courts have imposed requirements that affect the issue, and so on. In coastal management programs, for example, the role of science has fluctuated waxing and waning in importance over the years depending on factors having little to do with the value of science to good decisionmaking.
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Policymakers What scientific information is needed by policy decisionmakers usually depends on who needs it. In the legislative context, reliance on scientific knowledge for environmental policy formulation is often merely strategic and used to muster political support.
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Policymakers, in these circumstances, usually get no information, partial results, superficial studies, or a lot of speculation. Yet another element relates to the extent of the inquiry that is expected to generate the scientific knowledge a policymaker wants.'4 For example, a simple search and synthesis of existing scientific literature on a topic may be sufficient for some policy formulation purposes.
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Policy-implementors who have courts or scientific review panels looking over their shoulders are much more scrupulous in their use of knowledge and science than those operating without such "constraints." For example and as a result of recent judicial decisions, broad, generic studies or '6See, HA Dubious Battle to Save the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle," Science, Vol.
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v. California Coastal Commission {1 991 ~ 226 Cal.App.3d 1 260; See Also Lucas v.
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For example, non-governmental organizations, developers, and governmental entities in the business of using coastal and ocean resources (e.g., port districts, local governments, special districts, state highway departments) are, in one way or another, involved with policy implementation.
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For example, what is needed will depend on whether the scientist is seen as an advocate of a particular policy or merely as a neutral gatherer and presenter of factual evidence. As a general proposition, ~ think policymakers and implementors should not rely on or expect scientists to become advocates or poticymakers.
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They can be asked to draw conclusions, albeit somewhat speculative, about potential impacts on shoreline communities if sea level rises at a particular rate over a certain period of time. The line is crossed however, when the scientists are asked, as scientists, what the responsible governing bodies should do about it.
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In describing information needs, it is important for the user to understand the limitation of scientific knowledge, especially in the field of environmental science. If our expectations are not tempered by reality (i.e., gaps in our knowledge}, we run the risk of creating a situation as a result of which the value of scientific input to policy formulation may be discounted by decisionmakers and the public.
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There are many examples of science used to justify a policy decision which later turned out to have been a mistake.20 Public confidence in environmental policy decisionmaking and policy implementation requires credibility; and that, in turn, requires accurate, valid, high-caliber scientific information that is properly used. Other Factors to Consider Defining the Problem One of the most important steps in determining what information is needed from the scientist is a clear statement of the problem.
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Asking the Right Questions Once the problem has been defined, the right questions must be asked to ensure that the information provided is valid and useful. If the problem is to determine whether the rate of sea level rise along a particular coastline is accelerating and what, if any, land use policy decisions should be made, many more questions must be asked and answered.
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" Timing of informational input is usually critical. Unfortunately, and as a result of a combination of conflicting traits typical to each subculture, timely scientific input is a major problem.
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Making Clear Limitations of the Scientific Information To avoid misuse of scientific input and to promote understanding of what the information really means, it is important that the limitations inherent in the science are carefully explained. Environmental science is an emerging and evolving field with many major gaps in existing knowledge.
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In the environmental sciences little is fully understood about the interaction of forces within and among ecological units. In coastal and ocean governance, as in virtually every environmental protection program, the issues are so complex and our knowledge so limited that it is difficult to reach definitive conclusions about many of the technical questions raisecl.
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32 IMPR O DING IN TERN C TI ONS BETWEEN CON S TO L SCIENCE A ND POL /C Y Conclusion Science will play an increasingly important role in environmental public policy decisionmaking. Although scientists and policymakers and -implementors belong to distinct subcultures in our society, the two groups must learn to interact more effectively.
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Scientists tend to think that science is undersupported and that most decisions are "political," meaning that scientific input is lacking, ignored or has only a minor effect. Policymakers and 33
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Most of the literature on environmental science-policy interactions has been authored by policy analysts and perhaps they have more detached objectivity. Our perspectives are those of natural scientists who have long been engaged in basic and applied research in the coastal ocean (DFB)
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And so on. In work in progress, we are comparing the influence of science on policy related to these issues in the United States and the North Sea.
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Factor Science Policy Valued action Research, scholarship Legislation, regulations, decisions Timeframe | That needed to gath r | Immediate, short-term evidence Goals Increase understanding Manage immediate prob ems Basis for decisions Scientific evidence Science, values, public opinion, economics Expectations Understanding never complete Expect clear answers from science Grain Focus on details, Focus on broad outline contradictions World view Primacy of biological, physical, Primacy of political, chemical mechanisms social, interpersonal, economic mechanisms One cultural tendency of scientists poses particular limitations on the development of environmental policy: the value placed on narrowly defined scholarship. Particularly in universities where faculty are presumably evaluated for their contributions in research, teaching and public service, reward systems for scientists place major emphasis on original, specialized research.
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This explains why there may be more communication between scientists and policymakers/implementors within an advocacy coalition than between scientists in different advocacy coalitions. In coastal ocean science, advocacy coalitions with distinct scientific memberships have existed over such issues as the effects of of!
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Agency managers need to allow and encourage their professional staffs to "get out of the office" for such interaction—it is certainly more timely and may be more informative than the final report. Getting and Giving Advice Scientific advisory committees concerning some aspect of the coastal environment have been a growth industry over the past decade.
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Interestingly, this same committee recently completed its assessment of the Minerals Management Service's OCS Environmental Studies Program (NRC, 19921; almost all of the criticisms leveled were raised by the agency's own scientific committee a decade earlier with little result (Boesch, 1992~. Commonly, committee work is slow going for committee members and agency staff alike.
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40 IMPROVING INTERACTIONS BETWEEN COASTAL SCIENCE AND POLICY Despite these limitations, scientific advisory committees can fill very valuable roles of detached criticism, public validation, and forward-Iooking advice. We offer a few suggestions on how to make scientific committees effective, both to members and sponsoring agencies: Committee members: Sponsor agencies: make an effort to focus on what is known and how this information can help the agency; do not spend too much effort lamenting ail the unfilled research needs; concentrate on a future time horizon at which the committee's advice may have an effect; do not get bogged down with toclay's crises; avoid minutiae and details.
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For the most part, though, such temptation should be resisted because credibility is risked when the scientist's role moves from analysis to advocacy. When advocacy coalitions are in conflict, emphasis on the scientific norms of objective analysis can facilitate learning across opposing coalitions and policy development (Sabatier, 19881.
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Ecology anc/ the Human Spirit. Although we would argue that uncertainty is being incrementally narrowed as our knowledge of coastal ecosystems grows, there will always be substantial uncertainty in predicting the consequences of environmental policies in ecosystems as complex as those in the coastal ocean, which are under the influence of multiple environmental media and are pervaded by human society.
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The ~ 987 North Sea Ministerial Conference embraced this principle agreeing that "in order to protect the North Sea from possibly damaging effects of the most dangerous substances, a precautionary approach is necessary which may require action to contra/ inputs of such substances even before a cause/ /ink has been estab/ishec/ by c/ear scientific evic/ence." Originally applied to controls of highly toxic substances, the Precautionary Principle is now being evoked for the control of nutrients, overfishing, and virtually every human activity affecting the marine environment (e.g., EarIl, 1992~. But the Precautionary Principle does not let environmental science off the hook.
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In the Chesapeake Bay water quality modeling, for example, the rate constants depend heavily on research findings and the model results are both driven by input variables from the monitoring program and verified by matching predictions with further observations. Much of the understanding of the processes embodied in the model was developed through fundamental research supported
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Although new scientific information rarely initiated management action, the availability of good information and scientific advice not only enhanced the responsiveness and quality of management actions, it often reinforced management decisions and helped to keep the management process on track. Timing and Timeliness The cultural mode!
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1992. MMS' approach to quality control in the Environmental Studies Program.
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1 988. An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and role of policy-oriented learning therein.
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BijIsma teds.) , Distress Signals, Sign a/s for the Environment in Policy anc/ Decision Making, 3rd North Sea Seminar.
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Public policies which assign different importance to different components of the non-human physical environment, such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act, are clearly based on the cultural values humans associate with those components.
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Having thus addressed the question of WHY social scientists must contribute to coastal policymaking, we may now turn to HOW such contributions can be made. First, we will establish the principle of a "cultural ecology" to enable us to view the human and non-human components of the coastal environment as a unified system.
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Oil and gas and marine mammal policies are good examples of "coastal" policy arenas that involve or affect such people; oil and gas because "coastal" policy decisions affect all users of those resources, and marine mammals because non-coastal constituencies have major input to the policymaking process regarding marine mammals, even though they may never have been within 50 miles of the coast or have seen a marine mammal in person. Both in the development and in the implementation of coastal policy, the beliefs and behaviors of all of these people must be considered.
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In addition, because of the complexity and variability of the factors involved in human beliefs and behaviors, social scientists often supplement the documentable, quantifiable aspects of their analysis with more descriptive and interpretive material in order to give those who use their data the opportunity to sample that richness of belief and behavior not amenable to tabular summary. Although certain of the social sciences- notably economics and political science—-have been involved in policymaking to a greater extent than the others, all are relevant to some portion of the policymaking process.
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However, it is the latter activity social science FOR coastal policymaking, that is, designed for direct use within the policy process itself—upon which we'll focus here. For heuristic purposes we will divide our discussion into social science and scientists in the process of policy development versus the process of policy implementation.
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Such contributions are in fact required under NEPA and many other legislative mandates. In the development of specific policies for specific domains such as fisheries, coastal management or of' and gas, social scientists must work alongside natural and physical scientists in, for example, the definition of policy alternatives and in particular in the analysis of the potential impacts of those alternatives.
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, data management, and storage and analysis which apply to the physical and natural sciences also apply to the social sciences for the monitoring and evaluation process. Existing Mechanisms for Social Scientific Input There are three mechanisms for social scientific input to coastal policy and management practices: (1 ~ Social scientists working internal to the public policy process itself, that is as employees in public policy agencies; (2)
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In coastal zone management social scientists have served on advisory committees for state, regional, and national programs. In addition, social scientists have participated on National Academy of Science (NAS)
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Support and Resources for Coastal Social Science There are relatively few social scientists employed in regulatory agencies. Funding for social science research, especially in the applied areas, in programs
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Unfortunately, most applied science including, by definition most of that relevant for coastal policymaking- takes place under anything but conditions of order and control. Scientists often fee!
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Although several impediments exist to the full incorporation of social scientists into the coastal policymaking process, that incorporation must be accomplished before we will have a fully rational, comprehensive system for our value-based coastal policymaking.
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Examples will be drawn from the national Coastal Zone Management Program, the National Estuary Program, the Outer Continent Shelf Oil and Gas Program, fisheries management under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and marine mammal protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It is clear that virtually everyone favors strengthening the scientific basis and the technical soundness of public policymaking.
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The use of small daily doses of aspirin to ward off heart attacks may be a case in point. The purpose of this paper as mentioned above is to examine the present role of "science" in national coastal ocean management programs.
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The categories we will use in this study, therefore, are policy initiation, policy formulation, policy implementation, policy evaluation, and policy modification and/or termination. Policy initiation refers to the initial stage wherein a problem is recognized and placed on the national agenda; policy formulation takes place when, after a review of available options, a specific policy response is drafted into legislation; policy implementation is the process by which the mechanisms called for in the legislation (to achieve the policy goals)
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Similarly, a more scientific (more rigorous) approach to coastal zone management would involve much greater emphasis on the evaluation of outcomes and the subsequent adjustment of the management process based on such assessments.
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In this setting, one set of recruited scientists sometimes is pitted against another, especially if the policy area under discussion is complex and lacks agreed methodologies. Policy Implementation In policy areas involving the coastal zone and the coastal ocean and management of the resources contained therein, the implementation phase is by far
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Indeed, in my view, much more attention needs to be placed on this aspect of the policy process. Without rigorous evaluation procedures in place, coastal resource management programs could be "flying blind." How is it possible to improve management programs over time without objective, reliable, and timely information on how well they are doing?
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More realistic is the assumption, especially with regard to coastal zone and coastal ocean management initiatives, that considerable discretion is left to the implementing agency and that the linkage between program inputs and desired program outcomes is ill-defined and poorly understood. In the real world, therefore, periodic adjustment or modification of the program based on the results of carefully conducted, regular evaluations is a vital aspect of a properly functioning policy process.
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Implementation as an Experiment As can be seen from above, the implementation phase is largely conducted in a sequential fashion. It is usually seen as a process whereby regulations and procedures are created at the federal level, are received and interpreted at the state level/ leading to regulatory and management programs which are operated at state and local levels.
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The federal consistency provisions and the national interest requirements were virtually untested concepts when they were incorporated into the Coastal Zone Management Act of ~ 972. The concept of "optimum yield" in the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the approach embodied in "optimum sustainable population" in the Marine Mammal Protection Act were also new ideas.
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Yet all have been certified by the federal government as meeting the standards of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1 972. The differences between these programs are not random.
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Need for a technically sound evaluation process -- Four steps are necessary to create a more rigorous assessment process: A. The establishment and articulation of a clear set of goals for coastal management programs to achieve in a prescribed time period. B. The design and operation of sub-programs to achieve each of the agreed goals.
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Nonetheless, even the information on how much is being spent per acre to protect coastal wetlands would be of considerable interest. Program Operation The more rigorous approach to coastal management would require that specific attention be paid to the individual parts of the state's coastal management program associated with each of the agreed goals—that a clear methodology be set out showing what will be done during the next ~ 2 months to achieve each of the goals.
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The Use of Science in National Coastal/Ocean Programs This section discusses the role of science in four major national coastal ocean programs—the Coastal Zone Management Program (under the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1 972 as amended) , the Fisheries Management Program (under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of ~ 976 as amended)
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Lowry goes on to say that the approach used in CZMA involves "variate/es that are related in poorly understood ways and for which no widely accepted solutions exist." Prohibiting the take of marine mammals as prescribed in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) should restore the populations of these animals, which is a central goal of MMPA managing fishing effort, one of the measures called for in the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MFCMA)
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although clearly this kind of understanding is basic to a rational management program. Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act Amendments (OCSLAA)
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[The same is true for the National Estuary Program discussed below.] The of' and gas program (and the marine mammal protection program discussed below, as well)
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National Estuary Program The National Estuary Program (NEP) is the newest coastal ocean management program to appear at the federal level.
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Relatively little NEP funding appears to be going into management or implementation-related research although a novel program like NEP would seemingly benefit from such studies. Estimates of the degree of science involvement in each of the five coastal ocean management programs are noted in Figure 2 below.
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Of the five programs, the marine mammal protection program is judged to be the most tractable, the fisheries management program and the offshore oil and gas program, the next most tractable, and the estuary management program is judged to be of "moderate" tractability, with the CZM program judged as the least tractable of the five (Cicin-Sain, ~ 9861. Estimates of the degree to which the natural sciences are involved in the program suggest that the most tractable programs are likely to have a larger natural science involvement than the fess tractable programs.
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Figure 3 below contains a listing of some of the principal ways in which, in my view, science can have a positive influence on the coastal ocean policy, decisionmaking, and management process. Taking into account the opportunities for science input suggested in Figure 3, several suggestions are offered to those currently funding coastal ocean science research which is being conducted to support improved policymaking, decisionmaking, and management, and to those responsible for the drafting of legislation and for the implementation and operation of national coastal ocean management programs: 1.
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approaches in the expanded territorial sea and in the Exclusive Economic Zone Others will, of course, have their own candidate items for this list. In any event, it is hoped that agencies funding coastal ocean science and research will find listings such as this one useful as they formulate their funding priorities.
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1986. Ocean resources and intergovernmental relations: An analysis of patterns.
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~ shall then present an alternative, Advocacy Coalition Model, which has proven to be useful in several environmental policy disputes, including (1 ~ the controversy over freshwater flows into the San Francisco Bay/Estuary and (2) petroleum leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)
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2. Elected officials are responsible for making basic policy decisions in a manner which reflects the distribution of values in society.
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Thus the most active scientists in a particular dispute are likely to be those who have been involved the longest and who are most committed to defending a particular point of view. The end result is that scientists who have something to contribute to important policy disputes are seldom neutral (see also Margolis, 1 974; Mazur, 1981)
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For example, in a ~ 991 seminar at the University of California at Davis, Randy Brown of the California Department of Water Resources (the agency responsible for managing the State Water Project) interpreted the data in Figure ~ to indicate that delta smelt populations are tow but stable, whereas Peter Doyle of the University of California at Davis interpreted them as providing strong evidence for listing as an endangered species.
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This is likely to have very substantial repercussions on the operation of the State Water Project managed by DOOR.
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General Mode! of Policy Evolution Focusing on Competing Advocacy Coalitions Within Policy Subsystems (from Sabatier, ~ 988~.
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recently developed a conceptual framework of the policy process which views policy change over time as primarily the result of competition among advocacy coalitions within a policy subsystem. An advocacy coalition consists of interest group leaders, legislators, agency officials, researchers, and even journalists who share a set of basic beliefs (policy goals plus critical perceptions of causal relationships)
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The ACF assumes that members of a coalition will readily accept new evidence consistent with their views and seek to discount information which conflicts with their perception of the seriousness of a problem or the relative importance of various factors affecting it. For example, recent studies by Chris Foe of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board provide strong evidence that pesticides from rice fields in the Sacramento Valley contribute substantially to mortality among striped bass larvae during May-June (Foe, ~ 991 I
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In their paper for this symposium, Boesch and Macke suggest several other disputes in ocean policy which seem to have followed this pattern. Promoting Learning Across Coalitions The Advocacy Coalition Framework does not deny the existence of reasonably "objective" scientific research.
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prestigious enough to force professionals from different coalitions to participate and (b) dominated by scientific norms.
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Instead, the relevant demarcation is between groups of scientists and groups of agency officials who are allied in opposing coalitions. In such circumstances, many scientists are not neutral and the Advocacy Coalition Model is likely to be more useful for understanding the manner in which scientific information is used in the policy process.
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1988. Advocacy coalitions and the OCS leasing debate.
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~ 988. An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein.
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Among the most 26Brown's remarks, in Governor's Advisory Commission on Ocean Resources {GACOR}, Proceedings of the Second Meeting, 22-23 Oct.
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Schelber, "California Marine Research and the Founding of Modern Fisheries Oceanography: CalCOFl's Early Years, 1 947-64," California Oceanic fisheries Investigations lCalCOFll Reports, 1990 31 63-83 (1990) ; McEvoy and Scheiber, "Scientists, Entrepreneurs and the Policy Process: A Study of the Post-1945 California Sardine Depletion," Journal of Economic IJistory 14:393-413 (1984)
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Established in each case to help produce a coherent and integrated oceans policy for California, the two commissions operated in varying degrees of coordination with the state's administrative agencies and with the University of California's Institute of Marine Research at La Jolla, which also were dealing with ocean policy issues at that time.30 Certainly one could cite other episodes in the history of California ocean science and policy that are of great interest, ranging from the massive array of social science and natural science studies occasioned by the Santa Barbara offshore oil spill to the most recent (and perhaps most illustrious) example, the formation of the Monterey Marine Sanctuary.
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Fish and Wildlife Service, the state marine fisheries laboratory, and scientists of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography {SIO) of the University of California.
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29, 1 947, SIO Archives.} See also Revelle, MS. memorandum on the sardine project, May 3, 1948, manuscript in Subject Files: Marine Life Research Program, SIO Archives.
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The individual and joint scientific contributions of all these programs, in various ways, to United Nations and other international studies of the oceans, as well as to the provision of scientific data for international and 35The federal scientists had their own reasons for keeping a low profile on management policy recommendations and decisions, fearing that at best they would be charged with interference in state affairs and at worst would lose support of the commercial fishing interests in Congress. See Scheiber, "California Marine Research," passim; and McEvoy, Fisherman's Problem, passing 36See John Radovich, "Collapse of the California Sardine Fishery," in Resource Management and Environmental Uncertainty, eds.
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I have written at length elsewhere on Chapman's contributions as publicist and scientific entrepreneur: Scheiber, "Wilbert Chapman and the Revolution in U.S. Pacific Ocean Science and Policy, 1945-51," in Nature in Its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific, eds.
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This is not to say that Chapman, let alone Revelle, derogated the key place of the scientific enterprise by virtue of the concern to incorporate the insights and methods of social scientists in framing policy questions and resolving them intelligently. Indeed, Chapman often expressed his abiding belief in the importance of integrative research; he trusted to "scientific facts ...
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addressed—with differences emerging among the scientists, industry representatives, and government resource managers—and not a monolithic, controlling imposition of governmental imperatives, that proved to be the most intractable obstacle to agreement on specific policy recommendations for management of the sardine and California's other fisheries.42 Science and California Ocean Policy: New Initiatives, ~964-1973 Effective communication between experts anc/ non-experts is the sine qua non of planning, in order to utilize optima//y advances in know/ec/ge anc/ {echno/ogy. The situation is not yet hopeless, but the task ahead is herculean....
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It also had a major impact on the conceptualization of ocean and coastal policy nationally, presaging in some important respects the approach and some of the specific recommendations of the Stratton Commission. The IMR Report's immediate impact upon California policy debate, however, was above all its arguments for planning and management authority to be exercised at the state level, displacing fragmented local jurisdictions when scientific evidence on the coastal environment or social and economic objectives required it.
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The industry thinks both kinds of scientists are by and large chowder-heads, so this makes for a /ifs/e bit of c/ifficu/ty in cooperation.47 What is most interesting for our purposes, however, is that Schaefer himself a man at the leading edge of what was then the most esoteric and demanding methodology in marine fisheries science responded to Brown at Los Angeles in quite different terms.48 To Schaefer, the quest for relevant knowledge and techniques, in advising government on policy, could not be profitable it were confined to a narrow definition of science as the natural sciences which is certainly what Governor Brown had meant. Thus, Schaefer boldly reinterpreted the governor's specific subject-matter mandate for the IMP study by breaking it down into rather different functional areas of investigation.
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Within a decade's time, not only in California but nationally, the idea of "coastal zone management" as a governmental and scientific enterprise was to become commonplace.52 60Schaefer went on to suggest specific changes in the proposed statutory language so as to provide for ha penetrating and thoughtful study" to embrace "the various scientific, economic and legal disciplines involved. (Schaefer to Senator Warren Magnuson, May 6, 1964, copy in Wilbert Chapman Papers, Manuscript Collections, University of Washington Libraries.} 6'1MR, California and the Use of the Ocean, passim.
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During the ensuing seven years, consideration of the IMP recommendations moved into a distinctly political phase, as a Governor's Advisory Commission on Ocean Resources {GACOR) was appointed in ~ 965 to develop specific policy proposals, and to suggest administrative reforms and policy legislation.
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Schaefer and the academics on the commission resisted the push for such a link, seeking instead to have the state confine itself to geological studies that might provide the necessary information for development policies later.58 Memorandum, "With Respect to the Establishment of an Inter-Agency Council on Ocean Resources, " March 21, 1 966, GACOR Papers, Sl O Archives. 66James Sullivan, Remarks on Ocean Policy Issues in California, Sea Grant Workshop on Legal and Policy Issues of the Territorial Sea, University of Hawaii, January 1991; also, informal remarks by Peter Douglas of the California Coastal Commission, and discussion by Dr.
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17, 1965, GACOR Papers, SIO Archives.) Archives}: 69The 1965 IMP Report, much influenced by Chapman and Schaefer, had gone on record strongly in favor of changes in state management structure that would likely lead to an easing of regulations of the commercial fishing interests, while making it a basic axiom of policy, however, that the interests of sports fishing conservation would have priority.
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In a letter to Milner Schaefer, April 29, 1965 (GACOR Papers, SIO ArchivesI, Governor Brown expressed his concern for coordination with federal studies. See also note 65, infra.
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67Chapman, Circular letter to CMC Commissioners, March 12, 1969, Advisory Commission on Marine and Coastal Resources {CMC) Papers, S10 Archives.
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The commission needed to keep itself "sufficiently in tune with state government to be ate/e to communicate with it."68 Moreover, Chapman was keenly concerned that California state policy be articulated as quickly and effectively as possible, in light of efforts going forward in Washington to develop national policy initiatives in ocean affairs. The existence of a national ocean policy commission (the Stratton CommissionJ, which was proceeding with its studies while the CMC effort was gearing up in California, made it all the more important, Chapman urged, for "expressing our opinion en c/ judgment at every opportunity," in hopes of influencing the course of national policy.69 Despite potentially deep cleavages within the commission on policy issues, and despite its political difficulties in Sacramento, the CMC initially under Chapman and then under his successor, the prominent California attorney Robert Krueger—developed a set of recommendations on coastal, onshore, and marine development that advanced dramatically in public discourse the concept of scientific study, legal jurisdiction, and administration and management of the coastal zone as an social and ecological system.
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For in that delicate geographic zone, as Chapman later wrote, in the area of "a few miles either side of the interface between sea and /and, ... are the estuarine, po//ution, mu/fip/e-use, aesthetic, industria/, recreation, socia/, and economic problems so complex, difficu/t, and interdigitating as to try the patience of Mob and the wisdom of So/omon."73 Chapman strongly believed that these interrelated coastal zone problems should be left to the jurisdiction of the state governments, rather than addressed by national legislation and highly centralized administration.74 With adoption of Proposition 20 in 1972, following an extraordinarily successful campaign by the activist environmental coalition called the Coastal Alliance, state coastal zone regulation was given the kind of comprehensive 7, Douglas, "Coastal Zone Management," loo.
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. Also of key importance, especially in the fisheries management area after ~ 975, were new regional or state-federal structures for policy development and coordination.
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On the other hand, to proceed toward regulation with deficient or inadequate information can cause serious and unnecessary economic losses on capital investment and heavy costs to existing communities and individuals.77 This was the dilemma that CalCOFI scientists and California fisheries specialists faced with regard to the sardine; and by 1953, the tragic result was that the stocks did indeed collapse, not to come back to levels that would support commercial fishing for nearly forty years.78 2. The Frustrations of Political Entanaiement—and the Related Temptation to Go Around the Implementation Problem: So long as the scientists, lawyers, and social scientists of the IMP study group (and those associated with GACOR and CIVIC)
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Rote, "A Strategy for the Comprehensive Management of California's Marine Resources," in California Coastal Commission, Ocean Studies Symposium, A silo mar, Nov. 7-20, 1982 {processed, 19821.
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From page 119... ...
opposed policies of local, regional, state, and national governments.82 Both phases of the California story that we have considered here had elements of these minefield effects; but in dealing with many of the key questions that coastal oceans policymakers face today, in California and in all the other coastal states as well the problems are even more acute since the governments in question and also the administrative agencies they have created, with their own often-distinctive postures on key policy issues—have had another quarter century to develop their positions.
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From page 120... ...
Of particular interest, in recent years, is the relationship of plebiscitary decisionmaking, as was finally exemplified by Proposition 20, to scientific inquiry and informed examination of policy choices. The California electorate's vote for Proposition 20, establishing coastal zone management, occurred after many years of scientific and policy debate, well informed by the IMR-GACOR-CMC deliberations and reports, and the responses to them from a host of industrial and environmental organizations, as well as individual political leaders and both political parties.
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From page 121... ...
In the case of the IMR-~;ACORCMC history, the experts built on the simplistic charge given them by the governor to advance a sweeping reconceptualization of coastal zone systems, studies, and management, with enduring effects on both science and policymaking that have given the field its basic framework from that day to the present. Engineers on the big federal projects are at pains to specify their hopes for "civilian spinoffs" from aerospace, military, and naval programs usually without specification in advance; this is an institutionalized recognition from the operational side of the possibilities, so familiar to scientists engaged in advising, that unanticipated results can sometimes be far more important than the planned objectives.
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From page 122... ...
James Sullivan, Director of the California Sea Grant College Program; Peter Douglas, Director of the California Coastal Commission; Robert Krueger, Esq., of San Diego; and the late Robert Kelley, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara. Research for this paper was supported by the California Sea Grant College Program, under a grant to the Ocean Law and Policy Program, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley.
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Key Terms
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