Excerpted from: Collaboration: A Guide for Environmental Advocates, Frank Dukes and Karen Firehock,
University of Virginia, The Wilderness Society and National Audubon Society, 2001 (full publication in 3.2)
he increasing number and influence of collaborative processes
has profound implications for natural resource management. It can
impact how decisions get made,
who makes them, and the relative
influence of various groups,
among many other things. The
extent, role, and positive and negative implications of these
changes are hotly debated. This
Guide focuses primarily on how
environmental advocates respond
to individual collaborative
processes, proposals, or opportunities. However, an understanding
of the issues surrounding the collective impact of collaborative
processes will give a helpful perspective on any single collaborative effort. It may also influence
decisions about when and how to
participate. This Section summarizes the broader discussion surrounding the collective impact of
resource management by collaborative processes.
T
The Promise of
Collaboration
Potential benefits
Proponents of collaborative
processes argue that collaboration has the potential to achieve
benefits that may be more difficult
for other forms of public involvement or natural resource management decision processes to
produce. These benefits include:
• Bridging what were formerly
viewed as insurmountable differences to achieve gains in
relationships, to craft agreements that are creative and
stable, and to develop on-theground improvements for the
environment;
• Bringing together sufficient
resources to accomplish what
cannot be accomplished by any
one single party or smaller
coalition;
• Engaging former adversaries in
respecting the views and values
of others so as to enlarge what
had been a narrow self-interest
to encompass a broader interest
combining environmental, social,
and economic goals;
• Developing citizens who practice
the arts of active citizenship;
• Providing a positive public relations alternative for corporations
and public officials;
• Engaging citizens in ways that
promote mutual education,
including development of an
environmental ethic;
• Making decisions in ways that
are faster and cheaper, by avoiding costly and time-consuming
administrative, legislative, or
judicial public processes; and
• Creating environmental gains
beyond the minimum standards
required by laws or policies.
known early collaborative efforts
emerged from circumstances
unique to each particular community. A collaborative process is
usually seen as an alternative to
some less acceptable option,
such as a stalemate that blocks
environmental improvement and
economic development. An example would be a private collaborative effort to reintroduce an
endangered species into a particular area when the public agencies responsible for such
introduction have been ineffective
in doing so by traditional regulatory means alone.
As word spread of collaborative efforts that brought agreements between traditional
adversaries, observers began
linking these with the philosophy
and theory of participatory
democracy. One such argument
for collaborative processes is that
they provide an essential forum
for the development of “small d”
democracy – the networks of
reciprocity and exchange, mutual
obligation, understanding and
caring – which are required for
sustainable governance.
Many reasons have been
offered for the increasing use of
collaborative processes.
Philosophical foundations
• Shifting population demographics, as more and more urbanites
come into contact with ranchers
and loggers and seek ways to
There is no single philosophy
driving the increased use of collaborative processes. The best
Collaboration:
section 3
A R G U M E N T S F O R A N D A G A I N S T C O L L A B O R AT I O N
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These include:
A GUIDE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOC ATES
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Collaboration:
newly define uses and values of
public resources;
A concurrent shift in many natural resource agencies away from
supporting commodity production and towards restoring and
protecting ecosystem health;
A near-desperate search for
solutions on the part of resource
users who see the need for radical change as their way of life is
threatened by environmental
degradation or economic
decline, or both;
Increased awareness that many
natural resource issues, such as
nonpoint source pollution and
endangered species, transcend
geographic and political boundaries and must be addressed at
regional scales;
Recognition that protection of
landscapes and species must
involve private as well as public
parties and lands;
Recognition of the need for
adaptive management, flexible
decision-making based on the
uncertainties of managing the
natural world, and the need to
adjust management regimes to
respond to changing ecosystem
conditions;
Recent emphasis on “reinventing government” – for example,
at least two dozen EPA
programs now combine partnerships, voluntary goals, reduced
regulatory restrictions for
increased achievement, and
community involvement;
An ecological worldview that
recognizes the interdependence
of people and nature, as articulated by what is termed “ecosystem management”;
Inadequate protection offered by
formal legal and administrative
processes. Specific factors
include fragmentation of institutional authority, weak laws and
regulations, decreasing funding
for natural resource protection
and management at all levels of
A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF CONCERNS:
Arguing About Consensus by Douglas S. Kenney of the
University of Colorado details with considerable care the
arguments that have been made for and against collaborative
natural resource groups. His focus is on western watershed groups
but the analysis is relevant for other types of groups and other
locations as well. To order: www.colorado.edu/law/NRLC/.
governance, absence of political
will for enforcement, or perceived
inefficiencies of managing the
environment within the bounds of
the regulatory framework;
• An increasing emphasis on parity of social, economic, and environmental goals, often defined in
terms of sustainability;
• Heightened interest among the
public in what happens to their
environment;
• A desire for decision processes
that are inclusive, flexible, lowcost, creative, and that bring
agreement and implementation.
Concerns About
Collaboration
Many criticisms and concerns
have been raised about collaborative approaches for the management of natural resources. These
criticisms fall into two categories:
1) On a large scale, there are
significant concerns with how
the cumulative impact of policymaking by collaborative
processes threatens to displace traditional practices of
democracy and constitutional
governance and increase local
(neighboring communities)
influence over public
resources, including federal
lands; and
2) On a smaller, individual project
scale, there are concerns with
A GUIDE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOC ATES
how and when individual
processes are constituted and
managed.
If you want to explore the concerns with collaboration in depth,
many critiques exist (see
Appendix I). You can explore the
second set of concerns in detail in
the following sections of the
Guide. But it’s important to understand the first set of concerns as
well, since those concerns may
influence your answer when you
are invited to participate in a collaborative process, or your actions
when you are considering convening a collaborative enterprise.
Big-picture concerns about
collaboration
The structural arguments
made by critics of collaboration
are basic but profound: collaborative processes should generally
not be favored over traditional
decision-making processes found
in democratic governance.
Occasional collaborative
processes may well provide benefits, such as improved community
relationships, for a particular situation. Private efforts may be
worth encouraging. However,
despite individual benefits that
may occur, the cumulative impact
of increased public decision-making by collaborative processes is
to weaken mechanisms such as
advocacy, organization, coalitionbuilding, democratic governance,
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Collaboration:
abandoned in favor of less formalized approaches that often
decrease public accountability.
Concerns about the
conduct of collaborative
processes
The previous criticisms are
independent of the quality of any
particular process; they are concerned with the nature of collaboration and its cumulative
impact. In contrast, other concerns have to do less with the
nature of collaborative processes
INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
and often laws and regulations
demand that resource protection
should be the highest priority;
• There is an ideology of harmony
that is particularly compelling in
community-based processes
where parties are negotiating
with fellow community members.
Many if not all the traditional
This ideology is reinforced by
processes intended to protect
convening agencies, mediators,
the public interest (public notice,
and facilitators for whom agreeopen meetings, right of appeal)
ment is the chief desired outare weak or absent when ad hoc
come and who may feel
collaborative processes are
considerable obligation to satisfy
used to address public
those in power;
resources;
Ad hoc private groups accountable only to themselves may in
effect replace public processes
for rulemaking;
Collaborative processes involving public lands favor local representation that may ignore or
weaken national interests that
cannot be sufficiently
represented. This has led to
incompatibility with national
plans and policies as well as
disenfranchisement of
national/urban constituencies;
Accountability of elected and
administrative officials and
appointed boards is eroded
when ad hoc groups become
• There is a danger in developing
increasingly responsible for
a norm that decisions are only
influencing policy on major
legitimate when they are acceptissues;
able to all parties;
Public officials are delegating
• The more time devoted to coltheir decision power in order to
laborative processes by environ“pass the buck” and avoid makmental advocates, the less time
ing controversial decisions;
that is available for more tradiLegal and regulatory standards
tional advocacy and education,
that reflect national and state
despite continuing needs for
policies can become bargaining
both (sometimes called “opporchips rather than baseline stantunity costs”);
dards;
• Public participation procedures
Agency authority and current
were developed over many
laws and regulations can be
years and based on a strong
systematically bypassed and
foundation of public involvement
weakened as the power of ad
theory to provide an opportunity
hoc groups grows;
for all owners of a particular
Collaborative processes offer
resource to participate in its
equal validity to competing valmanagement. Even if imperfect,
ues when many circumstances
these procedures should not be
and science, all of which are
needed in greater amounts to
protect and enhance natural
resources.
Criticisms concerning the
nature and cumulative impact of
collaboration include the following:
than with the difficulty of doing
them right, such as when collaboration is promoted in inauspicious circumstances, or for
inappropriate reasons. The
inability to guarantee standard
procedures for public input and
the high potential for biased or
co-opted collaborative groups is
a major reason that critics think
their overall impact on the environment will be negative.
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These criticisms fall into two
general categories:
1) Collaborative processes are
being initiated in inappropriate
circumstances.
2) They are being conducted
using inappropriate practices.
A GUIDE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOC ATES
1) Collaborative processes are
being initiated in inappropriate
circumstances.
INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
Collaborative processes have
been criticized for being used in
the wrong circumstances. A number of environmental advocates
have found themselves in
processes that sounded promising, but that turned out to have
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been misrepresented by the convenor. Or they were tainted by the
motivations of key players. Or
there wasn’t sufficient attention up
front to thinking through all that
would be required to conduct an
effective and fair process.
In Section 4 you will find ways
of deciding when a situation is or
is not appropriate for a collaborative initiative. A brief checklist is
offered in Appendix C as well.
2) They are being conducted
using inappropriate practices.
There have been collaborative
processes on issues where such
efforts may well have been appropriate and potentially helpful, but
the process failed to live up to its
potential because best practices
were not followed. Perhaps a
mediator was selected by an
agency without consultation of
Collaboration:
participants, or key representatives were excluded, or there
were insufficient resources to
provide high quality information.
Sections 5-8 suggest such best
practices in detail.
What this means for you
For any particular situation, the
reasons for initiating a collaborative approach are
less likely to be a
response to a theory or philosophy
and more likely to
be specific to a
particular issue or a
particular community. Typical cases
might be: a neighbor wants to bring
together two other
neighbors who are
no longer speaking
to one another
because of damage
to a water supply, a
sawmill that
employs a substantial proportion
of a community is threatening to
or has already shut down, or an
agency is seeking to promote an
initiative that will require support
from diverse sectors.
What this means is that the
reasons for or against supporting
any particular collaborative enterprise will likely be based more
upon the circumstances of your
own particular situation rather
than upon any theoretical argument or philosophy. Nonetheless,
in circumstances where precedent
is being set, or public resources
are involved, or the scope of
potential impact is large, familiarity with the range of arguments
concerning collaborative
processes will be helpful. A variety of statements concerning collaboration and references to
readings in the Appendixes will
allow you to become more familiar with these arguments.
A GUIDE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOC ATES