Nature & Democracy

The Call for a Forum on Nature and Democracy

Designing the Human Capacity to Sustain Earth’s Major Ecosystems

Jane Elder (with contributions from Dave Dempsey and Cynthia Sampson)

Forum on Nature and Democracy May, 2008

Context

Over the last several years many of us have become increasingly concerned about the gap between stresses on the Earth’s ecosystems and the human capacity to respond to the scale of the challenges we face in the early 21st Century. Global warming/climate change and the rapid loss of biodiversity are at the top of that list of stresses, but we also need to consider the impacts of globalization and a human population that will surge well past 6 billion by mid-century.

My recent work on the Presidential Climate Action Plan (www.climateactionplan.com), especially in the areas of natural resources and oceans, has helped me realize that our environmental agencies haven’t been given the resources or the mandate to build the capacity to respond to the changes we are likely to see in the next several decades. Moreover, as the need to respond to natural systems on their own terms increases, we find governance and management systems constrained by historic legal frameworks and institutional silos that carve the management of living systems into often-disconnected pieces.

In 2005, scientists described the Great Lakes ecosystem – the world’s largest concentration of fresh water – as nearing an ecological tipping point after which recovery might not be possible. This warning – close to home and close to my heart – is a call to action if there ever was one.

The challenges of grappling with complex jurisdictions, political will, funding, institutional accountability, scientific capacity and meaningful public involvement are not new in ecosystem management, and they certainly aren’t unique to the Great Lakes.

Our nation needs a new road map to protect biodiversity and sustain ecosystem health in the global warming era. Even the most aggressive low-carbon energy strategy will not mitigate the need for new thinking and new practice in ecosystem protection, given the warming trend already upon us and the spectrum of other environmental stresses we already face.

A Forum on Nature and Democracy

Over the last year I’ve been talking with many colleagues about these challenges, and have proposed that we organize a working group to provide a forum for wider discussion and collaborative work. We see the need for some serious thought and discussion as to how we link these challenges in governance and literacy to the growing body of scientific knowledge that continues to warn us of the fragile state of Earth’s ecological resilience. The outcome of such a dialogue (at least an initial outcome) could be to craft specific recommendations for new strategies in ecosystem governance and management, starting in the U.S., and potentially Canada.  We also see the need to develop pilot projects and identify opportunities for priority response in highly vulnerable ecosystems.

We’re suggesting that a U.S./Canada Forum on Nature and Democracy could serve as a base and a catalyst for a dialogue on these and other challenging questions.

While we will need expertise from diverse fields to explore solutions, we also need the grist of input from experienced people in the broad fields of resource management, as well as elected officials, community leaders, business leaders, etc., because we all have a stake in shaping strategies for how we live on Earth. There’s a wealth of experience in what has worked on the ground, and what hasn’t, that should be part of this consideration. Turning this experience and foresight into tangible reforms that can make a measurable impact on the health of major ecosystems like the Great Lakes (and other systems) must be a priority.

Those of us engaged in these discussions so far recognize this is ambitious, but the actions we take in the next 5-7 years will be among the most important in environmental history, so I’m game for a little wild imagination and bold thinking.

We've posted three short background pieces.

1. The State of Ecosystem Management

2. Key questions for 21st Century Ecosystem Management

3. Barriers to Better Ecosystem Management: Observations from the Great Lakes.

We invite your feedback.

Barriers to better ecosystem management: Great Lakes Observations

Barriers to better ecosystem management: Great Lakes Observations

• The complexity of the decision-making regime (layered across multiple jurisdictions, borders and agencies).  This muddies the waters on where bucks stop (if we ever get the bucks in the first place) and leads to a lack of clarity on management roles and responsibilities;
• Erosion of the effectiveness and political will of federal enforcement agencies such as EPA, coupled with severe financial constraints and repeated budget and program cuts in state enforcement agencies, which translates into further erosion of enforcement capacity;
• Similarly, there is less capacity and less of an independent, “bi-national” voice within the International Joint Commission, reducing its credibility and effectiveness as an independent body to address the issues of U.S./Canada boundary waters;
• There is a lack of accountability by the U.S. and Canadafor failing to meet objectives under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement;
• An erosion of cutting edge research and scientific analysis capacity, including monitoring and surveillance;
• Lack of political will in Congress to address long-standing issues that require public funding and new regulation, from enforcement of the Clean Water act, to modernizing sewage infrastructure, to serious strategies for managing invasive species.
• Dated if not archaic institutional missions and approaches for agencies created to respond to the environmental crises of the 1960s and 1970s whose approach and mandate needs revisiting;
• Related to the above, a disconnect between a relatively strong public desire for Great Lakes conservation and the capacity of the institutions to invite, absorb, respond to and capitalize on that interest and passion through action.

Key questions for 21st Century ecosystem management

• How do we implement ecosystem-scale policy, while respecting and making best use of the roles and responsibilities of the multiple levels of jurisdictions with legal authority in a bi-national region?
• How do we create efficiency and streamline complexity across multiple programs, while protecting unique fields of expertise, institutional memory, local responsiveness, etc., that the diverse programs bring to management, research and regulation?
• How do we support effective solutions that deal with the needs of specific places (e.g. communities, watersheds, key wetlands, shorelines) while also developing solutions and responses to impacts from the global commons – such as climate change, atmospheric deposition of toxic pollutants, etc.?
• To reduce and eliminate pollution, how do we strike a balance between permit-based regulation and newer approaches that rely on incentives, consent decrees and other planned prevention approaches? What is effective under which circumstances, and is there an optimal mix of approaches? How do we take steps toward maximum reduction of pollution instead of assuming that pollution is just part of business as usual?
• How do we establish equitable and ecologically sound management of natural resources? What about consumptive uses?
• How do we create democratic and inclusive systems that engage a broad public spectrum in decision-making, and also engage the best expertise of leaders in science, environment, health and business?
• As global warming further changes the biosphere and has dramatic impacts on world fresh water supplies, how do we design regulatory and management systems that can best safeguard freshwater resources and other critical ecosystem functions?

The State of Ecosystem Management

1. While governments and individuals have risen to address specific crises (such as nutrient pollution in the 1960s), strategies to maintain and support overall ecological health have been less successful.

2. The “silo” approach to environmental management (e.g., toxics in one division of one agency, and fisheries health in another division of another agency) has carved “whole” systems into artificial pieces, driving management to treat isolated symptoms instead of root causes and systemic health and resilience.

3. Short-term funding cycles and complex layers of governing authority make bold and long-term action very difficult.

4. The success of agendas by some interests to persuade the public that “government is bad” and arguably that the civil service system itself is bad, has succeeded in starving agencies of resources and talent. Leadership and professional capacity for environmental protection in public agencies has atrophied over the last two decades, and we expect to see record turnover in agency leadership as a generation of “boomer bureaucrats” heads into retirement. The shrinking value of public service, even if only a perception, is robbing the public of institutional memory, mission-driven leadership, and bold strategies.

5. Our public education systems have not succeeded in substantially raising adult literacy on key ecological concepts and principles, and thus our human dependence on healthy, functioning ecosystems is neither well understood nor appreciated. Higher education, with its emphasis on reductionism, has also failed to develop broader expertise in ecological systems thinking, environmental ethics, and the social and cultural aspects of environmental problem solving.

6. Our cultural values and social priorities have placed concern for the environment in the second tier of public issues, and the public still largely views these as issues for experts to solve. Moreover, environmental policies are often viewed in isolation, and not in the context of economic and political security, conflict resolution, health, and overall human-well-being.

7. Many citizens feel as though their capacity to shape government decisions is limited in the face of powerful special interests. While voices for the environment are beginning to reframe and re-shape communications strategies, reversing these attitudes will take time and concerted effort.

As a result of all of these things, short-term gains are not adding up to long-term success. The need to envision strategies that transcend these barriers have never been greater, or more urgent.