Webinar: Shared Governance in the Watershed Context» Presented May 17, 2007
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Part II: Integrating Collaberative Governance into Water for Life...and Making it Work From this Presentation's Question and Answer Session...Q1. If the lack of informed and balanced viewpoints across the full spectrum of issues contributes to "bad" policy, how can we make good integrated policy decisions today when we have not invested sufficiently in ecological knowledge and therefore cannot present informed ecological opinion to the same level of detail and sophistication as the proponents of incremental degradation?Mike: We find ourselves in complex social and ecological issues and we're forced to act in the face of both uncertainty and incomplete knowledge. The bottom line is that, in the short term, we have to act. Part of that has to be a strategy to start filling in the information gaps, start identifying what they are. Part of this is, from the policy connection, understanding the disconnect in the landscape and land-use and water policy gaps. Mary-Ellen: The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment and there's been a problem with respect to what are the management goals. An ecosystem management approach is about managing the critical factors and processes in the ecological system that support economic activity. Our management practices have been driven by maintaining or sustaining the economy and maintaining people's right to access to resources, which is quite a different focus that maintaining ecological structure and function or the ecosystem performance. If we really want to take a solid approach to cumulative effects, we really need to take an ecosystem management approach, which I would argue we really haven't taken yet, and begin to understand that many of these tradeoffs and issues we've brought up here in shared governance may require reexamination of what has priority. At the same time, we can't trade everything off. That's one of the challenges of sustainability: it's about mutually reinforcing relationships between the economy, ecology, and society. We've never really had a framework in place that enabled us to address that, both from a region's point of view and from a decision-making point of view. Mike: There has not been a requirement for a nested approach to public policy and we've been operating without clear provincial level policy, which makes it difficult to do anything at a watershed or sub-regional level. There's certainly a lot of hope in the current discussions of the Alberta Land-Use Framework and moving the water strategy forward. But without some clear direction at that highest level-which is possible without detailed scientific understanding- or a clear provincial level policy, it's hard to act. Q2. Given we have a land-use framework and a watershed framework, what can we do about the integration of these?Mary-Ellen: Clearly, from our perspective, you can't disconnect these two things; but it has not been clear to us how they are or will be connected. I think the critical aspect goes back to the framework: do you conceive the framework to be about flow and allocation, or do you conceive involvement of land use? I think it's a conceptual link that must be made-and absolutely those policies need to be connected-but it's a little too early to tell how. Mike: Part of the issue in Alberta is the separation between Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. Having water and air completely separate from land-use planning at the provincial level, and a disconnect at the municipal level as well, makes things extra challenging. Q3. How can we in Alberta generate an ideal "collaborative partnership", realizing the diversity and entrenched conflicts among interests, stakeholders, and institutions?Mary-Ellen: If we simply go back to a power struggle between who's more powerfully politically and influentially, then the public interest does get lost. That's why a conflict-resolution approach is critical to find ways forward and meet some common needs in a public interest context and deal with where we have more in common on some issues than on others. Seeing a conflict between the environment and economy will lead us to very difficult positions and that's been our history; but we need to lead ourselves towards, as I mentioned, this relationship where we have to have a healthy environment in order to have a healthy economy. If we see them as more compatible objectives and we use conflict-resolution approaches, then we can go in that direction; otherwise we will be spelled out by simple power struggles. Mike: We're definitely in need of some quick wins in Alberta. A lot of people are on this call today who have been involved in a lot of processes and who have invested a lot of time to see the result of their effort end up in documents that don't really change what's happening at the ground level. A lot of people are on this call who have decided not to participate directly in the current Alberta land-use framework, just because it's again another process where there's a lack of trust around the final results. I think we need, and maybe it's going to come from the water council, something in the short term that increases the level of trust. Q4. I am very interested in gaining an appreciation for the "up front" work that is needed to keep "political decision makers" onside throughout these collaborative processes. We can have good discussions with general agreement that could easily fall apart when decision makers all of a sudden are faced with a decision, such as implementation of a watershed management plan. I think most of this translates into collaborative management across jurisdictions versus what might be thought of a planning exercise.Danielle: There's a lot of talk about collaboration, but ultimately the government needs to support the collaboration and support the decision making behind the collaboration. The government can't take a step back and hope that all the players come to together and come up with a decision that they're not involved in. The government has to be involved, it has to participate, it has to make sure that environmental baselines are not exceeded. We have to expect the government to protect the ecological issues. But if the collaboration comes together and stakeholders come together and they come up with an excellent decision that the government can support, government has to endorse and adopt those. I think that's been a problem in the past. The government often receives a recommendation; however, the government rejects those recommendations despite public involvement. So, will this governance model work given the political government mentality? I think the political government mentality has to take a step back. Government has to allow the collaboratives to work, it has to engage with those collaboratives, it has to support them; but ultimately government has to go with the will of the collaborative as if government is a member of it. Mary-Ellen: The collaboration is not an activity that takes place independent of government and then, oh, surprise! here are the recommendations, what do you think? If this is to be a true partnership and in the public interest, then the government has to participate as the convenor by removing the red tape and by representing the public interest, which includes economic interests as well as ecological interests and social value interests. But it can't be a passive player who just then decides whether to accept or reject. If the government doesn't want to participate in the process, then it's not collaborative governance. Q5. Is it possible to achieve the three conditions needed for shared governance? Collaborative governance requires working toward common goals and reciprocal relationships. How can this be possible when goals and priorities of industry are irreconcilable compared to those of other water users? Also, how do you balance inequities of participants-how are teachers and taxi drivers working on their own time and resources supposed to provide equitable input (and achieve a balanced outcome) when 'working with' well-financed and expertly-staffed organizations like CAPP and the ACR?Mary-Ellen (comes from an aboriginal land claims background): One could say there's no hope in reconciling completely different industrial or aboriginal interests, and that it will never happen. But, negotiation is exactly why it happens because everyone needs the same thing. Industry needs water; people need water in a civil society sense. Our common interest is our need for air, water, and ecological goods and services that are provided to us. We have common interest in that we share common resources. Inequities around how we access those resources are a whole other ball game and that's the politics of it. But, in terms of sharing the common interest, all of us, regardless of the sector that we associate ourselves with, are dependent upon a healthy ecological system and a healthy watershed. We do have that in common and I think we have to build from that rather than the conflicts. We need more integration because we do have interest in common. That, of course, is the old cliché about sustainability. We do have a common future. We need to start recognizing how we integrate interests more effectively than we've done to date. Mike: It's a tough question from an individual standpoint. Pragmatically, people with an interest in an issue have to pick one issue to stick with; you can't pick them all and that's part of the problem-and we're faced with half a dozen issues right now in the province that require a lot of public participation at the provincial level and more at smaller-scale levels. It's a matter of picking one issue and trying to participate as best you can and pick at least one or a couple of those and try not to get distracted by the latest one that you get invited to. Q6. How does one incent cooperation or obtain reciprocity to move towards ecological governance where corporate mandates are inherently and legally focused on return for shareholders, particularly short-term return? That is to say, the status quo acts as a disincentive to participate with trade-offs in mind for these stakeholders. Are any incentives strong enough?Danielle: Collaboratives are not going to work in every single situation. We can't expect to solve all of our environmental problems this way. But when the conditions are right, even those who are actors that are typically making decisions and do contribute to the impact on watersheds, you can find incentives for them to participate. And it's not always the negative regulatory ones, although that may need to happen. In some cases you will have an industry player or the government who would like to see things change, but they're not going to initiate change unless there's something they receive in return. It doesn't always have to be about the ecological; they may provide some ecological benefit but in return they receive something back. The government could say, for example, we'll provide a tax break, tax benefit, or infrastructure for improving environmental conditions, and they provide that in the context of a collaborative. Likewise, large water users who really don't have any incentives to reduce their water use may have another interest, such as better water security or more stable water supply, which will make them be willing to give something up. If those tradeoffs are not there, or the parties don't want to come to the table to investigate whether there are tradeoffs, I do believe there is a need to have the government prod-either in the form of regulation or the threat of it-so that people come together and they investigate those alternatives. Mike: Shareholders are the same public interests that we're talking about participating in the process. There is a growing push from shareholders to respond to things other than the bottom line, such as the triple bottom line. We have a long way to go and there is rising pressure to address ecological and ethical elements of business practice. The more that we can put pressure on corporate boards through those directions, the more traction we'll get on these issues. Mary-Ellen: I think we have seen in quite a number of different areas quite a shift over the last few years in terms of what might be considered corporate behaviour-certainly the rise of corporate social responsibility, environmental management systems, or seeing greenhouse gas reduction as an economic or financial benefit. A lot of countries have used environmental thinking to improve their economic importance-and that's not to say it's been across the board and I certainly would tend to be a little more cynical with respect to what Brad Stelfox calls the "severely normal Albertan", and perhaps there's the "severely normal government" that seems to assume that public interest means a happy corporate energy sector. I think what's going on now in the province is broader than that. In a lot of ways, the political climate, the social climate is a huge influence on some of these actions. That's not to say things will change overnight. But I think we've seen evidence of change and there's no reason that we won't see more, especially if there's more collaboration among the NGOs and the ENGOs and public sentiment, with respect to influencing the political climate. Mike: There's a large disconnect, as in the South Saskatchewan River basin, between the amount of water held in permits and what the Bow River, the South Sakatchewan River, and the Oldman River are going to be able to provide. We're not very far from bumping into some pretty significant limits that are going to force water interests to participate in these discussions.
About Our Presenters...Mike Quinn: Dr. Quinn is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary and Director of the Miistakis Institute for the Rockies — a research support organization specializing in spatial data and analysis. As a naturalist with a penchant for the intersection between the social and natural sciences, Dr. Quinn enjoys studying natural systems — with a particular bent towards the maintenance of biodiversity, the design and management of protected areas and urban green space, the relationships between people and the rest of the natural world, and the history of natural history. Current research projects include landscape scale cumulative effects assessment, integrated landscape planning, and the development of collaborative, community-based monitoring programs. He co-manages the Transboundary Environmental Policy, Planning and Management initiative between the University of Calgary and University of Montana. Mary-Ellen Tyler: Dr. Mary-Ellen Tyler was Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, 1998-2003. Dr. Tyler has worked in both the private and public sector as an environmental planner and ecologist and spent ten years with the Federal Government in British Columbia working with Indian and Northern Affairs in resource development impacts assessment, local government development and intergovernmental resource management issues related to comprehensive land claims negotiations. Her current areas of research, scholarship and professional practice are in urban ecology, sustainable urban design, urban watershed management, ecological restoration, and urban environmental management. Danielle Droitsch: Danielle Droitsch directs Bow Riverkeeper, an organization seeking to protect and restore the Bow River from its headwaters to the main stem of the South Saskatchewan. She received her J.D. from the University of Tennessee College Of Law and her honors bachelor's degree from James Madison University. Danielle served as Policy Director at American Rivers, a Washington D.C. based organization. She oversaw policy matters for the Hydropower Reform Coalition, which promoted recreational and environmental values in hydropower licensing. She was Executive Director of the Tennessee Clean Water Network, a state-wide rivers protection organization, and Associate Regional Director for the National Parks Conservation Association's southeast regional office. Currently, Danielle is on the Alberta Water Council, the board of directors for the Bow River Basin Council, and is Chair of the Alberta Environmental Network's Water Caucus. |
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