Roger’s Advice for Scientists Testifying before Congress

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These are from a post by Roger Pielke Jr. on his blog here, I thought they also might be relevant to our sorts of science.

What are the lessons here for experts who testify before Congress?

I can think of several:

1. Decide what your role is. Regardless of which party invites you, decide whether you are there to defend that political party’s views (on science or policy) or if you are there to share what you know about questions for which you have expertise. These are not always the same thing.

2. Appreciate that statements that you make in the media that cherrypick, emphasize extremes (on any side of an issue) or otherwise go out on a limb could set your scientific colleagues up for difficulties in the future when they are asked to defend those statements in a political setting. At that point, the scientist being asked to defend the dodgy statements may face a trade-off between scientific accuracy and political solidarity.

3. Speak for yourself and let others speak for themselves. This is of course can be very difficult when participating in a shared campaign, either for action or a perspective. Even if you are not actively participating in that campaign you may be forced to render a judgement on it, e.g., “Ms. Scientist the IPCC consensus says X, what do you think?”

4. Recognize that when incorrect statements are made in a public setting, the consequences for you as an expert will be much higher than for politicians. That is just the way that it is. The consequences for folksy, grandfatherly Ralph Hall of being wrong will never be as significant as for a scientist testifying before him. So always be able to defend claims that you make.

5. Stick to your area of expertise when testifying as an expert. This seems obvious but is routinely violated.

6. Finally, it should be obvious that a decision to accept an invitation to testify is a political act. No, it does not mean that you shared the political agenda or scientific views of those who invite you. But it does mean that your participation in the process will be more thoughtful and more effective if you have considered your role in the political process, and especially your stance on advocacy versus arbitration. The risk of not thinking these issues through is of course a greater likelihood that you’ll simply be a stage prop in a political theater.

On sea level rise, the statements made by Holdren in 2006 to the BBC as AAAS President and environmental activist were far less measured and responsible than his statements made in 2009 and 2011 on the same subject as science advisor to the president before Congress. The difference — which I attribute as much to setting as to any changes in the science of sea level — helps to illustrate the difference between an expert who seeks to use science selectively as a basis for political advocacy and one who wishes to faithfully arbitrate scientific questions for policy makers. While these roles are not necessarily mutually exclusive, typically a choice must be made.

What Do We Know About Carbon and Wildfires?

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One of my ideas for this blog was to be a place where we could share information and learn about topics from others who know more- as well as share alternative framings of an issue.

One topic that recently came up in my office relates to carbon and wildfires. (Yes, the other main topic of interest is the “orderly government shutdown.”)

Is it simply that there is vegetation, and soil, and that ultimately no matter how severe the fire, everything will grow back, the soil will redevelop, and it will be carbon-neutral? Or are there other ways of thinking about this?

In many parts of the country, people like to thin pine trees to either create “historic” conditions, to reduce fuels and change fire behavior (to protect communities), or to decrease stocking so that pines will remain healthy, especially in a potentially warming environment, or all of the above. Many of the carbon discussions seem to be about what happens if you thin trees and either sequester them in various kinds of products, or use them to replace fossil fuels- and how that relates to the carbon you might have released by burning up the stand.

So my question is whether conditions that keep fires from being intense enough to destroy carbon in the soil, are “good” for climate mitigation.

Some of this may relate to timing. Like soil will “grow” back unless something has happened to make that impossible. But if it takes 1000 years, by which time we will have decarbonized our society, should we still count it? Obviously it’s easier to know about replacing trees than replacing soil. Or understanding the damage that fires can do and what it takes to reverse it. Or understanding how changes in climate will affect future development of soils and vegetation.

Here’s one paper I found by Bormann et al. Here’s another one by Hurteau et al.

Desired Future: Whose Desire? What Future? Why?

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The idea of a “desired future” is found frequently in Forest Service NFMA and NEPA discussions/writing. I decided to see if I could find out where the idea of “desired future” and “desired future condition” come from. It sort of shows up in the 1979 NFMA Rule, mainly w/r/t wildlife populations, but gains a major toehold on FS thinking in the 1982 rule:

Sec. 219.11 Forest plan content. The forest plan shall contain the following: … (b) Forest multiple-use goals and objectives that include a description of the desired future condition of the forest or grassland and an identification of the quantities of goods and services that are expected to be produced or provided during the RPA planning periods

And it has been a part of FS thinking ever since. I can understand back in 1982 that the Forest Service wanted to remake America’s national forests into something foresters would desire, while zoning out Wilderness, Wild and Scenic Rivers, and other “set-asides”. So the idea of “desired future” made sense, at least to foresters who were running the Forest Service back then, some of whom were desirous to see the allowable timber cut increased from 11 to 33 billion board feet.

But to continue to use the language in the 2011 proposed NFMA rule is a different matter. The focus these days is not on increasing “allowable cut,” but instead on restoring ecosystems resiliency. But there is still a hint of what author David Ehrenfeld called The Arrogance of Humanism, 1981 at work here. At least I think so. That is why I’ve advocated for simple scenario planning instead, in part to avoid what I believe to be a “desired future” trap. For an article length view, see Thomas Stanley’s Ecosystem Management and the Arrogance of Humanism, Conservation Biology, 1995 (pdf)

Let’s leave a couple of inquiry questions: Is the idea of “desired future” even needed in forestland adaptive management? Why does this language persist in NFMA rules.

[Update, 4/6/11: I noticed this AM that the Draft NFMA rule refers to "desired condtions" (219.7 (d)) instead of "desired future," or "desired future condition(s)" but the meaning appears identical, at least to me.]

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Related: In Search of Our Desired Forest, John Rupe, NCFP, 2/18/2011

It’s Complicated: Forest Management’s Wicked Problems

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Most people view the problems of forest management from the narrow perspective of their own interests. They understand that there are “many great interests on the National Forests which sometimes conflict a little,” as Gifford Pinchot described the situation a century ago. While we must honor specific interests, the Forest Service’s charge under Organic Act of 1897 stewardship framing, then broadened and altered by subsequent law is more complex. It is never as easy as getting folks together to sit across a table and working out a “forest plan.”

The Forest Service came into being at the end of a very rapacious period in American history. Hence the emphasis on “reserves” in the Organic Act , and later in the Weeks Act of 1911. The public lands had been attacked by many as the so-called settlement of the American West proceeded after the Civil War. It was perceived and used as a “commons” and plundered and burned in too many places. That caused the public outrage that led to the forest reserves.

After successfully bringing the reserves into the national forest system, Gifford Pinchot wanted to regulate all forest practices in the US. Pinchot could not achieve his dream, and the private lands were over-cut for a long time. Even Weyerhauser, where I worked for a summer in the late 1970s—and deemed the “Best of the SOBs” by Forbes magazine, knew but were reluctant to admit in public that their “fee lands” were being cut faster than their “High Yield Forestry” tree farms could replace the volume being cut and milled during that late period of the US housing boom. There would be a “gap.” And sure enough, just as soon as their and other private land owners “gaps” appeared the pressure mounted to cut the national forests. And cut they did, until the environmentalists, working public attitudes/pressures/law shut it down, amid great angst for locals particularly in the Northwest.

As the timber wars raged, more people with new-found affluence were using the national forests and more conflicts emerged between recreationists and cattle and sheep grazers on the national forests. And there were two emergent back-country recreationist movements that were destined to clash one with another: the “primitive back-packers” and the “ATV/OHV users”. In addition, primitive canoe, kayak, float boat enthusiasts were clashing ever-more with commercial outfitters and motorboat enthusiasts, not to mention personal watercraft. And then there were Wilderness advocates clashing against motorheads of all ilks. The wars were on.

Amid this upwelling of controversy, the US Congress penned the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974. But before the ink dried on that law, timber cutting on the national forests, clearcutting to be precise slammed to an immediate legal halt via a lawsuit on the Izaak Walton League. Then under a panic to reopen clearcutting on the national forests, the National Forest Management Act of 1976 was born, and so was forest-level planning. But there was little in either the RPA nor its amendment the NFMA that was destined to settle the controversies. The controversies were the stuff of wicked problems in public forests as noted first by Allen and Gould in 1986.

So here we are more than 30 years after NFMA, with the same controversies raging, overlaid by more people wanting more (and different) things from the national forests, more people living much closer to the national forests, global climate change controversy, species loss controversies that stem from more people (and roads/dams/power lines/energy corridors/etc.) across the landscape and from more stress on both “sources” (resources) and “sinks” (particularly air and water sheds where pollution is dumped)added in, etc..

And all the while the Forest Service continues to pretend that forest planning, pretty much as designed in the late 1970s, but having dropped economic rationality in favor of ecological rationality, will somehow save the day. Or at least that’s how I read the Draft Planning Rule (pdf)

It is my feeling that the only path forward that will afford any chance to allow forest users to sit across tables and talk seriously about prudent use of individual forests, watersheds, or mountain ranges, is for their to be some means to continue to discuss, debate, and develop policy for “broader scale” issues that will set boundaries on discussions of use and conservation at “local scales,” including but not limited to the national forest-scale.

That is why I continually suggest that an Adaptive Governance approach be developed in the NFMA rule. It could as well be developed apart from the NFMA rulemaking process. But until and unless it is developed, there is little or no chance that national interest groups will allow for the type across-the-table “use discussions” that more local interest groups advocate. This conclusion is not mine alone. Consider this from 1999, subtitled Making Sense of Wicked Problems:

What is the answer then, to these complex (wicked) problems? How do we organize ourselves to deal with diverse values and expectations about sustainable forest management? Shannon (1992) asserted that the answer lies in the notion of informed governance. That is, we need places where people can learn, question, debate, and come to an informed judgment of what choices are best (FEMAT 1993). In Coming to Public Judgment , Yankelovich (1991) determined that the most critical barrier to making effective and informed choices in a complex world is the lack of forums in which the process of “working through” value differences and preferences can occur. There is growing support among natural resource professionals that a public dialogue must be an integral part of achieving social and political acceptance of forest practices (e.g., Bengston 1994, Clark and Stankey 1991, Shepard 1992). Regardless of value differences, if people are to come to an understanding of, if not agreement on, the problems and choices that confront public lands management, it is likely to be in public forums where open and honest discussion can occur. Unfortunately, from their research on adaptive approaches to forest management, Stankey and Shindler (1997) conclude that such forums are most notable by their scarcity. (emphasis added)

Anybody want to explain to me where I (we) have got it wrong?
[Note this post was precipitated by this comment. Thanks Brian]

Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

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Anyone catch Lester Brown and Co.’s Plan B, on PBS last night ? Here, via Mother Earth News, is the heart of the message. Instead of “business as usual,” that is Plan A, Brown, (from the US Department of Agriculture, now at the Earth Policy Institute) and fellow-travelers advocate a radical restructuring of the world’s economy to get to close to carbon free energy by 2020, not to get there part way by 2050 as the US and others are currently staged to do.

In the PBS pitch, Lester Brown teams up with Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman, Tom Lovejoy, Bruce Babbitt and others to make the case for radical restructuring. They advocate for political movements/action on a scale unheard of (at least since World War Two, when President Roosevelt halted the production of automobiles in the US for several years to mobilize for armament production to battle Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito).

Plan B includes four tightly integrated components:

  • Cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020
  • Stabilize population at no more than 8 billion
  • Eradicate poverty
  • Restore the Earth’s natural systems—including forests, soils, grasslands, aquifers, and fisheries

All four components are tightly integrated and all four must move forward at the same time to be effective. There were many familiar themes presented in Plan B. But one that I was glad to see was that they advocate for a carbon tax, instead of some foolish carbon trading scheme. I have argued similarly on my Ecology and Economics blog. Plan B’s components reminded me generally of topics we used to talk about regularly in the Forest Service when I was bombarding people via email, particularly in the early 90s, on Eco-Watch.

[Update]: To make this relevant, which I agree with reader Brian that it is “questionable”, let’s add an inquiry question: Where between the lines of science and advocacy does Brown and Co.’s this rather strident polemic fit?”

How does this, and similar earlier “apocalyptic warnings” either inform forestry debates, else detract therefrom? We already know that there are both disciples and detractors re: global warming and the human-causation factor. We also know that when we attempt to either develop forest policy or apply said policy as forest practice we will encounter both cheerleaders and jeer-leaders. Short of “adaptive governance” political engagement, how are we to deal with any of this?

The Art and Promise of Adaptive Governance

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Adaptive Governance is art and science, blended with management and politics. It is art since political decision-making is an art. One face of adaptive governance is a dance wherein public land managers engage with particularly ecological and social scientists in learning from experience about transformations in ecosystems and institutions. The dance is broadened further, since both managers and scientists dance with the public, both as interested individuals and communities of interest alongside communities of place.

The promise of adaptive governance for the US Forest Service and other public lands agencies is that it might heal the wounds from many of the forest and rangeland wars that have only festered during thirty years of failed rational planning games. The promise too is that if properly framed and practiced, adaptive governance could free up talent at the national forest level to do the many worthwhile jobs that need attending to at that level, like road, trail, and campground and other recreation-related maintenance, like permit administration, and program and project management (fire, timber, recreation, minerals, grazing, etc.), like attending to trespass and encroachment problems, fragmentation of land ownership patterns/problems, and so on. Forest-level people would not have to attend to many tasks now burdening them under the current “planning” frame—framed as rational planning with public input.

One problem I’ve been harping about for years is that “wicked problems” can not be tamed via rational planning. They have to be attended to through the art of political decision-making. Take a look at the Fishlake National Forest in central Utah, for example. It is widely known for its ATV experiences, jamborees, etc. It is also a relatively easily-accessible place for big game hunting, via various sorts of Off Highway Vehicles. [In younger years I used to wander the roads there, and wander off the roads, looking for big mule deer.] The decisions, or political/social happenstance, that took the Fishlake in this direction, are the stuff of politics, not science.

Some of the tasks that now appear to be the responsibility of forest-level managers and practitioners would be handled closer to the center or the Forest Service (and at the center, the USFS Washington Office). These are the tasks of landscape and broader-scaled assessments, monitoring efforts, and related problem staging/resolution/learning as adaptive management policy-setting. In addition, the center of the organization would be held accountable to steer and monitor deeper “double-loop” learning that comes from thoughtful examination, reflection upon, and learning from “Transformations in Human and Natural systems,” the subtitle of Lance Gunderson and CS Holling’s Panarchy. Finally the center of the Forest Service would be the keeper of the Vision/Mission of the agency, reconciled appropriately with the Congress and the Administration. [Note: Mission/vision stuff should not be framed as “NFMA planning,” but still might be part of broader strategy setting and contained-in-part by a FS Strategic Plan.]

Critiquing Adaptive Governance
I have spent the last week or two trying to better understand applied adaptive governance, to see whether the time to try it formally on American public lands is at hand. I ran across several interesting investigations [which I’ll not link to today, but may detail further later], looking into the art and practice of adaptive governance or what we might call adaptive management in its public form. In almost every case the authors were reluctant to embrace adaptive governance fully since the track record is not very good, for various and sundry reasons. Once problem frequently noted was that the practice was too technical, too much engaged in “scientific rationality.” On the other extreme, some authors noted a tendency for unwarranted devolution; wherein the process was captured by too narrowly framed interests, often dominated by “locals.” In almost every case, US authors failed to investigate the influence of “political backlash” by the Bush/Cheney Administration as they waged war on the Clinton Administration’s initial strides at adaptive governance under banners of “Ecosystem Management” and “Collaborative Stewardship.” This backlash began earlier with the so-called “Gingrich Revolution”— remember the “Contract On With America”? [Want some fun? Google up: “contract with america” “public lands”] Why was the backlash missed? I don’t see how you can separate adaptive governance efforts from the politics that enfold them.

As mentioned earlier, critical review authors cite the fact that adaptive management in its public form is too technical, too much centered in technocratic rationality. But adaptive governance need not be so burdened. Adaptive governance can operate in policy-development spaces far apart from those where “adaptive management experiments” are structured, tested, and rationalized. But it can embrace those too, where they make most sense. This is the direction some of us tried to take the Forest Service in the early 1990s, under the banner “A Shared Approach to Ecosystem Management,” outlined in part here. It lives today under the banner “adaptive governance.”

Embracing Adaptive Governance
An important aspect of the emergence of adaptive governance is that it is about humans and their institutional settings—that these often fall into the same rigidity traps (problems of overly-tight coupling) and poverty traps that we talk about in so-called natural systems. This is easily seen through the lenses of Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (1993), Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions (1995), and Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002).

I believe that the time it right to more-fully embrace adaptive governance—to replace what has been forest planning. But a big barrier is that the Forest Service remains a technocracy, a big-believer in science and management, with little or no formal emphasis on the art of “forestry,” the art of “political decision-making,” etc. I remember all too well the many Forest Service social science meetings where I complained that two words (and practices) were forbidden in both voice and action: politics and psychology.

In a future post I will lay out a roadmap to begin that journey as a rewrite to the administrative “rule” that is being batted around in Draft form, improperly framed as a “planning rule.” Here, I’ll just leave one definition of adaptive governance. Maybe someone here can come up with a better one.

Adaptive Governance: linking a broad range of actors at multiple scales to deal with the interrelated dynamics of resources and ecosystems, management systems and social systems, as well as uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise. Adaptive governance focuses on experimentation and learning, and it brings together research on institutions and organizations for collaboration, collective action, and conflict resolution in relation to natural resource and ecosystem management. The essential role of individuals needs to be recognized in this context (e.g., leadership, trust building, vision, and meaning); their social relations (e.g., actor groups, knowledge systems, social memory) and social networks serve as the web that tie together the adaptive governance system. It has cross-level and cross-scale activities and includes governmental policies that frame creativity.

From “Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems”, Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2005. 30:441-473 (pdf)

Related:
Adaptive Governance and Forest Planning, John Rupe, NCFP, Feb. 2010
Book review of Adaptive Governance: Integrating Science, Policy, and Decision Making, by Ronald D. Brunner, Toddi A. Steelman, Lindy Coe-Juell, Christina M. Crowley, Christine M. Edwards, Donna W. Tucker, 2005
Collaboration Reading for Thoughtful Practitioners, Dave Iverson 2006
Taking Uncertainty Seriously: Adaptive Governance and International Trade (pdf), Rosie Cooney and Andrew T.F. Lang, The European Journal of International Law 18(3), 2007

Missoulian Story on Planning Rule Public Meeting

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Somehow I missed this one earlier.

Here’s the introduction:

It’s a little like changing the shape of the strike zone in baseball, or the allowable deductions on your income tax form. A proposed planning rule for all U.S. Forest Service activity is both deeply wonky and game-changing.

The draft rule spreads fine print from page 8,480 to page 8,528 in the Federal Register. In there is something that may affect every trail walker, tree cutter, mushroom picker, snowmobile rider, hunter, angler, small-plane pilot, outfitter, gold miner, folf player and who-knows-what other national forest user.

About 80 such interested parties gathered on Tuesday in Missoula to hear Forest Service planning specialist Regis Terney answer questions about the draft rule. For all its complexity, the rule is the simplest part of a process that guides the writing of huge plans for 125 national forests and grasslands across the nation. The Missoula audience was ready to scrutinize it down to individual word choices

Public Meetings on Planning Rule: What Did You Hear?

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Photo of bear at Golden Colorado forum on planning rule by Kirk Siegler

I didn’t see too much in the press about the meetings so far. There is this one from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Forest Service Updating Framework For Long-Term Planning

Rob Manning | March 25, 2011 | Portland, OR

Top federal forest officials visited Portland Friday. And a new constitution for the country’s national forests was on the table, as Rob Manning reports.

The Forest Service is updating a federal framework that local forest managers have to use to draft long-term plans, whether for grasslands in the Southeast or the Mount Hood National Forest.

Assistant director, Ric Rine is on a national tour explaining the draft rule – and why it should change.

Ric Rine: “The 1982 regulation reflected the science and the planning processes of the ’70s, when timber management was a dominant use. The science has changed, public values have changed, the rule hasn’t changed.”

Environmentalists, loggers, and snowmobilers asked Rine skeptical questions – mostly asking for details. They wanted to know how science would be used.

Several people suggested that a proposal for a narrow-window to file objections would marginalize the public.

Rine said the intent is to rely on a more collaborative process to better include the public, and avoid objections in the first place.

And this one from KUNC, Greeley Colorado.

Like any bureaucratic planning document, the proposed rule isn’t exactly bedtime reading. But there are several clear themes; such as directives that the Forest Service consider the best possible peer-reviewed science before issuing local management decisions and a push for more forest restoration and habitat protection jobs.

“The proposed forest rule has some promising ambitions,” says Caitlin Balch-Burnett, Colorado outreach representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “However, we feel like these ambitions really do not translate into meaningful and binding standards.”

Defenders of Wildlife is one of the groups that sued the Bush Administration during its attempt to revise the 1982 planning rule. Courts threw that out twice in 2005 and 2008. Balch-Burnett says the Obama Administration’s plan gives too much discretion to the Forest Service and its local forest managers when making decisions on watershed or wildlife habitat protection.

“Our concern is with so much flexibility and not enough guidance given, that’s when you know, critters can fall through the cracks in terms of management and protection,” she says.

But by giving more flexibility to local forest managers in its proposed rule, the Forest Service also seems to be trying to address complaints from critics of litigious-minded conservation groups who argue current planning gets too bogged down in administrative appeals.

Tom Troxel, executive director of the Intermountain Forest Association which represents timber companies in Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota, says in this era of budget deficits, the planning process is too long and costly.

“I live in Rapid City,” Troxel says. “The Black Hills National Forest I think has the world record for forest plan revision, it took them 16 years to finish a 10-15 year plan.”

In other words, Troxel says, forest plans are supposed to get updated every 10-15 years. On average, local forests take about six years just to revise a plan.

That was about how long it took Colorado’s most visited forest, the White River N.F., to issue its latest version in 2002, according to a forest spokesman. And much has changed there since then. Just think about all those beetle-killed trees dotting the hillsides of Summit County, for instance.

Troxel says the current national proposal does little to address the costs and complexity embedded in the existing rule which he says has made it difficult for timber businesses to operate under.

“Whatever your interest in the national forest is, it’s better to have them managing forests and maintaining trails and improving wildlife habitat than it is in this endless planning process,” Troxel says.

At a public meeting earlier this month in Golden, Forest Service officials fielded criticisms similar to those of Troxel and conservationists. The agency’s Ric Rine says that’s why the proposed national rule is a draft, not a done deal.

I attended four public meetings, and one with state government folks and elected officials. As with the story above, “best available science” and objections were also topics in our area. I plan to post more on those later this week. What did you all hear? Did you hear anything that surprised you? If so, what?

From Forest Planning to Adaptive Governance

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“If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing.” Aaron Wildavsky

[Author’s note: This is a lengthy (for a blog), partisan, historical view rant on the road from NFMA “forest planning” to “adaptive governance.”]

Let’s face it, the “forest land and resource management plan” is an anachronism—an artifact of a bygone era. That era was in its heyday when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reigned supreme after President Richard M. Nixon consolidated rule-making and other powers in the OMB via executive order in 1970. Economics-based, comprehensive rational planning was the rage. It is no surprise that The Renewable Resources Planning Act was passed in 1974, just after Nixon consolidated power under the banner of rationally planned and carefully audited governmental process. Twenty years later Henry Mintzberg penned The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994). Mintzerberg’s classic pretty much laid a tombstone atop rational planning exercises. Or at least it should have.

The Forest Planning Era
Following passage of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 as an amendment to the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, it was thought that forest program management decisions could be adequately fit into a forest plan “decision container”—that somehow each forest could develop a forest-wide plan that would integrate programs now and into the future in a such a way as to allow disclosure of environmental consequences that might flow from said decisions. Project level National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) disclosure would disappear with proper forest planning and environmental disclosure at the forest level.

Allowance was made for FS administrative region plans, and for a national RPA Program plan. Given the upper two tiers, it was believed that decisions would be integrated vertically, and cumulative effects—according to NEPA standards—could be adequately disclosed.

It was a relatively innocent era, when viewed through the “green-eyeshaded accounting lenses” of OMB over-see-ers. The innocence collapsed relative soon in the forest arena as litigation proved that the three-level administratively-bounded review was not going to pass muster in the courts. Not only were projects not going to be shielded from NEPA review by a forest plan, there was increasing evidence that at least one level of planning/disclosure might be needed between project and forest.

An initial remedy to the seemingly endless process gridlock brought about by too many levels of planning was to eliminate regional plans. I referred to this then as the Texas two-step solution (forests/projects), since at that time the Forest Service’s National Planning Director was from Texas. But that was a solution looking for a problem, or better still a “non solution” not looking for anything but an easy way out. The problem between forest and project remained. Another problem was to be found elsewhere, framed larger than forest plans but not fitting into regional plan containers.

Spotted Owls, Roadless, and more
Much time and effort was now spent in the 1970s, 80s, 90s on above-forest policy making, brought about by actors and actions taken either against the Forest Service or from within the Forest Service responding to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. They were, “Spotted Owl Management Plans,” “The Roadless Rule,” “The Northwest Forest Plan,” and more. These decision containers were bounded as regions, not FS administrative regions but geographical regions more appropriately suited to the issues and the actors petitioning for problem resolution. Note that the policy-level decision making was largely about curtailing timbering and roading, but the Forest Service chose to name the efforts after the initiating issues, not the federal actions being considered.

Forest Planning Proves Resilient, if not useful
The forest planning paradigm still captured much attention, but the three-level planning process swirling around the forest plan—projects/mid-scale/forest—was felt by forest planners and the Forest Service generally to be too cumbersome. Something else needed to be done. While the rest of the world was waking up to complex systems, wicked problems, and adaptive management, as was part of the Forest Service via the Northwest Forest Plan, the Forest Service via the NFMA rule was still stuck in the wonderful, if overly complex and somewhat bizarre world of capital P “Planning.” And the Forest Service was always trying to force-fit things into forest-level and project-level decision containers. But times were changing by 1990 and at least for a time, the Forest Service seemed to be ready to catch up to the rest of the world.

Adaptive Governance: Emergence in the Clinton Era
Adaptive management seems to be evolving in name to Adaptive Governance, following a path laid down early on by Kai Lee in Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (1993). For a time the Forest Service seemed inclined to follow. [Note: Today, the “adaptive governance” path seems already well-discussed, if not well traveled. That is if my “adaptive governance” Google search is an indication. But my Wikipedia search didn’t give me much. Recognizing that the only viable adaptive management for dealing with public lands management has to deal with both Kai Lee’s Adaptive management compass and his civic-engagement gyroscope. I’ll go ahead and use the term “adaptive governance” hereafter.]

In what we might call Clinton era management, Chief Michael Dombeck sought to bring about a Leopoldian awakening (see, e.g. here, here) to Forest Service thinking. That “awakening,” as per Leopold’s earlier thinking, was about adaptive governance. But the largely Republican-dominated Forest Service resisted. Chief Dombeck was never accepted by Forest Service managers since he was from the BLM and appointed by an environmentally left-leaning Clinton administration. Things didn’t get better under Chief Jack Ward Thomas, himself a huge fan of Leopold. The road from Pinchot to Leopold was not going to be an easy one. Adaptive governance thinking was soon on the chopping block along with pretty much all else from “new forestry” to “new perspectives,” etc. following the election of George W. Bush as a new Administration came to Washington.

Adaptive Governance: Bush/Cheney Backlash
The Bush/Cheney public lands legacy can be viewed as a legacy of war—war on the environment and war on anything the previous Clinton Administration had built under the rubric of “ecosystem management” (See generally Bob Keiter’s Breaking Faith with Nature: The Bush Administration and Public Land Policy). Under Mark Rey as Undersecretary of Agriculture, the Forest Service moved into its “Healthy Forests Initiative,” followed soon thereafter by the “Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003.” As Bob Keiter notes, the names could be viewed as cynical, as part of a well-orchestrated backlash against Clinton era reforms. To Keiter:

By using the Healthy Forests Initiative to expand the scope of NEPA categorical exclusions and to alter the ESA consultation process, the Forest Service has further enhanced its authority and reduced the potential for judicial review of its decisions, which is also what the [Aquatic Conservation Strategy] and species inventory revisions to the Northwest Forest Plan would have done. Congress has abetted this de-legalization effort by including NEPA provisions in the HFRA and the Energy Policy Act that either eliminate or reduce environmental analysis requirements for timber thinning and energy exploration projects.279 Add to this the Bush administration’s approach to its ESA responsibilities—which include an overt hostility to new listings, a rush to delist species, and contemplated revisions to the section 7 consultation process and critical habitat designation and critical habitat designation criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield the agencies from any meaningful accountability. It is a return to an era when discretion reigned supreme. [Footnote in original]

All good things come to an end. So do all bad things. The Bush/Cheney regime and its war on the environment ended in January 2009, although effects (and federal judges) linger. [Personal aside: My friend from the early “planning days,” Dale Bosworth served as Forest Service Chief early in the Bush/Cheney Administration. I believe Dale did what he could to curb the worst of the what might have been done to the Forest Service during that era, but didn’t take my advice the be take a firm stand and be the first Chief since Gifford Pinchot to be fired for standing up against the powers that be. Had I been in his shoes I might not have taken that advice either. Who knows? But it wasn’t in Dale’s nature to work that way. I don’t find fault with Bosworth’s leadership/management during that era.]

Adaptive Governance: Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’
Unfortunately for Leopoldian dreamers, incoming President Barrack Obama’s audacious plans have not yet been focused on matters environmental, other than green energy. Nor will they likely anytime soon, even if Obama or anyone in his Administration were prone to do so—which itself is in question. Obama is too distracted with two wars, emergent unrest in the Mideast and Middle America following Tea Party elections in statehouses and the US Congress. Not to mention continued after-shocks from the near-disaster of the financial meltdown that arrived coincidentally (or not) right as Obama was entering the White House.

Obama cut his political teeth on community organizing, and that is in a sense Kai Lee’s gyroscope to accompany his adaptive management compass. So we can at least hope for endorsement from Obama if planning is replaced with adaptive governance. Whether or not it will be a good thing depends largely on whether or not untoward devolution happens—or is perceived to likely happen—under adaptive governance schemes. Time will tell. But I get ahead of our story. The Forest Service hasn’t yet embraced adaptive governance, although I hear they are flirting with it. Instead they are still wedded to capital P “Planning.” As Andy Stahl noted, the recent Draft NFMA “planning rule” (pdf) (as the Forest Service likes to call it), stages up a rational planning exercise. The difference is that this time it is driven by ecological rationality instead of the earlier economic rationality from the OMB era.

Adaptive Governance: Absent in the NFMA Draft Planning Rule
I suspect it was because the Bush/Cheney era NFMA rule was thrown away by the courts, but for whatever reason the Obama Administration chose to rewrite the “NFMA rule.” There has been a flurry of commentary on this blog and elsewhere about the rule and associated planning. But does anyone really care about this type planning anymore? What decisions are really contained by a forest-level plan? Despite the language of the draft rule, I find no “ecological resilience” decisions, neither “ecological or social sustainability” decisions, nor any “species viability” decisions, nor … that can be contained in a forest-level plan. All such considerations will well-up at scales different from forest boundaries.

As I’ve argued before, these are wicked problems. Wicked problems are not amenable to rational planning resolutions. Part of the “wicked problem” problem is that they are shape-shifters, they vary in problem identification and resolution across both time and space. They just won’t stand still, and will not be force-fit into predetermined “decision containers.”

In addressing wicked problems, I believe that scale-dependent futuring, and/or puzzle solving, is in order alongside scale-dependent assessments and monitoring. We ought to add in scale-dependent standard setting. They all fit under a header “puzzle solving.” Where scale-dependent is really the stuff of framing decisions/actions according to a “Garbage Can Model” wherein issues, actors, and arenas self-organize across the landscape into various and sundry decision containers. We all need to think hard about wicked problems and, e.g. Cohen, March, and Olsen’s garbage can decision model. Here’s a pdf of CMO’s 1972 article: “A Garbage Can Theory of Organizational Choice.”

See too Pritchard and Sanderson’s chapter in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002), “The Dynamics of Political Discourse in Seeking Sustainability.” After setting stage for adaptive governance, complete with “wicked problem identification” and “garbage can” resolution mechanisms, Pritchard and Sanderson conclude:

[Testing hypotheses and applying lessons learned] to the thorny puzzles of environmental management and governance are [noble] goals. The greatest promise lies in addressing political issues directly, rather than in avoiding or submerging them. The fondest hope might be that individuals, communities, and formal organizations engage the spirit of adaptation and experimentation, by allowing a set of contingent ideas to shape “the gamble” of democratic resource management, and citizen experts to report on the results. Of course, for such a profoundly disorganized and multiscale approach to thrive, government, market, and citizen must share a common vision—that all must address these puzzles in order that they might be engaged and worked on—not solved forever; that “expertise,” popular voice, and power are separable, and none holds the dice [from a “floating crap game” model of politics] for more than a pass.

A Few Questions Linger
Is an ecologically framed rational planning rule what we need to resolve controversy?
Or is it time to embrace adaptive management, even adaptive governance in an attempt to tame wicked problems? Yes, I know that the preamble to the Draft NFMA rule claims that forest planning will be driven by adaptive management. But, really? Read the rule and explain to me how the draft rule stages for more than rational planning.

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Related:
The Forest Service as a Learning Challenged Organization, Iverson, 1999
US Forest Service Deeply Flawed Planning Culture, Iverson, 2004

What is forest planning?

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I’m trying to work up yet-another forest planning post tracing the evolution of Forest Service decision-making from the rational planning era to the adaptive governance era. So I decided to solicit opinion in advance. What do you think forest-level planning is? Here are some possibilities. Feel free to add more, and I’ll update this post.

What best describes “forest-level planning”?

  • Anachronism – an artifact of a bygone era
  • Distraction – a relatively safe place for environmentalists and other “forests service malcontents” to wage war against the forest service, distracting them from larger arenas where they might prove more damaging to forest service agendas
  • Nuisance – nonsense that keeps foresters and “ologists” out of the woods
  • Abomination – a “pox on all our houses,” a legal/administrative nightmare
  • Communitarian Decision Container – a place for people to gather together to build community and resolve problems about a national forest they love
  • Rational Decision Container – a place for professionals and scientists to help managers make rational decisions about best use of a national forest

[Updated: 3/28/2011]