Matthew McKinney

Evaluating Community-Based Collaboration on Federal Lands and Resources

The growing interest in community-based collaboration (CBC) has provoked both enthusiasm and skepticism. This article sheds some light on the claims of both proponents and skeptics by presenting data on nearly 50 cases of CBC on federal lands and resources in the Rocky Mountain West. The findings indicate that participants are generally satisfied with the process and outcomes of CBC; CBC tends to open and inclusive of all interests, viewpoints, and stakeholders; CBC fosters informed decision making; CBC is efficient in terms of time and money; CBC produces valuable outcomes; CBC is often better than its alternatives; and CBC is slowly realigning the roles of citizens and public officials. This article also offers some insights on evaluating collaboration.

Collaboration and the Ecology of Democracy

Collaboration is a proven approach to building agreement and resolving conflict over natural resource and environmental issues. This article moves beyond this conclusion and explores the degree to which collaboration—particularly citizen-driven collaboration—offers an alternative theory and practice of democracy applied to the governance of natural resources. Using complexity theory, we argue that collaboration should be considered as one species within the ecology of democracy, which also includes direct, representative, participatory, and deliberative forms. Collaborative democracy is defined as citizen-initiated processes that emerge organically outside the established system of public decision-making. While this form of democracy faces a number of challenges in theory and practice, it tends to result in outcomes that are well-informed and widely supported—largely because people with a stake in the issues being addressed play a central role in framing the problems and solutions. Natural resource managers can be more effective by understanding the complexity of the democratic environment within which they operate.

Water resources planning: A collaborative, consensus‐building approach

Abstract Public involvement in water resources planning is traditionally limited. While decision makers may solicit public input, affected parties rarely have the opportunity to participate directly in the decision‐making process. In recent years, this lack of meaningful public participation has been exacerbated by an increase in the number of individuals and groups interested in water management. In light of these limitations in and new demands on water resource planning, there has been a loud call for the development of new mechanisms to enhance public involvement and conflict management. The state of Montana has responded to this call by developing a state water plan through a collaborative, consensus‐building process that directly involves the public in water policy decisions. In general, the process is based on the principles of environmental dispute resolution. After reviewing these principles, the design and implementation of Montanas state water plan is examined. The advantages and limitations of...

Reconciliation of development and ecosystems: the ecology of governance in the International Columbia River Basin

This article explores the emergence of formal and informal bridging organizations to facilitate solutions to water conflict at the scale of the water resource. This new approach to governance is of particular importance on rivers within or shared by countries in which water management is fragmented among national and sub-national levels of government as well as among governmental sectors. This article focuses on the Columbia River Basin, in the United States and Canada. Review of the Columbia River Treaty governing shared management of the river has opened a public dialogue on river governance. Treaty review coincides with change in both the biophysical setting and the values and capacity of basin residents. Climate change is altering the timing of flow relied on by the management of developed river infrastructure and the annual runs of the basins’ salmonid species. River development increased economic development in the basin, but at the cost of ecosystem function. Assertion of legal rights by indigenous communities has brought an alternative world view to the review—one that seeks to maintain the benefits of river development while reconciling that development with ecosystem function. This article identifies the governance mechanisms needed to achieve reconciliation and describes their emergence in the Columbia River Basin through an analytical framework focused on local capacity building and network formation across jurisdictions, sectors, and scales of governance. Both countries fragment water management authority among jurisdictions and sectors, but bridging organizations have emerged to link interests and government at the watershed and basin scale. Emergence of new governance is facilitated by increases in local, regional, and indigenous governance capacity. This networked governance emerging at the biophysical scale while embedded in and linked to a hierarchy of formal international, national, state, and local government is characterized as the ecology of governance.

Responding to Streams of Land Use Disputes: A Systems Approach

Abstract Disputes over land use are inevitable. Two recent studies demonstrate that negotiation and mediation can effectively resolve such disputes on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. Given this evidence, and the reality that disputes over land use in many communities are increasingly chronic and ongoing, it is time to move beyond the ad hoc use of negotiation and mediation and incorporate collaborative methods throughout the land use decision-making process.