Tomas M. Koontz

Research Note A Typology of Collaborative Watershed Groups: Citizen-Based, Agency-Based, and Mixed Partnerships

Collaborative resource management partnerships have proliferated across the United States in recent years. These partnerships are extremely diverse, varying by region and exhibiting a wide range of structures and functions. While numerous studies have emphasized the uniqueness of each collaborative partnership, theory building to date has been minimal. In this note we take a step in that direction by developing a typology of collaborative groups based on member composition. Through examination of 64 watershed groups in Ohio, we classify groups into three types: citizen-based, agency-based, and mixed. Comparisons across group types reveal several systematic differences in group accomplishments. Results suggest that different roles for different types of collaborative partnerships should be considered when involving them in planning and management.

One size does not fit all: Matching breadth of stakeholder participation to watershed group accomplishments

The role of the public in US policy making has shifted substantially during the past several decades. This shift is particularly evident in environmental policy, where collaboration among multiple stakeholders is on the rise. Much of the literature on collaborative environmental management emphasizes the need for widespread community involvement, especially from private citizens. Many proponents of collaboration have argued that broad inclusion can lead to better environmental solutions while also establishing legitimacy, building social capital, and overcoming conflicts. Yet such broad inclusion may be costly in terms of time, energy, and resources, and it may not yield the desired results. Thus, a key question is how the breadth of public involvement is linked to collaborative group accomplishments. This study, using watershed groups in Ohio, demonstrates several links between group membership and results. Groups with a broader array of participants tend to excel in watershed plan creation, identifying/prioritizing issues, and group development and maintenance. In addition, groups comprised of a relatively balanced mix of governmental and non-governmental participants are more likely to list planning/research and group development and maintenance results than are groups comprised primarily of non-governmental participants. In contrast, groups with a narrower membership and groups that are composed primarily of non-governmental participants may focus more on pressuring government for policy change.

Money Talks?But to Whom? Financial Versus Nonmonetary Motivations in Land Use Decisions

Land use patterns have important environmental and social consequences. With a majority of U.S. land privately owned, understanding land use requires learning about land owners and how they make decisions. Land use research spans multiple social science disciplines, but past efforts have emphasized parcel owners who rely on their land for economic livelihood, focusing on financial motivations, or else policy tools relying on economic incentives thought to affect owner decision making. This article describes an in-depth study of 250 parcels in one Indiana county, providing a first step toward a parcel owner decision-making theory applicable across a broad range of activities. Interviews with parcel owners provide rich detail about factors affecting land use decisions, including differences in motivation between financial returns and nonmonetary benefits. While the latter are more often cited as motivating land use activities, their importance depends on several owner and parcel characteristics.

Stumbling Forward: The Organizational Challenges of Building and Sustaining Collaborative Watershed Management

This article examines the challenges of collaborative approaches to ecosystem management associated with the formation and maintenance of new institutions. Individuals who lead collaborative watershed partnerships must grapple not only with complex environmental issues, but also the more mundane—but no less critical—challenges associated with building and sustaining a new organization. The authors focus on the nexus of organizational development and ecosystem (i.e., watershed) management by examining in depth how one group, the Little Miami River Partnership (LMRP), experienced and responded to the challenges of creating a collaborative organization. Results shed light on the disproportionate role that organizational development, as compared to watershed planning, efforts can play in the day-to-day operations of a watershed group. By linking the results to prior research studies, the authors draw conclusions about when and why this disproportionate emphasis on organizational development occurs and implications for practitioners and policymakers.

Multi-level governance, policy implementation and participation: the EU's mandated participatory planning approach to implementing environmental policy

ABSTRACT Innovations in European Union (EU) policy making have produced a distinctive, novel mode of policy that combines components of participatory and multi-level governance for policy implementation. In this manuscript we provide a conceptualization of what we term the EUs ‘mandated participatory planning’ (MPP) approach. This approach is increasingly used to implement EU directives, mandating the explicit formulation of certain plans or programmes on mostly subnational or cross-national levels. Drawing on three empirical examples from (mostly) environmental policy, we argue that analysing MPP as such is useful to help identify challenges and possibilities for EU policy making. Our framework provides a means to organize inquiry and compare disparate policies, and to more broadly understand the integration of policy, planning and implementation. This perspective, in turn, sheds fresh light on familiar concepts at the intersections of multi-level governance, policy implementation and participatory governance, namely multilayer implementation, participatory implementation and polycentric governance.

Implementing ecosystem management in public agencies: lessons from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.

Ecosystem management was formally adopted over a decade ago by many U.S. natural resource agencies, including the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. This approach calls for management based on stakeholder collaboration; interagency cooperation; integration of scientific, social, and economic information; preservation of ecological processes; and adaptive management. Results of previous studies indicate differences in the extent to which particular components of ecosystem management would be implemented within the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and suggest a number of barriers thought to impede implementation. Drawing on survey and interview data from agency personnel and stakeholders, we compared levels of ecosystem-management implementation in the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management and identified the most important barriers to implementation. Agency personnel perceived similarly high levels of implementation on many ecosystem-management components, whereas stakeholders perceived lower levels. Agencies were most challenged by implementation of preservation of ecological processes, adaptive management, and integration of social and economic information, whereas the most significant barriers to implementation were political, cultural, and legal.

The farmer, the planner, and the local citizen in the dell: how collaborative groups plan for farmland preservation

Collaborative planning aims to shift decision-making from government officials to citizens and stakeholders. Recently, scholars and practitioners have focused a great deal of attention on such efforts, particularly in the context of watershed management planning and ecosystem management. Collaborative planning, some argue, can lead to better land use plans as well as foster increased community capacity to constructively address important issues. But the policy implications of collaborative planning are not well understood. To date, scant research has focused on understanding how participants without binding legal authority arrive at specific plans and what those plans contain. This study offers insights into this process, through a cross-case comparison of 15 community-based advisory task forces to develop farmland preservation plans in Ohio, USA. Analysis of plan documents, combined with task force member and local government official interviews, reveal patterns of plan contents and planning processes across different contexts. Results suggest that several contextual variables are associated with the sophistication level of completed plans, while group size and financial resources are linked to the amount of network-building fostered by the planning process.

Research Designs for Evaluating the Impact of Community-Based Management on Natural Resource Conservation

Abstract Community-based management has increasingly replaced centralized planning and regulation as an alternative means for conserving natural resources. But there is little empirical evidence to suggest whether community-based management has a positive or negative impact on the actual condition of natural resources. If, as is commonly argued, conservation success depends largely on local context, then we must think carefully about the entire causal chain of community-based management activities, from the inputs supporting decision-making processes to management outputs and environmental outcomes. We accordingly discuss appropriate methodologies for demonstrating the causal impacts of community-based management on natural resource conservation.

Measuring the Performance of Public-Private Partnerships

The shift from government to governance and the increasing reliance on public-private partnerships are well documented, but there is less clarity regarding how to measure the performance of these new arrangements. Performance measures based on traditional governmental forms, such as centralized planning and regulation, are relatively straightforward. In collaborative governance, however, the wide range of policy tools for enabling and encouraging public-private partnerships—such as grants, contracts, and technical assistance—requires more nuance in distinguishing outputs from outcomes. Choosing appropriate output and outcome measures is necessary if public-private partnerships are to be held accountable for performance. Drawing on evidence regarding inconsistent use of performance measures from the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), a classification system is presented for defining outputs and outcomes for different types of programs. PART data are used to demonstrate the need for a consistent classification scheme and to illustrate program-based categories of output and outcome measures for both direct government provision and public-private partnerships. The purpose is to aid practitioners participating in, and academics studying, public-private partnerships and performance management systems.

Policy-Level Collaboratives for Environmental Management at the Regional Scale: Lessons and Challenges From Australia and the United States

Collaborative approaches to natural resource management are playing a key role in addressing complex environmental problems. Much of what is known about collaborative groups is drawn from those working on local, action-level activities. Yet there have also been collaborative groups established to address large regions and policy-level conflicts. Little is known about how policy-level collaboratives differ from the action-level efforts that dominate the literature. Based on three independent case studies and an international forum involving 17 researchers and practitioners, this article compares the findings from policy-level collaboratives established in Australia and the United States. The authors identify four distinct aspects of policy-level collaboratives, which relate to convening, organizational arrangements, science investment, and implementation strategies. We conclude by suggesting key research questions that need to be pursued to better understand how these groups can more effectively address large bioregions and significant policy problems.