Bringing the Outsiders In: Social Movement Advocacy in the Planning Process

In 2008, the Massachusetts Green Communities Act opened up new sources of funding to help the state reach its ambitious energy efficiency goals. The responsibility for allocating these funds was given to a group of diverse stakeholders, the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Advisory Council. One stakeholder, Community Labor United (CLU), was intent on using the process to push its environmental justice mission aimed at generating high-paying jobs and community-level benefits.

Eric Mackres (MCP ’10) studied how CLU incorporated both organizational efforts and collaboration into its activities. In doing so, CLU blurred the line between traditional social movement strategies (from the outside) and participation (from the inside) in the planning process. CLU had to learn to find the middle ground both among its own constituency—which included labor groups, environmental advocates, and community organizers—and with utilities and other parties with an interest in energy efficiency funding.

While CLU made occasional missteps in shifting between collaboration and organizing, in the end they were effective in securing funding for community-based pilot programs that would further their environmental justice goals. Eric credits much of CLU’s success to its hybrid strategy that combined social movement theory and collaborative decision-making. He suggests that the two styles of planning can be combined more frequently with good results. Read more about CLU and how these two schools of thought can be combined in Eric’s thesis here.

How the Tea Party Killed Climate Legislation

The vast majority of the effort to confront climate change in America has happened at the state and local level. Hamstrung by political discord and a poor economy, the Federal government has been largely silent in enacting legislation that addresses global warming. One of the best chances and more heartbreaking recent failures was 2010’s American Power Act. Initially a bipartisan proposal of Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman, the act sputtered in the Senate after conservative pressure led Senator Graham to rescind his support.

 Kate Dineen (MCP ‘11) examines the convergence of forces that opposed the legislation, and she credits Tea Party activists with mobilizing the pressure that forced Graham to withdraw. Her thesis describes the party as a particularly energetic manifestation of political views that are surprisingly grounded in traditional concerns of the Republican party establishment. She also details the robust media and institutional infrastructure that supports and amplifies the efforts of Tea Party populists. These factors combine, Kate shows, to produce a political situation in Washington in which it is difficult for environmental advocates to effectively address climate change through legislation.

While her thesis paints a dark picture of environmentalism’s prospects on the Federal scale, Kate closes with a note of optimism. If populist pressure has been able to pressure the Senate into inaction, perhaps an equal and opposite grassroots force could successfully force it to act. Read more in Kate’s thesis here.

Designing Environmental Markets for Real Water Users

Due in large part to years of heavy irrigation, the portion of the Arkansas River that cuts through southeastern Colorado is one of the most saline rivers in the United States. This has dangerous environmental and agricultural implications, and is complicated by the state’s strictly regulated system of water rights. Increasingly, policymakers seek to resolve natural resources problems such as these by creating water quality trading markets that offer financial incentives for environmental protection. However, these markets have generally underperformed, threatening to leave us with the unsatisfactory options of inaction or costly technological solutions.

Beaudry Kock (DUSP PhD ’10) believes that a market-based approach can work, but that it must be reoriented to reflect the reality of social and economic interactions. Policymakers typically design environmental markets by assuming that actors will behave in an economically rational manner, but in practice that is often not the case. Financial self-interest is rarely the only factor that individuals consider, and they are often unable to determine what the lowest-cost decision will be before acting. Instead, decisions are often based on precedent, recommendations from friends and colleagues, or other factors that fall outside the bounds of rational choice theory. Environmental markets need to address complex motivations, and Beaudry’s dissertation lays out a way to do this.

Through a collaborative fact-finding process involving local stakeholders, Beaudry shows how to reduce salinity levels in the Lower Arkansas Basin by as much 10%. He finds that, by implementing a package of incentives, policymakers can address the diverse preferences of the market. Some actors respond best to traditional financial incentives while others are more likely to be swayed by improved information regarding the financial and environmental consequences of their previous decisions or by social network interventions that take advantage of various community ties. Beaudry shows how environmental markets can succeed by appealing to various triggers—both rational and irrational—of human behavior. Read Beaudry’s dissertation here to learn more about his recommendations and share your thoughts with EPP’s Facebook group.

Three Companies + Three Different Approaches = One Big Loss for the Environment

Oil and gas mining are big business in resource-rich Alberta, due largely to the province’s Athabasca Oil Sands. Nathan Lemphers, (MCP ’09) looked at the region’s three major mining companies and found surprising variation in their environmental records. Each company had its own strengths and weaknesses in stakeholder involvement, environmental protection, and operational transparency, revealing a lack of uniformity that Nathan credits to lax environmental regulation by the provincial government.

 

Environmental regulation in Alberta has had a shaky and inconsistent history, and oil-mining companies today have poor guidance from regulators, lax monitoring, and inadequate enforcement penalties and incentives. The absence of a strong regulatory framework has granted companies agency in determining their own approaches to environmental protection, but they are not above the influence of external forces. Environmental advocacy groups, First Nations communities, and the international media all put pressure on mining companies to adopt environmental protections, and the resulting variation in corporate responses reflects differences in how these companies have strategically responded to this pressure. Nathan identifies several factors, such as corporate organizational structure and a preference for a good public image, that dictate the priorities that corporations hold in taking environmental action.

 

As Alberta’s mining industry continues to grow, the provincial government must step in and establish clear guidelines for companies to follow in adhering to environmental regulation. Nathan lays out three areas of focus that must be addressed in order to restore the credibility of Alberta’s environmental regulators. The first is the transparency of data and the methods used to gauge environmental impacts and health. The second is a more robust environmental monitoring program that resolves the flaws in the current process. The third is improved enforcement mechanisms that guarantee that regulations are followed. Read more about Nathan’s conclusions in his thesis.

Overcoming Barriers to Using Local Knowledge in Natural Resource Management

Many academics and practitioners argue that the dominant model of natural resource management— top-down and “scientific”—wrongly discounts the value of local ecological knowledge (LEK), a system of knowledge developed over time through observation and interaction with the natural environment. Although advocates have expounded the benefits of using local knowledge, in practice, LEK is rarely integrated into the scientific assessments that drive management decisions.

Proponents of integrating LEK into management’s knowledge base have offered a three-fold argument. They suggest that it can 1) improve the understanding of local ecological and social conditions, producing management decisions and policies that are more responsive to these conditions, 2) offer models of adaptive, sustainable resource use, and 3) quell the conflict and mistrust that arises when local expertise is ignored or discredited as “anecdotal.” While there is considerable practical evidence to support these views, why scientists rarely tap local knowledge bases is not well understood. This study confirms academics and practitioners’ claims that a major barrier to incorporating LEK is a “language” divide: LEK is rarely presented in scientific terms and thus it is difficult for scientists to understand its relevance or confirm its accuracy. Furthermore, scientific studies are often too complex for untrained locals to understand and thus engage.

By Tomas Castelazo (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

This study also reveals a less acknowledged barrier: conflicting interests. Such conflicts are to be expected between those who extract resources—and have some of the most extensive LEK—and the scientists responsible for advising managers on how that extraction should occur. Whereas resource users tend to hold utilitarian values and resist any attempts to limit their access to the resources they extract, natural resource scientists have become increasingly precautionary and conservation-minded over the past several decades. Such contradictory interests make knowledge sharing a risk-incurring exercise for both scientists and resources users. And unlike those associated with bridging the language divide, these risks or potential costs are not related to the effort required to undertake translation; rather the risks are embedded in the very act of working together and sharing knowledge. Scientists fear that by involving adversarial resource users they will politicize and compromise their science. Resource users fear that if they divulge LEK, it will be used to limit their access to resources, or somehow compromise their livelihood. Although individuals who are able “translate” between the local and scientific communities can overcome the language divide, interest conflicts are rarely overcome by similar translation. Instead, this analysis suggests that incentives must be created to encourage the sharing and eliciting of LEK and alter the perception of risk. Collaborative research programs in the New England fishery provide useful examples.

Read Alexis’ full thesis and let us know what you think on the EPP Facebook Group!