Ruckelshaus Highlights Seven Lessons From
Successful Collaborative Environmental Efforts
Second, every important stakeholder must be brought in at the very start of the process. Everyone has to be in the boat rowing. You can’t leave anyone on shore, because those are the people most apt to roll rocks off the bridges as the boat goes by. When you include all interests you almost guarantee that the result will transcend the sterile posturing of single-interest politics, and that people will learn the habit of listening before passing judgment. Involvement has to be early because, remember, you’re operating in an atmosphere of deep distrust. No one wants to feel co-opted by some prior set of assumptions or decisions. The very point of the process is that everyone gets to see the cards dealt – everyone gets to kick the tires on the technical issues.
Third, the sponsor of the process should be a relevant governmental authority and it should signal in unambiguous terms that the process is the only game in town, and that what comes out of the process will more-or-less prevail as public policy. Then everyone must play or risk being left out. The government needs to set the arena – then the process has the best chance to succeed. This is often, not always but often, crucial in order to get former opponents around the same table to work together in good faith. If one or another party thinks it can get another bite at the apple in some other forum, they will hold back from the full cooperation necessary for success. Let me note here that these processes are utterly different from the typical public meeting, where people state their positions and afterward are under no obligation to listen to any opposing statements.
In collaborative processes you are motivated to listen carefully to the other side – because you need all that information to be able to move forward as a group.
Fourth, it is usually essential that the alternative to collaborative agreement is unacceptable to the parties. There must be a stick along with the carrot. The unknown terrors of the Endangered Species Act drove the parties to the extraordinary efforts in Puget Sound. There the Courts had been tried for years and while useful, people had come to believe they are ineffective at developing a comprehensive solution that adequately reflects the interests of the parties who have something at stake. So even though many have entered into the collaboration with some trepidation, they have been guided by the advice of Mae West who once said, “Whenever I have been faced with the choice of two evils, I always pick the one I haven’t tried before”...
Fifth, professional facilitation and access to extensive technical advice is essential. We’ve learned that ordinary citizens have an amazing ability to filter through scientific information that may contain contradictions and come up with reasonable findings. Now, there’s a somewhat subtle point about the involvement of government agencies in providing technical support for facilitating these processes. I said you need the backing of government in these things, and you do, but while government can initiate and participate in such processes, it is often best for the actual cooperative decision-making group to operate under the auspices of a non-governmental, neutral, organization. The point, after all, is that lots of people don’ t trust the government. The government has to let go. Let the citizens decide how to get there.
One approach to providing a neutral venue for assistance in collaborative problem solving is the use of major state universities. At the school for Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming and the Policy Consensus Center at the University of Washington and Washington State University, efforts are underway to assist governments at all levels and citizens in solving intractable problems through the use of collaborative processes. The universities offer scientific and technical help and knowledge about how collaboration can help. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been involved in the creation of both university centers. I know they are providing a real benefit to both states and the effort is spreading to other centers of learning nationwide.
A recent survey by the Policy Consensus Initiative counts more than 60 such programs at some stage of development across the country. I am convinced that every state should have at least one University offering its intellectual assets and process expertise to assist citizens and governments in resolving disputes.
Sixth, you have to confront economics in some detail. What you don’t want is a trivial “feel-good” agreement on vague principles that leads to no action. Make no mistake; these processes are ultimately about who gets what. Their real genius lies in discovering that different sides can each get what they need, that the pie can be artfully cut so as to be bigger than we thought. This is known in the facilitation business as going from OR to AND. We stop saying fish or irrigation, jobs or wildlife and we start saying fish and irrigation, jobs and wildlife. From that change, everything else flows. For instance, we have a comprehensive funding analysis on the financial needs of Puget Sound if the fish are to recover. It will be part of the recovery plan submitted to NOAA.
Finally, such a process must have as its goal some deep and meaningful solution. It must, in the words of Donald Snow of Montana¹s Northern Lights Foundation, “break through the shallow façade of rhetoric and reach to the heart of the issue.” Only then, when people are united despite their differences by hard-earned trust, does the astounding political power of collaboration become effective.
Read the full transcript of Ruckelshaus’ lecture (185KB PDF).
Read more about William D. Ruckelshaus.