Collaborating on Environmental
Decisions: For Good? For Worse? For Whom?:
North Carolina Universities Host Symposium on Environmental Conflict
Resolution
Representing a rainbow of affiliations from young professionals in graduate school, attorneys, researchers, policy analysts, practitioners, natural resource and environmental professionals, and senior executives of businesses and non-governmental organizations, they arrived from Alabama, Georgia, Washington, DC, Virginia, Tennessee, Colorado, Korea, Utah, and across the state of North Carolina.
Although the use of collaborative approaches in environmental policy and management is becoming more common nationwide, and at the local, state, and federal levels, there is skepticism about whether the principles of inclusiveness and fairness are part of the drive toward local innovation and new decision-making structures. What are we to make of this? Is “collaboration” being used as a tool to devolve federal decision making to state and local decision makers, all in an effort to avoid participation by national environmental groups? Are collaboratives becoming a forum for political convenience?
Prominent leaders in the field of collaborative approaches to environmental policy during the plenary session and guest speakers during concurrent sessions tackled these questions. Gail Bingham, President of RESOLVE, Inc., set the symposium’s reflective tone as she recalled “decades of experience”, acknowledged the state of the practice, and highlighted core principles of process work that served then, now, and will into the future: transparency, inquiry, and inclusiveness.
Lynn Scarlett, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior, described new federal initiatives in environmental policy and management with the challenges we continue to face and have yet to face. Jim Souby, Executive Director, Oquirrh Institute and PCI Board member, discussed the role and record of state governments in applying these processes to important policy issues.