Title: Implementing%20Effective%20Watershed%20Management%20Programs:%20Lessons%20from%20Six%20Watershed%20Management%20Programs
1Implementing Effective Watershed Management
ProgramsLessons from Six Watershed Management
Programs
- Mark T. Imperial, Ph.D.
- Master of Public Administration Program
- University of North Carolina at Wilmington
- http//people.uncw.edu/imperialm/index.htm
- Timothy Hennessey, Ph.D.
- Dept. of Political Science
- Dept. of Marine Affairs
- University of Rhode Island
2Research Design
- Based in part on a study funded by the National
Academy of Public Administration - Analyzed 6 watershed management programs
- Inland Bays (DE)
- Lake Tahoe (CA, NV)
- Narragansett Bay (RI, MA)
- Salt Ponds (RI)
- Tampa Bay (FL)
- Tillamook Bay (OR)
3What is the Ecosystem Approach?
- Usual tendency assumes that no watershed is
managed without some form of centralized
government program - Programs often emphasize science and some form of
participatory planning process - But all watersheds are managed in various ways
- Complex set of programs at the federal, state,
and local level - Watershed management is as much a problem of
improving governance as it is science or policy
design
4Ecosystem Governance
- Governance
- Means for achieving direction, control, and
coordination of organizations with varying
degrees of autonomy in order to advance the
objectives to which they jointly contribute - Challenge for practitioners
- Find ways to enhance governance in a world of
shared power where the capacity for solving
problems is widely dispersed and few
organizations have the power to accomplish their
missions by acting alone
5Improving Ecosystem Governance
- When viewed from an institutional perspective,
you improve ecosystem governance by - Building, enhancing, expanding, or changing
interorganizational networks - Managing existing interorganizational networks
more effectively - Altering, changing, or improving how decisions
are made both within and across organizations
(integration and coordination) - Building new institutions that improve problem
solving capacity - These activities are likely to occur at different
levels - Operational, policy-making, institutional level
6Operational Level
- Activities involve government service delivery
- Improve environmental conditions directly or
indirectly - Occur individually or collectively
- Influenced by activities at the policy-making or
institutional level - Improving environmental conditions
- Habitat restoration, installing BMPs or other
environmental infrastructure, land acquisition,
coordinated permit programs - Educating decisionmakers and the public
- Educational and training programs targeted at
schools, homeowners, industry, resource users,
and government officials - Monitoring and enforcement
- New monitoring programs, coordinating existing
environmental monitoring programs, and improved
regulatory enforcement
7Policy-Making Level
- Collective decisions that determine, enforce,
continue, constrain, or alter actions at the
operational level - Performs a steering function by improving
communication, coordinating actions, and
integrating policies that advance shared goals - Knowledge sharing
- Examples joint research projects, interagency
databases (e.g., GIS), co-locating staff,
creating work groups, task forces, committees,
and regular informal staff interactions - Activities are necessary because
- Information is often lacking or widely dispersed
- Competition for resources and policy direction
helps practitioners find creative solutions to
shared problems
8Policy-Making Level
- Resource sharing
- Shortage of resources (staffing, funding,
expertise) is common - Examples hiring staff to work in other
organizations, volunteers, sharing costs, using
another agencys funding priorities - Develop shared policies and norms
- Examples shared policy documents, joint work
plans, shared priorities for infrastructure
investment, BMPs, habitat restoration, or land
acquisition - Activities help
- Creates a shared sense of purpose
- Creates peer pressure at the political,
professional, and individual levels helps
enforce agreements and encourages action - Integrate policies agency decisions at the
operational level - steering function
9Institutional Level
- It is important to not only establish meaningful
interactions, but find ways to make these
relationships endure - Key institutionalize shared policies in a higher
order set of rules or create new organizational
structures - Institutionalize shared policies in existing
institutions - Examples MOU, creating a new program,
incorporating policies into comprehensive plans,
CIPs, or other plans, legal agreements, or new
legislation - Create new network organizations
- When a group of organizations makes joint
decisions or acts as a single entity they are
acting as a new organization an organization
comprised of other organizations
10Institutional Level
- These activities are important because they
- Enhance or constrain activities at other levels
- Make activities less dependent on personal
relationships or hard to replace leaders - Minimize turnover problems (e.g., loss of
institutional memory or trust embedded in
personal relationships) - Provide institutional infrastructure that
subsequent collaborative efforts build upon - Provide slack resources to support collaborative
activities at the policy making or operational
levels
11What are some lessons for practitioners seeking
to improve ecosystem governance and build new
institutions?
12Think Holistically, Act Strategically
- Important to understand the ecology of
governance - The unique contextual setting, tradeoffs among
problems, and how institutions function and
interact - Look for strategic opportunities to improve
ecosystem governance dont separate planning
from implementation - Avoid a centralized is best mindset
- Tendency to manage activities using one large
committee - By way of contrast, you could use series of
targeted efforts involving only the actors need
to complete the task - This polycentric approach can reduce transaction
costs, increase flow of information, and allows
potential collaborators to negotiate directly
with one another
13Public Value is Generated in Many Ways
- Improved environmental conditions is often the
driving force that initiates watershed efforts - However, respondents often point to intangible
issues related to improved governance when asked
about program benefits - Public value is generated at different levels
- Individual
- Organizational
- Network
- Societal
14Sources of Public Value
- Improved job satisfaction or motivation
- This can improve job performance
- Learning, adaptation, and change
- Policy-oriented learning
- Diffusion of innovations,
- Collaborative know-how
- Developing organizational and network capacity
- Enhances coordination within and across
organizations - Improves program effectiveness/efficiency
- Better decision-making and resource allocation
- Leverages new resources
- Social capital and civil society
- Develops trust and personal relationships
- Volunteerism and civic engagement
15Inertia Bandwagon Effects
- While the pattern of activities in each watershed
varies, it is common to find that - Initial efforts are slower than expected
- They then increase in scope and number as
participants gain experience and learn how to
work together or - They gradually peter out as enthusiasm and
resources diminish, participants are unable to
overcome their differences, or they are unable to
find ways to work together - Inertia
- Participants underestimate the time and effort
required to build relationships and trust
precursors to joint action - Takes time to plan and organize efforts, secure
necessary resources, and reach agreement on a
course of joint action
16Inertia Bandwagon Effects
- Bandwagon effects
- Once a threshold level of success is achieved,
efforts build momentum, pick up speed, gain new
members and resources, and expand to address new
issues and problems - Advice for practitioners
- Gradually scale up efforts to facilitate learning
- Start with issues where there is strong support,
build on early successes, and expand efforts to
other issues/problems over time - Enlarge shadow of the future so there is reason
for continued interaction - Trust builds slowly, can be destroyed quickly,
and it must be maintained
17Common Implementation Problems
- Disposition and skills of implementors
- Some staff/organizations may not like working
together - Staff/organizations lack skills to participate
effectively or manage network processes - It takes resources such as time, money,
equipment, staff, technical expertise, and legal
authority to get things done - If you cant do more than attend meetings, then
you cant get much done - If resources are distributed among organizations
it creates complementary relationships and
incentives for joint action
18Common Implementation Problems
- Heavy reliance on external funding sources
- Funding agency sets priorities rather than
watershed effort - Need to systematically address specific problems
to avoid random acts of environmental kindness - Stability in funding is important
- Facilitates repeated interactions
- Allows participants to plan and budget with
confidence - Reduces transaction costs related to finding
funding - Lots of incentives for noncooperative behavior
- Turf guarding, conflicting budgetary and
statutory responsibilities, competing
programmatic priorities, etc.
19Accountability
- Accountability mechanisms are important but also
are a two-edged sword - Specific goals, objectives, and monitoring
processes provide incentives for joint action - Monitoring processes create peer pressure at the
political, professional, and individual level - But there is a constant tension between
organizational autonomy and accountability - Too much accountability can create disincentives
for joint action
20Summary Conclusions
- Ecosystem management is advanced governance and
there is no substitute for well managed programs - Management matters
- Need good director and staff and have them work
as a team - Wide range of skills required to manage network
processes - Build on early successes and expand efforts over
time - Pick issues where there is strong intersectoral
support and celebrate the small wins to get the
bandwagon rolling - Implementation tends to be a trial and error
process as practitioners learn how to work
together in productive ways - Path-dependent quality - some activities will be
preparatory to others
21Questions?