Implementing%20Effective%20Watershed%20Management%20Programs:%20Lessons%20from%20Six%20Watershed%20Management%20Programs

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Implementing 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

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Research 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)

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What 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

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Ecosystem 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

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Improving 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

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Operational 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

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Policy-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

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Policy-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

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Institutional 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

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Institutional 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

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What are some lessons for practitioners seeking
to improve ecosystem governance and build new
institutions?
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Think 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

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Public 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

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Sources 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

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Inertia 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

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Inertia 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

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Common 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

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Common 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.

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Accountability

• 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

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Summary 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

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Questions?