Journals
Fall 2006, Vol. 46, No. 4
Essay—Build It and They Will Come? Mandating Collaboration in Public Lands Planning and Management
Antony S. Cheng
The U.S. public lands are essentially a grand social experiment. Born in the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth century and institutionalized throughout the twentieth century, public lands are a milieu in which American society plays out its ever-evolving relationships with land, nature, and the resources that provide for human material survival and comfort. Public lands are also places in which Americans work out the ever-changing relationships with one another with respect to the natural world, from debates over the appropriate role of government regulation to whether private entities should be able to benefit from the use of public forests. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the participants in this grand social experiment are turning to collaboration as a primary way to work out these relationships.
Land Use Dynamics and Policy Implications in the Jinghe Watershed of Western China: A Critical Assessment from Local Perspectives
Lin Zhen, Li Yang, Goodi Xie & Shengkui Cheng
This article provides insight into land use dynamics and policy implications from local perspectives in the Jinghe watershed of northwestern China. Spatial and temporal data were used to analyze the land use changes. A survey was conducted to investigate farmers’ perceptions and the factors causing these changes. A transition matrix and weighted index were used to make quantitative comparisons between land uses and farmers' perceptions from 1980 to 2003. The results show that land use changes occurred predominantly in forests and grasslands. Land use continues to shift between agricultural land, grasslands, and forests. Governmental policies, market demand, personal willingness, and a desire to conserve land resources are the primary driving forces behind changes in land use. From this research we conclude that a comprehensive resource conservation strategy should build resource conservation into policy making, institutional reforms, local participation, indigenous technology, population control, and ecological migration.
Seal Bounty and Seal Protection Laws in Maine, 1872 to 1972: Historic Perspectives on a Current Controversy
Barbara Lelli & David E. Harris
Modern predator management balances conservation and preservation with the desire to exploit natural resources. Seals (marine predators) engender controversy because seals and humans both consume fish. To understand the foundation of current stakeholder positions concerning seals, we examined the history of seal legislation in Maine from 1872 to 1972, which included two bounty periods as well as limited legal protection. We analyzed the stakeholder interests that influenced Maine legislation and compared them to similar influences at work in a modern context, the Canadian Atlantic Seal Hunt. This history and analysis can provide lessons for seal management elsewhere.
Examination of the Phoenix Regional Water Supply for Sustainable Yield and Carrying Capacity
Jan C. Bush, Subhrajit Guhathakurta, John L. Keane & Judith M. Dworkin
Metropolitan Phoenix lacks a current, publicly accessible statement of its water supply from which to evaluate options for growth. This article presents research into the size and sustainability of the regional water supply. It introduces residential carrying capacity as an intuitive measure of the economic size of a water supply and examines entitlements, regulatory programs, and subsidies that constrain existing supplies from supporting new economic uses. The findings are (1) that the Phoenix renewable water supply is, in theory, sufficiently large to meet future regional economic goals and protect many environmental functions if the current context of entitlements and institutional arrangements is ignored; and (2) that Phoenix needs to engineer new water supply policies instead of new water resources, to avoid large economic and environmental costs in the future.
Policy Tools for Wildland Fire Management: Principles, Incentives, and Conflicts
Sara Elizabeth Jensen
Public perception of a fire "crisis" in the United States makes fire management a priority for both land managers and policy makers. Land managers focus on three major methods for resolving the current fuels build up problem: mechanical fuels treatment, the use of prescribed and naturally ignited fire, and fire suppression. Public policies create incentives for different fire management strategies, which encourage or discourage the use of these three management objectives. This analysis finds conflicts in fire policy and management practices to be relatively few and minor. Conflicts generally result from the inherent complexity of fire-prone ecosystems, which requires some flexibility in policy implementation and interpretation. The absence of reliable data to either support or deny the claims that conflicting policies, excessive litigation, or burdensome procedures are thwarting federal attempts to bring the fuel/fire crisis under control suggests that sweeping policy changes would be ill advised at this time.
Voluntary Environmental Regulation in Developing Countries: A Mexican Case Study
Allen Blackman & Nicholas Sisto
The past two decades have witnessed an explosion in the popularity of "voluntary" environmental regulation that provides incentives—but not mandates—for pollution control. Advocates claim that such regulation holds particular promise in developing countries where conventional command-and-control policies often perform poorly. Yet evaluative research on voluntary regulation has focused almost exclusively on industrialized countries. This article presents a case study of four high-profile voluntary environmental agreements used during the 1980s and 1990s in an attempt to control pollution from leather tanneries in León, Guanajuato—Mexico’s leather goods capital and a notorious environmental hotspot. To understand why environmental authorities made voluntary agreements the centerpiece of their pollution control efforts in León, and why this approach ultimately failed, we reconstruct the history of the voluntary agreements along with that of local, state, and federal environmental regulatory capacity. Juxtaposing these two timelines suggests that the four voluntary agreements were both motivated by—and eventually undermined by—gaps in the legal, institutional, physical, and civic infrastructures that regulators needed to implement command-and-control policies. To the extent that our findings may be generalized, they imply that voluntary regulation is not likely to be an effective means of shoring up poorly performing command-and-control regimes in developing countries.
Salmon as Lazarus in the Oregon Desert: The Historic Settlement and Relicensing of the Pelton-Round Butte Project
Shems Baker Jud
The Deschutes River, like so many rivers throughout the country, is a river divided. Cleaved by a series of dams built for hydroelectric power generation, the Deschutes is really two rivers. Below the dams the river is a recreational mecca supporting anadromous fish as well as rafters and fishermen, while above the dams the river and its tributaries no longer support salmon or steelhead. Recently the dams on the Deschutes River underwent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing process, a once-in-generations opportunity to impose new environmental conditions on an old license. In this instance the results were extraordinary. The license holders and other stakeholders entered a path-breaking settlement agreement that, in addition to numerous other environmental benefits, calls for redesigning the dams with the goal of reintroducing anadromous fish to miles of habitat. In addition, the settlement agreement calls for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs to become the majority owners of the complex within the next few decades. These unprecedented results, tribal co-ownership and a massive salmonid reintroduction effort, are a tribute to the hard work of the parties involved in the settlement process, the willingness of the license holders to work with the environmental community, and the rejuvenating potential of the Federal Power Act. While there is no guarantee that the reintroduction effort will be successful, it is clear that major environmental benefits will nevertheless result from the new license. The most valuable aspect of the Deschutes River process, however, is neither tribal co-ownership nor the massive reintroduction effort, but rather its value as a model for mutually beneficial dam relicensing efforts in the future.
