CHAPTER 6
SCIENCE-BASED
COLLABORATIVE MANAGEMENT
This chapter and the next examine cases where governmental actors and institutions play dominant roles in collaborative processes. They represent a more proactive role than in the government-encouraged cases (Chapters 4 and 5), with government defining issues, providing the majority of resources, and organizing group structure and decision making largely around governmental personnel. In this chapter, we describe how a federally and state funded regional program established procedures for pursuing ecosystem management through science-based collaborative planning. The many different governmental and nongovernmental actors within the Albemarle–Pamlico Estuarine Study (APES) program had different goals, levels of engagement in the planning process, and roles in the implementation of the resulting plan. To overcome these differences and make progress in the collaborative effort, these actors agreed to base the program on the assumption that conflict about managing the estuary arose from insufficient or differing understandings of the biological system. In the federal and state governmental actors’ interpretation of ecosystem management, science was to provide the foundation for resolving conflicts among the many participants. Consequently, this chapter draws attention to an important question: By relying on science, can government overcome conflicting interests and goals of different governmental agencies, interest groups, and members of the public in a collaborative effort? For APES, this strategy backfired in the end, when it became apparent that science could not resolve the key conflicts among stakeholders.
COLLABORATION TO MANAGE AN ESTUARINE ECOSYSTEM
The Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds of eastern North Carolina constitute the second-largest estuarine ecosystem in the continental United States. In the mid-1980s, residents became concerned that increasing development of the estuaries would cause the kinds of ecological crises that had occurred in the Chesapeake Bay. Although the system was still relatively healthy, citizens and managers perceived worsening water quality, problems with fisheries, loss of habitat, and a lack of understanding about how the estuary functioned that made it impossible to design effective management strategies. Concerned citizens and scientists lobbied for the inclusion of this region in the National Estuary Program (NEP), a federal program under the Clean Water Act of 1987, to encourage ecosystem management of the nation's critically threatened estuaries.
Administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the NEP is a governmental institution that establishes a formal framework to characterize and plan for management of critically threatened estuaries across the nation through the establishment of localized estuary programs. The Albemarle–Pamlico Estuarine Study (APES) was one of the first programs established under the NEP. The NEP supplied a framework for the APES program by requiring a 1:3 match of state to federal funding, providing suggestions for assembling an inclusive Management Conference, and recommending a planning process consisting of characterizing the estuary and defining the problem, creating a plan, and implementing the plan. Nonetheless, the actors working within this framework had considerable flexibility in designing the structure of APES. These actors, primarily members of federal and state governmental agencies, as well as marine scientists from North Carolina academic institutions, designed the structure and process of APES to rely heavily on generating new and synthesizing old scientific information in a rigorous, credible way. The result of these choices was to privilege science and scientists throughout the APES planning process.
The National Estuary Program may appear to be a straightforward case of government-initiated collaborative management, but a close study of APES reveals a more complex dynamic. First, substantial community concern already existed about these systems, largely among fishers, environmental groups, and marine scientists. These groups, however, were not organized on an ecosystem scale. By initiating, supporting, and participating in APES, they hoped to influence the government (primarily the state of North Carolina) to improve management of the system. Second, “government” in this case was far from monolithic. The roles and expectations of local, state, and federal governmental actors in this process were very different and often opposed to one another. Third, the NEP is primarily a planning program. APES was charged with studying the system, gathering public input, and proposing a management plan. The NEP did not include provisions for management; rather, existing state and local agencies were expected to implement the plan.
Although this program officially was initiated and supported by a federal-state partnership, citizen interest was critical in getting this region included in the federal program. The federal government representatives, especially EPA staff, tended to view APES as an opportunity to encourage stronger protection of the estuary by the state. The state of North Carolina's purpose in participating was to improve scientific understanding of the system and assess the effectiveness of existing policies, rather than to assume there were widespread weaknesses in management. Local governments seemed to have little awareness, at least initially, about the potential implications the final plan could have for their land-use planning and so were not very active in the formation of the program. Thus federal, state, and local governmental actors had very different expectations for their participation.
While the NEP guidance documents suggested that “characterization and problem definition” were important early steps in estuary planning, APES focused far more on generating new scientific understanding than did many of the other NEP programs. This reflected a strong focus by the initial APES participants on improving scientific understanding of the estuary. These participants reasoned that better scientific understanding would eliminate conflict and inform appropriate policies. Therefore, the dominant efforts within APES focused on funding new research and involving highly respected scientists in the collaborative process. But governmental and nongovernmental actors within the collaborative effort faced challenges such as disagreements over what science to fund and the inability of scientists to resolve management questions. As a result, the final plan did not resemble a new plan of action based on improved understanding so much as the lowest common denominator of agreement among diverse participants. Nonetheless, the collaborative experience of APES helped initiate new partnerships and programs that have continued to influence estuarine management since the formal end of the APES program.
THE NATIONAL ESTUARY PROGRAM AND ALBEMARLE–PAMLICO ESTUARINE STUDY
The National Estuary Program is one of several federal-state governmental institutions promoting ecosystem management of large bodies of water, including the Chesapeake Bay Program and the Great Lakes Remedial Action Planning programs. These programs were founded on the recognition that the complex problems faced by large ecosystems—including watersheds that span multiple jurisdictions, diverse and intractable land-use conflicts, and great scientific uncertainty—were not adequately addressed by existing regulatory programs.
The National Estuary Program was formed specifically to address problems of critically threatened estuaries. Through a federal-state partnership, the program forms collaborative efforts called Management Conferences in each of the critical estuary regions. Management Conferences involve governmental and nongovernmental managers, scientists, stakeholders, and other actors in a five-year effort to produce a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP). The EPA provides funding, with a 25 percent state match, during the planning process for research, public outreach activities, and demonstrations of management strategies. NEP Management Conferences do not have authority to implement their CCMPs. Instead, Management Conferences aim to develop a plan with widespread support that will be implemented by existing agencies, state legislatures, local governments, or other organizations.
Within these formal guidelines, NEPs vary greatly with respect to scale, process, rules, and outcomes. There are 28 NEPs in various stages of planning and implementation (U.S. EPA 2003). The APES program was one of the first and geographically largest of the programs. Covering more than 30,000 square miles in northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, the APES program addressed concerns about water pollution, fisheries, and habitat (APES 1994; Owens 1987).
APES was initiated through a confluence of the ideas of leading marine scientists from universities in North Carolina and a political opportunity that made the program attractive to both federal and state policy actors. The congressional committee overseeing development of the National Estuary Program was the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, then chaired by Walter Jones, Sr., a Democrat from eastern North Carolina. Representative Jones was interested in ensuring that North Carolina had an opportunity to participate in this program. Meanwhile, marine scientists in North Carolina had been discussing the idea of a comprehensive study of the state's estuaries since the mid-1960s. These scientists believed that knowing more about these estuarine ecosystems could help guide management of the rapid development projected for North Carolina's coastal areas and prevent the ecological disasters they had seen elsewhere in the country.
One of the marine scientists was Dr. John Costlow, then director of the Duke Marine Laboratory. Costlow was a politically active Republican and a former mayor of Beaufort, North Carolina, a small town located in the APES study area. In 1984, Jim Martin, a Republican former university biochemistry professor and congressman, was elected governor of North Carolina. These common political and intellectual pedigrees provided the marine research scientists with an unexpected entree to the state administration. While the size and status alone of the North Carolina estuaries made the area a strong candidate for the new federal estuary program, this combination of the marine scientists’ leadership and access to key politicians provided an especially auspicious opportunity for the region. With strong support at both the state and federal levels, APES was designated in the first tier of National Estuary Programs in 1987.
After APES was established formally, the convening partners held a kickoff meeting on Valentine's Day 1987. More than 600 people attended this Saturday meeting, with representatives of governmental agencies, private groups, and many citizens present. EPA staff explained the structure of the program and the resources that would be available. Costlow made a speech challenging the group to make sure that this program did not end up the way so many prior efforts to study the estuary had—as plans “gathering dust on a shelf.” Participants later described the mood of people leaving that session as optimistic.
Seven years later, after spending more than $11 million and running several years behind schedule, APES completed its CCMP (APES 1994). There was widespread disappointment with this plan among environmentally oriented stakeholders, particularly over its lack of specific recommendations. Participants also were disappointed by the failure to establish a continuing implementing body to coordinate management efforts. Overall, most of the participants felt that APES had not lived up to its initial promise. No single reason can be given for the perceived failure of this collaborative effort. Part of the explanation, however, certainly lies in conflicting and overly ambitious expectations by the various participants (Korfmacher 1998).
STRUCTURE OF APES
The structure of the APES program had a critical influence on how governmental roles evolved over time. The kickoff meeting in 1987 was organized by the group that became the APES Policy Committee, a seven-member body that included leading marine scientists, a representative of the governor of North Carolina, and federal agency staff members. The Policy Committee had been established in 1986, in anticipation of formal designation under NEP. Most of its decisions were made by consensus of the members, and it was instrumental in determining the structure and membership of the other committees. Based on the decisions of the Policy Committee, the remainder of the Management Conference was established in mid-1987.
The Management Conference included both governmental and nongovernmental actors. It consisted of three standing committees in addition to the Policy Committee: the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and two Citizens Advisory Committees (CACs), one for the northeast Albemarle region (ACAC) and the other for the southern Pamlico area (PCAC). In addition, the Management Conference was assisted by a director and a small staff in the office of the secretary of North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).1 The structure of the TAC and CACs, the membership of these committees, the staffing plan, and the placement of the APES program within the administrative hierarchy were the result of Policy Committee decisions.
The Policy Committee was the official decision-making body for the program and its liaison with the convening partners—the governor of North Carolina and the EPA. This committee was envisioned as a group of academic and policy leaders, including the secretary of the DENR, several federal agency representatives, and the directors of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Beaufort Laboratory, the Duke University Marine Laboratory, and the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences. In interviews, several federal agency representatives and scientists said that they viewed APES as an opportunity not only to better understand the estuarine system, but also to encourage the state to protect these resources more effectively. Perhaps because of this orientation, on several occasions the sole representative of the state on the Policy Committee, the secretary of the DENR, was at odds with the other members of the committee. Although the chairs of the CACs and a representative of Virginia were added in later years, the Policy Committee remained a small group with relatively low turnover throughout the program.
The TAC was composed primarily of representatives of the state and federal agencies responsible for environmental management of the study area. The TAC's role was to provide scientific and technical advice to the Policy Committee, to manage the program's daily operations, to evaluate technical proposals and reports, and to provide input into the ongoing planning process. The TAC had several subcommittees, including the Technical Review Subcommittee, which was composed of members with strong scientific credentials and was responsible for reviewing research proposals and reports.
Although the TAC nominally included a diverse range of expertise and representatives from nearly all environmentally relevant state agencies, actual participation varied among agencies and over time. Some governmental members did research, some contributed actively to developing program documents and recommendations, and some participated as observers only. For example, while the Virginia representatives attended meetings fairly regularly, several of them noted that their purpose in attending was to prevent any recommendations that would negatively affect Virginia, rather than to advance a particular agenda or contribute to implementation. Several agency heads attended APES meetings initially but later sent designated representatives of lower rank. Even in the first year of the program, attendance by TAC members, especially state agency representatives, was disappointingly low, according to some APES participants. The Division of Marine Fisheries remained actively involved through participation on the TAC and in ongoing research, but the other two agencies critical to the management of estuarine resources, the Division of Coastal Management and the Division of Environmental Management, were involved only sporadically.
Citizens representing a variety of interests were involved through the two CACs and engaged in the APES process in two ways: as committee members and in outreach efforts to broader publics. The two regional committees, ACAC and PCAC, had been formed to minimize driving time to meetings and keep the structure relatively simple, but it also resulted in a divided citizen voice, as the two committees forwarded their recommendations separately and did not always agree.
Initially, the Policy Committee planned to appoint 15 members to each CAC, all but 4 of whom would represent specific interests. But after the Republican administration pointed out that this would result in domination by Democrats, 15 additional citizens were added to each CAC. In the end, 30 members were appointed to each CAC. These included 19 citizens and 11 designated according to various interest groups: two local government officials, an educator, a coastal engineer–surveyor, and representatives of tourism industries, developers, recreational hunting and fishing, commercial fishing, agriculture, industry, and environmental groups. The CACs met regularly to discuss ongoing planning issues, make recommendations on research funding, and comment on the production of program documents. Although the CACs initially made recommendations to the TAC, midway through the program they successfully petitioned to appoint representatives who would report directly to the Policy Committee.
Participation on the committees was designed to be representative. But respondents to a mail survey mentioned three groups that were not adequately included on the CACs: women, socioeconomic minorities, and the elderly. In addition, numerous respondents commented on insufficient representation by groups that were nominally on the CACs, such as local government, agriculture, industry, and fishing. This reflects the fact that although they were included formally, actual attendance by these groups was weak over the nine-year planning period.
Whereas industrial, commercial fishing, and agricultural interests were perceived as underrepresented, many APES participants commented that the CACs were dominated by environmentalists. Several explanations were given for this observation. First, many of those appointed to serve as interest group representatives, as well as many of citizens, were active in local environmental groups. Although this dual representation did not mean that these individuals did not adequately represent the opinions of the groups they were officially appointed to serve, it did contribute to the overall impression that the CACs were dominated by environmentalists. Second, environmentalists tended to take on the leadership roles on the CACs. Several leading environmental representatives held staff positions with environmental groups, so attending meetings was part of their jobs. This made it easier for them to take on leadership roles than it was for lay citizens. Finally, there tended to be lower turnover rates among environmental representatives than among other participants. As a result, by the last years of APES, the CACs were dominated by a core of longtime members, many of whom had strong environmental affiliations. Thus, although the government-dominated Policy Committee designated diverse CACs, each committee's character was determined more by specific appointments than by formal structure.
In addition to citizen membership on committees, APES sponsored a variety of activities intended to educate and involve the broader public. These included producing public awareness materials, organizing workshops, and promoting environmental education. Annual public meetings were held to report on the progress of the program and to present research reports. Near the end of the program, several public hearings took place to solicit comments on drafts of the CCMP. Throughout the APES planning process, however, the CACs provided the majority of public input.
The program was supported by a small staff housed in the office of the secretary of DENR. Housing the staff in a line agency within DENR was discussed, but it was recognized that to maintain its legitimacy, APES could not be directly affiliated with the state agencies whose programs it would be assessing.
All four committees in the Management Conference met regularly and operated under parliamentary procedures; motions were approved or rejected by majority voting. Final program decisions were made by the Policy Committee, with input from the other committees and staff. Committee members often sent representatives to meetings they could not attend, but these substitutes could not vote. Decisions made by the APES Management Conference informed a nonbinding planning process. The APES committees made decisions about funding allocations, planning processes, and plan recommendations, but these recommendations were not binding on any of the participants, including governmental actors.
THE APES PLANNING PROCESS
The NEP guidelines generally described four phases for ecosystem planning and management that guided regional collaborative efforts: planning initiation (building a management framework); characterization and problem definition; creation of a CCMP; and implementation of the CCMP (U.S. EPA 1989). After designing the Management Conference, the next task in the APES program was to begin characterizing the Albemarle–Pamlico system and defining the problems it faced. The roles of governmental actors in APES evolved throughout these phases, particularly in relation to the scientific community and citizen participants.
Characterization and Problem Definition
The intended role of science in the NEP was to provide a “description of the quality of the estuary, defining its problems and linking problems to causes” and to “transfer scientific and management information” (U.S. EPA 1989, 2, 23). The APES planning process incorporated science by compiling existing information on the system, funding new research, and basing its CCMP recommendations on available technical knowledge. The program began by describing its overall priorities and research needs in a five-year work plan (APES 1987). Between 1987 and 1992, APES sponsored research on the estuarine system through a competitive peer-review process. Each year, the Management Conference developed a request for proposals (RFP) based on the work plan and new information. Researchers developed proposals that were reviewed externally and prioritized by all three committees; the Policy Committee made the final selections.
Some participants from each committee complained that the program did not adequately prioritize its research agenda, so that although many issues were addressed, no management questions were resolved. This was attributed primarily to the fact that research priorities were established by the consensus of the entire Management Conference, whose members had widely varying priorities. Of the 74 priority areas for research identified in the 1987 Work Plan, the program funded studies directly related to only a quarter of these topics (APES 1987). Thus the attempt to be inclusive and make decisions by consensus may have undercut the program's goals with respect to funding useful applied science.
Although the CACs’ recommendations for research funding were solicited, the Policy Committee did not always adopt them. The Policy Committee pointed out that in many years, there simply was not enough money to fund all the recommended studies, and that in some other cases, the citizens sometimes recommended proposals that were technically unsound. Nonetheless, rejection of CAC recommendations undercut citizens’ support for the program. Many CAC members thought the research funding process was unfair, calling it “scientific cronyism” because they felt that the research community had co-opted the process and that their priorities for research were ignored.
Several of the citizens who felt that their input was ignored cited a single funding decision as evidence for this claim. This was a 1990 decision not to fund a proposal on trawling impacts. Understanding more about the impacts of shrimp and crab trawling was of critical interest to many CAC members, who believed that trawling was causing severe environmental harm to benthic (bottom-dwelling) animals and fisheries. In 1990, the CACs advocated that APES request a proposal to study the effects of shrimp trawling on the benthic community, noting that this was their highest priority. One proposal was submitted in response to this RFP item. Based partly on the strength of the CACs’ recommendation, the TAC also recommended this study for funding. The Policy Committee, however, faced with a tight budget, chose not to fund this study. Realizing how important this study was to the CACs, the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) director visited both CACs soon after this decision was made to explain that there were technical concerns about the study that had been proposed and that DMF planned to study the issue using separate state funding. Nonetheless, the firm impression that this case made on many CAC members was that their technical recommendations were ignored.
Despite this perception by CAC members, TAC and Policy Committee members emphasized that CAC input was very important in their deliberations and decisions. Some TAC members even complained that the citizens’ influence was too strong and that citizens did not always have the program's overall goals in mind. One TAC member said that the CAC research priority recommendations were parochial, focused only on their own geographic areas rather than on the most pressing problems in the system.
As part of this phase of planning, the NEP required that APES produce a status and trends report characterizing the estuary. Production of this report was contracted to North Carolina Sea Grant, because that program had access to a wide range of expertise with respect to the state's estuaries. More than 40 researchers contributed to four work groups that compiled the report between April and December 1989. In addition, a technically trained member of the CACs participated in each work group. The result was a 341-page report describing various environmental indicators and management efforts related to the environmental concerns identified by APES, noting insufficiencies in data and the frequent lack of causal explanations.
Many Management Conference members were disappointed by the first draft, feeling that the report as written was not useful because it stopped short of stating conclusions or making recommendations. Environmental representatives on the CACs and some Policy Committee members were especially disturbed that the report seemed to downplay their concerns about the ecosystem's health. On the other hand, the draft report's editors and many Management Conference members felt that it gave a very sound description of the system. One TAC member believed that environmentalists’ objections arose only because “the technical assessments did not bear out their religious notions ... [and] did not fit the environmental party line.” Thus the purpose of this report and the extent to which it was appropriate to extrapolate from uncertain and incomplete research findings became very controversial.
The controversy over the report was resolved through a yearlong process of adding judgments to each section, gathering input through seven public hearings, and changing the tone to emphasize management issues. While several changes were made to the structure and substantive content of the document, many members believed that it was the changes in tone that were the most critical to improving its acceptability. After these revisions, the Policy Committee approved a final version of the Status and Trends Report in June 1991. Nevertheless, bitterness remained among many members of the Management Conference about the process of adding judgments to the report. As one TAC member said, “The Policy Committee just changed the findings to meet the environmental group dogma, rather than the scientific evidence ... I gave [them] a speech on the trial of Galileo. The Policy Committee wanted the technical people to recant the witness of their own eyes.” Meanwhile, many CAC members had become convinced that the Management Conference's reluctance to make management recommendations in the Status and Trends Report did not bode well for the program's ability to write an effective CCMP.
During the characterization stage, 20 percent of the APES budget was dedicated to funding public involvement projects. One important public involvement project focused on the CACs themselves. Eager to move the program from studies into action, in 1990 the CACs participated in five joint workshops to develop goals and actions as a starting point for the CCMP. The North Carolina Coastal Federation received an APES contract to bring in a facilitator from the Chesapeake Bay Program and document the recommendations from these workshops. Despite fears by some TAC and Policy Committee members that the resulting document would be perceived as a consensus product of the entire Management Conference, it was eventually published as an APES report (Armingeon 1990). The Blueprint for Action set forth a proposed framework for the development of the CCMP, a list of goals and objectives, and a list of recommended actions to achieve these goals.
Part of the federal government's mandate for the NEP was that a program be inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders and characterize an estuary using the best available science, but the fact that APES actors interpreted the mandate by focusing on improved scientific understanding of the system reduced the influence of citizens in the program. The process of characterization gave power to technical experts, from both universities and agencies, and reduced the relevance of local government, citizens, nongovernmental organizations, and agency managers. Reinvolving these stakeholders was an uphill battle as the program sought to relate the scientific findings to management questions and to write the CCMP.
Creation of a Management Plan
In accordance with the five-year schedule dictated by the EPA, the goal of APES was to produce a CCMP in 1992. A change in political leadership in North Carolina and some strong public criticism delayed the plan, however. The second public draft of the CCMP was published in December 1992, just after Democrat Jim Hunt won the November elections for governor of North Carolina. Because of substantial opposition to the first and second drafts of the CCMP, sometimes called the Martin Plan, the Hunt administration decided in early 1993 to undertake extensive revisions (APES 1994, 8). The governor and EPA administrator did not sign the final CCMP, referred to by many participants as the Hunt Plan, until November 1994.
Several concerns were raised about the first public draft of the CCMP. One specific recommendation that drew criticism from the public was the requirement of a 20-foot undisturbed buffer strip around all perennial streams, rivers, and tidal water bodies (APES 1992). At least half of the public comment concerned the buffer strip recommendation. Although APES participants strongly supported the use of buffer strips, agricultural and forestry interests had two objections to the recommendation. First, they felt that a standard buffer strip was inappropriate given varying environmental conditions in the region. Second, the mandatory buffer strip recommendation was perceived as government interference with private property by farmers who were accustomed to voluntary best-management-practices programs, not mandatory regulations. In the third public draft and final CCMP, the buffer strip requirement was modified greatly to avoid a backlash against the entire CCMP.
Other significant objections to the first drafts of the CCMP came from local governments. Indeed, one Policy Committee member suggested that “the study's ‘Achilles Heel’ could be the lack of consensus in local government regarding the CCMP.” Local governments were concerned that there had been inadequate consideration of the economic impacts of the CCMP recommendations, and they feared that the Albemarle–Pamlico Estuarine Council, the body proposed to oversee implementation of the recommendations, would promote new regulations that would restrict economic growth, and that local governments would be responsible for implementing these regulations.
Meanwhile, a number of economic developers and local officials in the Albemarle–Pamlico region organized a campaign to get county commissioners to adopt resolutions asking Governor Hunt not to sign the CCMP. APES staff characterized this campaign as “bringing ignorance to power,” as a few individuals were able to convince numerous local officials that the Albemarle–Pamlico Estuarine Council represented another layer of bureaucracy that would impose new regulations and stifle economic growth. In fact, the implementation body described in the CCMP had no authority whatsoever. Regardless of whether it was founded on misunderstandings, the objection by the local governments was especially serious because it threatened to affect the governor's willingness to sign the final CCMP.
To address these concerns, the Policy Committee decided to add more local government representatives to the Albemarle–Pamlico Estuarine Council and to rename it the Coordinating Council to emphasize its nonregulatory nature. Although the final solution to this controversy was acceptable to most Management Conference members, the process by which it was resolved made a negative impression on many participants. Many members were angry that the local government officials, who had turned down repeated opportunities to participate in APES, had so much clout at the end of the process and wound up having a significant impact on its outcomes.
The two major objections to the draft CCMP, regarding buffer strips and implementation institutions, came from groups (agriculture and local government, respectively) that, although nominally represented on the CACs, had not actively participated in APES. Several reasons for their lack of participation have been suggested by members, including that they were put off by the domination of environmentalists on the CACs, and that they calculated early on that opposing the final plan would be more effective in protecting their interests than participating throughout a process they perceived to be dominated by environmentalists. Regardless of the reason, these groups were in fact quite successful in advancing their positions by opposing the final plans and appealing directly to the new political administration, rather than participating in the planning process.
When Governor Hunt first took office, opposition to the CCMP was so strong that he doubted whether a CCMP that he would sign could be developed at all. To help increase public support, the program hired a public-relations specialist, held special meetings for different groups of stakeholders (Waters 1993), and hired two part-time staff members devoted to communicating with local officials about APES. At the same time, Hunt's newly appointed secretary of the DENR asked state environmental managers who had not been participating regularly in APES to help make the plan more “implementable.” The original CCMP recommendations were seen as too specific to incorporate into ongoing agency programs. The Hunt administration thought it was more likely that general CCMP recommendations could be used to support implementation of new regulations as opportunities arose over time. This was especially critical, because the 1992 elections brought a Republican majority to the state assembly, which was expected to be suspicious of new environmental regulations. Therefore, state agency managers were asked to help revise recommendations to fit in better with their existing programs and agencies’ future plans.
The mandate from the Hunt administration shifted the role of state agency actors. Some had been participating in APES to create a new system of estuarine management, while others had essentially abandoned this process. The Hunt administration directive involved many of these state agency actors in recrafting APES recommendations to align them with existing governmental agencies.
In addition to the substantive changes in the CCMP, the document was thoroughly revised and streamlined to be more “user-friendly.” The tone was changed to clarify that the recommendations were not regulatory mandates. For example, the pervasive use of should in the second public draft was changed to would.
Taken together, these changes gave many members of the Management Conference a strong sense that the CCMP had been “watered down” between the second and third public drafts. This observation invokes the warning cited in the first chapter of this book that consensus decision making can result in “lowest common denominator” recommendations (Coglianese 1999). Although some APES participants acknowledged that this was necessary in the face of interest group opposition, many regretted having to delete or soften the few concrete recommendations they had made. The environmental groups represented on the CACs especially were critical of the revisions. On the other hand, state agency actors generally agreed that it was more useful to have a document that had the consensus support of interest groups than to insist on specific recommendations that created insurmountable opposition to the plan.
The process of translating scientific information into management recommendations revealed conflicts between governmental and nongovernmental actors that had remained hidden during the characterization stage. Governmental actors who had not been actively involved became much more involved as APES began to make recommendations that had the potential to affect their programs and activities. This was particularly clear with local governmental actors who had not been significantly involved in APES until the program recommended the establishment of a continuing Coordinating Council, which they feared would impede their autonomy.
Implementation
The final plan was signed by Governor Hunt in November 1994 in a ceremony in Washington, North Carolina.2 According to the governor, the signing ceremony for the CCMP was “a celebration of people working together and making things work—not of big government but of people collaborating on a voluntary basis.” But some APES participants who commented on the finalization of the CCMP had different reactions. Some felt that that the CCMP was “watered down” and were disappointed in its delayed release. Nevertheless, many were hopeful that the document they had worked so hard to produce would finally be implemented.
The final CCMP called for the creation of seven Regional Councils (one for each river basin in the region) and a central Coordinating Council to oversee the implementation of the APES recommendations. As with the Management Conference, these groups had neither authority nor a designated source of financial support. Although there were delays in their formation, they have continued to meet annually. North Carolina's implementation efforts are supported by approximately $300,000 per year in federal funds. This funding was denied one year because of the EPA's judgment that North Carolina was not making sufficient progress in implementation, but since that time, the EPA has been satisfied by the program's efforts. While most implementation of APES recommendations occurs through existing state agencies and programs, the modest funding from the federal government supports several staff, the Regional Councils, demonstration projects, and other activities focusing specifically on the Albemarle–Pamlico system. This federal funding is substantially less than what was available for the APES program before 1994.
Although the dedicated infrastructure for the National Estuary Program within the DENR is minimal, various state agencies have carried out many of the APES CCMP recommendations. The Division of Environmental Management moved to a basinwide planning and permitting scheme for water pollution, and the state's entire fisheries regulatory system has been overhauled. In several cases, APES also provided the basis for cooperation among management agencies in the region. One example is the joint use of the geographic information systems (GIS) initially funded by APES. The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and Division of Environmental Management continued to use this GIS capacity for cooperative coastal water quality planning after the APES planning process ended.
APES also provided a forum in which citizens, interest groups, and scientists learned about the estuarine system, the management institutions, and how they could influence decision making in the future. This experience continued to influence these groups’ participation in coastal policy after the APES planning process. Particularly significant were the contributions of APES to the growth and experience of local environmental groups in the region. Such ripple effects that have improved management of North Carolina's estuaries may be considered “invisible successes” of APES (Korfmacher 1998). Although it may be argued that these changes would have occurred regardless of APES, it is clear that the program brought an unprecedented amount of attention and funding to estuarine management issues.
GOVERNMENTAL IMPACT
When APES was established, it appeared well poised to conduct collaborative planning. The end of the program, however, saw widespread disappointment with its direct accomplishments. Much of this disappointment can be traced to the complexities of the governmental roles in this program. More generally, governmental roles affected the APES issue definition, resources, and group structure and decision-making processes.
Issue Definition
The National Estuary Program encouraged looking at ecosystems that crossed state lines. The NEP designation included the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and their watersheds. This study area was so large that individual citizens and local government officials may have had trouble identifying with the scale. Because such a small section of the study area was in Virginia, North Carolina was the dominant state actor in the process. NEP, as a governmental institution, greatly influenced the geographic and biophysical scale of APES.
The scope of the program also was wide, as opposed to being framed more narrowly on a few key issues. This is probably because APES resulted from an opportunity for federal funding, not an immediate perception of crisis in specific parts of the system. In addition, many scientists, politicians, and managers felt that the system was not understood well enough to specifically identify the most critical problems. Finally, the federal program encouraged an ecosystem perspective, which included all aspects of the estuary. Therefore, it is not surprising that the program identified a wide range of issues, including fisheries, habitat, water quality, and human actions. By spreading resources among all of these problems, however, the program was not able to address any of them thoroughly. Thus the general guidance of the NEP institution, with the cooperation of governmental actors and nongovernmental scientists, favored addressing a broad range of issues through the APES program.
It appears that different actors entered the process with different definitions and ways of framing the problem facing the Albemarle–Pamlico system. Although the NEP was designed on a federal model for ecosystem institutions that emphasized increasing state and local management of ecosystems, many of the EPA staff saw APES as an opportunity to encourage North Carolina to strengthen its protection of the estuary. Thus federal actors looked at APES as a way to influence other aspects of ecosystem protection in North Carolina. The state's administration perceived that the main problem was lack of knowledge—about how the system functions, whether it was changing, and how existing management was working. Several state agency staff members recognized that North Carolina's environmental protection laws were quite strong but that implementation was insufficient. Local government's response varied, but local officials did not perceive an immediate reward or direct local impact of spending time studying and making recommendations about such a large area. Meanwhile, environmentalists believed that the estuarine system was in imminent danger because of lax protection.
Because of the orientation of state agency actors and the scientists who helped initiate the program, APES ended up focusing primarily on information gathering. It funded numerous studies to improve understanding of the physical system in hopes of leading to better management. Representatives of environmental groups and many private citizens on the CACs were frustrated by this approach throughout the program because it postponed action. Thus, although the intent of the NEP institution was to promote proactive ecosystem planning, various governmental actors had different agendas including, according to several observers, state actors’ desire to postpone more aggressive management actions.
The APES program was based on general guidance and resources provided by the NEP combined with scientific and governmental actors’ insistence that the estuary was insufficiently understood. If actors within APES had acknowledged that action in the face of uncertainty is essential to sound ecosystem management, the APES resources could have been allocated differently to address the estuaries’ problems. For example, if the citizens involved had been the primary drivers of the program, as in the Applegate Partnership (Chapter 2), they might well have maintained a local orientation, focusing on bays or river segments with which individual communities identified. It is likely that they would have funded more demonstration and priority action projects to test the effects of new management strategies, rather than the more basic research that APES funded. They might have focused on a few issues that were of great concern to local communities at that time, such as the impacts of trawling. Although such approaches may not have been more successful than APES was, it is clear that the structure established by the Policy Committee and its decision to focus on increasing scientific understanding significantly constrained the approach of APES to ecosystem management.
Resources for Collaboration
The human resources available to APES depended directly on participation by governmental actors and indirectly on choices made about how to involve different nongovernmental participants. State and federal governmental agencies provided human resources in the form of representatives to the Management Conference and staff assistance. Governmental actors dominated the Policy Committee as well as the TAC. Moreover, as leaders of the effort, federal and state governmental actors were critical in deciding whom to invite to participate in the various committees. Over time, participation by representatives from several agencies diminished, and the program encountered difficulty involving local governmental actors throughout the process.
Federal funding and the participation of technical staff from state agencies gave the program access to significant technical resources. The decision to spend nearly half of the program's total budget on new research resulted in a significant accumulation of knowledge about the estuary. But because much of this research was devoted to improving the basic understanding of the estuary, rather than to resolving specific management questions, the program could not use this research extensively in writing its CCMP. At several stages of the program, scientific experts from academic institutions and government agencies were called together to summarize data to address various management questions.
Federal and state governments provided the financial resources of the program – about $11 million over seven years—through a 1:3 local-to-federal cost share. In addition, several federal agencies devoted special funding projects to the Albemarle–Pamlico system. Nearly half of the funds were spent on new research. Although the nongovernmental participants had a say in which research was funded, the initial decision about how much to allocate to research versus other activities was made before their involvement.
GROUP STRUCTURE AND DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES
Most of the decisions about the structure for APES were dominated by government. Within the flexible institutional framework of the NEP, governmental actors, along with the academic members of the Policy Committee, created the system of committees, decision-making processes, and plans that constituted APES. They established a majority decision rule, although most decisions were made by de facto consensus. The decision-making process was more collaborative than hierarchical, as recommendations of the TAC and CACs were supposed to be considered equally by the Policy Committee. Because the Policy Committee selected initial members of the TAC and CACs, the TAC reflected the governmental actors’ view of the problem as essentially a scientific one—lack of coordinated understanding of how the estuary functions—rather than a primarily human problem of education, behavior, management, and politics.
As a result of the Policy Committee's sensitivity to partisan concerns, the CACs initially represented an interest group and political balance. Over time, however, they became dominated by those most motivated to participate in the extended planning processes, primarily environmentalists. Thus, although the NEP institution set forth a framework intended to ensure balanced input and a collaborative decision-making process, decisions made by the actors in APES eventually led to a process dominated by scientists, technically trained governmental actors, and environmental interests.
COLLABORATIVE OUTCOMES
Government as an institution required the development of a plan based on science through a collaborative structure; however, the actual process and outcomes of APES were significantly affected by how the governmental actors interpreted this general mandate. Because the governmental actors and scientists involved in structuring the program agreed that it should enhance scientific understanding of the estuary, APES largely avoided difficult issues such as acting in the face of uncertainty, land- and water-use conflicts, and trade-offs among opposing values.
Environmental Outcomes
Environmental management outcomes for this collaborative planning program center on plan recommendations and subsequent changes in management. Many of the APES recommendations have been implemented, primarily by state agencies. Water quality protection efforts now are carried out on a basinwide basis throughout the state, as recommended in the plan, and the state completely overhauled its fishery management system. Participants from state agencies also cited several examples of ongoing collaboration between agencies that arose from partnering in the APES process (Korfmacher 1998).
Social Outcomes
APES contributed significantly to social outcomes, particularly the ability of local citizens to participate in estuarine management. For example, it aided the growth of numerous coastal environmental groups, which remain active in coastal environmental management (Korfmacher 1998). In some cases, however, their experience with APES contributed to citizens’ hesitancy to become involved in future collaborative efforts. Without authority for plan implementation, the impact of APES “on the ground” was limited, and many participants who were optimistic at the beginning were disappointed at the end. This may have reduced their enthusiasm for involvement in future collaborative efforts. In addition, a number of citizens felt that the Management Conference ignored them, and therefore the time they invested in meetings over as many as eight years was wasted. Moreover, at least in part because of their experience in APES, several prominent environmental groups in North Carolina have drawn up conditions under which they will agree to participate in a government partnership to ensure that their involvement is taken seriously. On the whole, however, APES taught participants how to participate in environmental policymaking more effectively.
Another important social outcome is the development of new networks related to estuarine policy. Scientists in particular reported that participation in APES helped them better understand the decision-making process and how they could be more effectively involved. The active roles played by many state and federal agency actors led to a rich network of government divisions that had not existed before APES. This network led to better communication and several new coordinated programs (Korfmacher 1998). For example, the state Divisions of Environmental Management and Coastal Management used the GIS capacity developed by APES to develop a program for mapping and managing coastal watersheds.
CONCLUSIONS
Nongovernmental actors had significant roles in APES, and many governmental actors were personally committed to partnering with them. Nevertheless, most of the important decisions about issue definition, resources, structure, and processes were influenced strongly by governmental institutions and actors in the collaborative effort. These initial decisions had ongoing implications for the incentives of various participants and their ability to influence the outcomes of the collaborative process. In particular, the decision to focus on increasing scientific understanding as a prerequisite to planning had lasting implications for resource use, participation, and outcomes. This approach reduced the power and relevance of nontechnical participants, which in turn undermined the program's ability to develop consensus and buy in despite its collaborative structure.
The question of whether science-based collaborative planning can overcome the different agendas of various governmental agencies, interest groups, and members of the public is particularly important because so many collaborative efforts are built on the assumption that more knowledge will lead to better accord. Although APES tried to gain credibility and achieve consensus by improving understanding of the estuary, the funded science did not address key barriers to collaboration in managing the estuarine system. These barriers came from many sources, not just a lack of scientific knowledge. This case shows that although government may build credibility through science, it is still necessary to address the underlying sources of conflict both between governmental and nongovernmental participants and within various jurisdictions of government itself.