Publication Abstracts

The Potential Role for Technology Demonstration Projects in Clean Energy Planning: The Case of Offshore Wind

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Jennifer Edwards and Lawrence Susskind

In July 2008 Al Gore challenged U.S policymakers and technical experts: create a new electricity system that is completely climate-neutral within 10 years. Gore’s Repower America initiative has been compared to the Apollo project in both its scope and its potential, but numerous technical, regulatory, and political obstacles stand between today’s power system and the one that Gore envisions. What Gore’s challenge underscores, however, is the urgency of the global warming problem and the limited time frame available to change course (IPCC 2007). While a 10-year time horizon might be impossibly ambitious, one success of the Repower America program is that it has moved the debate beyond the need for a renewable energy system, to a focus on how long it will take to build it.

What is already clear is that any future electricity system in the U.S. must include significant amounts of clean, renewable power and that will require among other things, the construction of offshore wind energy facilities. While the U.S. as a whole is fortunate to possess a diversity of domestic renewable resources, including small-scale hydropower in the northwest, agricultural biomass in the Midwest, and solar and geothermal in the west and south, the country’s expansive coastline means the offshore wind resource is one of the most abundant. The estimated “developable” wind resource is approximately 900 GW -- just under the current generating capacity of the entire U.S. electricity grid (Musial 2005). For many regions of the country, especially coastal states in the northeast, offshore wind is one of the most promising technologies from a technical standpoint.

State Ocean Planning and Offshore Wind Development: Summary of Efforts in Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island

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Jennifer Edwards and Lawrence Susskind

In 2003 the Pew Oceans Commission released a report on the dire ecological health of America’s oceans, urging a rethinking of existing federal and state piecemeal ocean management strategies (Pew Oceans Commission 2003). The report states that U.S. ocean policy has largely been created on a “crisis-by-crisis, sector-by-sector basis” which no longer serves the current challenges (Pew Oceans Commission 2003, vii). The overall message of the report is that a future governance strategy needs to take a much more integrated approach to ocean management, “with the entire ecosystem in mind, embracing the whole as well as the parts” (p. 26). An approach that segments individual interests, such as fisheries, navigation, and coastal development, will not solve problems, but simply shift them from one sector to another, creating conflict and delay.

Within this context, policymakers and renewable energy developers have intensified the push to develop offshore “renewables” in the U.S., most notably offshore wind energy, but also tidal energy and other emerging technologies. The first U.S. attempt to build a large scale offshore wind farm is the proposed Cape Wind project, in federal waters off Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound. This project, proposed in 2001, triggered staunch opposition from certain local residents, mostly on environmental, aesthetic, and cultural grounds (cite). In contrast to the integrated approach advocated by the Pew Commission, the questions generated by this contentious case have been sequestered within the federal environmental review requirements under NEPA (The National Environmental Policy Act). The debate over offshore wind energy has, therefore been separated from the larger, overarching question of how our oceans should be managed.

How Can Practitioners Analyze and Engage Science-Intensive Public Disputes?

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Mattijs J. van Maasakkers

This paper brings together three theoretical approaches to the analysis of science-intensive policy disputes, namely policy studies, the sociology of scientific knowledge and an emerging field I call “convergence conceptualizations”. Each of these approaches generates relevant questions about the ways in which actors attempt to engage and influence the outcome of science-intensive public disputes. By bringing together these diverse approaches and listing the most relevant questions and their theoretical underpinnings, this paper seeks to provide a practical list of considerations for practitioners that find themselves involved in a science-intensive policy dispute.

Environmental Restoration in the Atchafalaya Basin: Boundaries and Interventions

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Mattijs J. van Maasakkers

The Atchafalaya River is a 135-mile long river in Louisiana. This makes it the largest distributary of the Mississippi. In this thesis, I will review the ways in which the Atchafalaya Basin is described as a complex system by the two agencies that are responsible for its management, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. Different stakeholders understand the Basin in a variety of ways. My question is how the different views of the Basin impact its environmental restoration and management. I answer this question by describing how the agencies transform elements of the Basin into maps, plans and various management activities by relying on science, aerial photography, and long-time residents of the Basin. I will argue that a central aspect of successful environmental restoration is that communication among different stakeholders must create a shared discourse to frame the main issues in the Basin. In the Atchafalaya Basin, this means that environmental restoration cannot be successful without some level of consensus among the stakeholders about what the Atchafalaya Basin is, how it has developed and which environmental qualities are present in the Basin today and which ones need to be restored.

Feasibility Analysis of Coordinated Offshore Wind Project Development in the U.S.

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Mimi Zhang

Wind energy is one of the cleanest and most available resources in the world, and advancements in wind technology are making it more cost effective. Though wind power is rapidly developing in many regions, its variable nature creates obstacles in integrating significant amounts of wind power to the electric grid. One potential solution for reducing the fluctuating nature of wind power is to site wind projects in regions of complementing wind regimes to reduce variability.
This thesis explores the feasibility of creating a coordinated network of offshore wind projects through examining its technological requirements, economic viability, and the policy and planning issues of building such a network in the U.S. Wind speed data for sites along the east coast of the U.S. are used to analyze the nature of offshore wind patterns and the benefits of interconnecting multiple wind projects. The main questions are: 1) Is an offshore wind network technologically feasible? 2) What are the costs and benefits of creating an offshore network with transmission lines? 3) What are potential ways to plan, permit, and develop such a network?
An overview of research on existing turbine technology, turbine foundation technology, and transmission technology shows that it is technically possible to build a network of offshore wind projects. An analysis of the costs and benefits of physical interconnection shows that the cost savings from reduced variability pale in comparison to interconnection costs. It is more cost effective to coordinate the siting of all projects within the network, by connecting the projects directly to the onshore grid as opposed to creating a separate, offshore grid for wind projects. The current planning process for offshore wind development permits projects on a site-by-site basis, so developing an entire network of sites with the goal of reducing variability would require an extensive stakeholder process where all relevant parties agree on a set of sites. A coordinated network could also be developed over time by incorporating variability as a priority in the permitting process.

Using Climate Policies and Carbon Markets to Save Tropical Forests: The Case of Costa Rica

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Marisa Arpels

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, advocates for forest conservation thought that climate change could provide a lever to motivate developing countries to reduce deforestation. Fifteen years after the first climate change convention, however, global emissions from deforestation have increased. This thesis uses Costa Rica as a case study to examine how international climate policies and carbon markets have addressed greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation. I argue that, to date, the international climate regime has failed to provide effective incentives to Costa Rica to finance its forestry reforms because of political decisions that favor forest protection in developed over developing countries. To be effective, the international climate regime needs to generate a substantial financial investment for avoided deforestation in developing countries and develop flexible policies that build capacity, promote sustainable forestry practices, and reward early reformers.

Establishing a Minimum Standard for Collaborative Research in Federal Environmental Agencies

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Kalle E. Matso, Molly O'Donovan Dix, Benjamin Chicoski, Debra L. Hernandez, and Jerry R. Schubel

There is a general consensus that--given the magnitude of the challenges facing our nation's natural resource managers--the rate, efficiency, and effectiveness of linking research to decision making must be enhanced. Many reports have touched on this issue, most of them culminating with the exhortation to "foster more interactions between scientists and users, "but very few documents provide details or assign responsibility to drive the interactions that most agree should happen. As a result, many natural science and engineering programs "talk the talk"--that is, they say they do collaborative research with intended users; however, upon inspection, few of them "walk the walk" by effectively supporting collaboration throughout the research process. Moreover, when called to support transition to application in specific ways, research agencies often balk, most often objecting that research programs cannot afford to take any support away from funding more research. They may also argue that science works best for society when it is freed from concerns related to application. In this paper we will 1) review the cultural conflict that often underlies disagreements about collaborative research, 2) offer details on the basic ingredients required to achieve a minimum standard for collaborative research, 3) suggest an approach for determining the appropriate level of support for collaborative research, given various research goals, and 4) recommend specific steps for motivating scientists and stakeholders to participate in collaborative research.

Sustainable Energies? A Feasibility Study of Conservation Credit Trading Schemes as a Tool to Conserve the Sagebrush Steppe Biome in Three Western States

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by Nathan Lemphers

The sagebrush steppe biome and its associated species, most notably the Greater Sage Grouse (GrSG), is under considerable threat from energy development. Conservation credit trading schemes (CCTS) have emerged as one method of mitigating wildlife or habitat loss while encouraging the strategic conservation of critical wildlife habitat on a much broader scale than has traditionally been possible. This paper 1) outlines the current on and off-site mitigation policies concerning wildlife and wildlife habitat currently in use in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah and how they are determined, enforced and amended, 2) summarizes the level of cooperation among the state and federal governments required to carry out these policies as well as the response of the energy industry, 3) gauges the feasibility of CCTS in the current political climate and 4) examines ways of improving the effectiveness of the present conservation protection system.
It will be extremely challenging to mount a ‘successful’ CCTS program given the complexity of the property right structures, the number of government agencies, energy companies and citizen groups involved (each with competing interests), the lack of data, the time scale for ecosystem recovery, a history of minimal public engagement in wildlife management, lack of political will, widespread unfamiliarity with CCTS and the fact that the GrSG is not a federally listed species.
Furthermore, significant differences exist among the states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah with respect to their commitments to mitigate the impacts of the energy development on wildlife and wildlife habitat. The passing of HB07-1298 in Colorado with its clear and unequivocal directive to manage for cumulative effects on wildlife and the recent statements of the Wyoming government’s steps to conserve the GrSG and the sagebrush steppe biome hold promise for further change. Opportunities now exist for other states to emulate these progressive actions.
This report identifies five key avenues that policymakers might want to pursue.
• Using larger-scale, ecosystem based management to assess cumulative impacts and ensure best management practices;
• Seeking increased transparency, accountability and public involvement through collaboration;
• Building on the success of previous conservation banking schemes;
• Pursuing mixed ownership conservation agreements with assurances (CCAA) to overcome the patchwork surface/sub-surface rights in certain states; and
• Advocating more comprehensive reclamation bonds which integrate into larger ecosystem management plans.
The Cooperative Sagebrush Initiative, a public/private/non-profit organization working in the west to conserve the sagebrush steppe biome is currently advocating a CCTS. To present a more credible defense, proponents of CCTS should be familiar with not only the significant barriers which face CCTS implementation, but also the often underutilized policy tools available to the public. Underlying any conservation initiative must be a realistic analysis of the current policy framework and a long-term desire to build economical, ecological and political resilience.

The Role of Science in Water Management in Washington State

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Tijs van Maasakkers

The Columbia Basin Project provides irrigation water to farmers in Eastern Washington State. Construction started in 1936, but the second half of the project as originally envisioned has not been built. This part of the project, the East High Canal, has been the subject of intense political debate and scientific controversy for decades. In this paper, the role of scientists and experts in the decades-long discussion over the East High Canal is explored. Three critical moments in the discussions are described, focusing on the ways in which scientists and experts participated in and influenced the political debate over the canal. The first attempt to build the canal ended in 1983, after experts could not agree on the calculation of costs and benefits. The second attempt began in 1985 and ended in 1994 after salmon in the river were listed under the Endangered Species Act. In 2001, the state legislature decided additional water storage was needed, and a third attempt to build the canal began. In all three instances, disagreement among experts regarding important aspects of the project allowed elected officials to postpone the decision about whether or not to build the irrigation canal. The uncertainties about the costs and benefits of the canal, and later about the impacts on salmon survival, were not resolved. Agreements between stakeholders over the allocation of costs and the distribution of water have not found broad support in the expert communities. This has prevented the emergence of a durable consensus around the basic facts and trade-offs of the project. Future attempts to develop this canal will have to consist of attempts to arrive at a basic level of agreement among experts on how to assess the costs and benefits of the project, and its impacts on salmon survival.

A DIALOGUE, NOT A DIATRIBE. Effective Integration of Science and Policy through Joint Fact Finding

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Herman A. Karl, Lawrence E. Susskind,
and Katherine H. Wallace

While “decisions based on sound science” has been a credo of natural resource management and environmental policy in the United States for more than 100 years, science is still not independent of politics. The concept of “decisions based on sound science” is predicated upon the presumptions that science is a neutral body of knowledge immune from value judgments, science can predict with certainty and clarity what will happen in the physical world, and policymaking is a rational process. None of these is true.5 Policymaking is not an entirely rational process of identifying problems and choosing optimal solutions, especially when scientists must make value-laden assumptions and extrapolations in the face of highly uncertain data to answer questions posed by policymakers.6 What is needed is a way to ensure, politics aside, that our understanding of the workings of complex ecological systems informs public policy choices about where and how development should proceed, how natural resources are managed to ensure sustainable supplies, and whether and how to regulate economic activities that pose a threat to human health and safety as well as environmental protection.

Bridging the Divide: Incorporating Local Ecological Knowledge into U.S. Natural Resource Management

by Alexis Schulman

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For the past 100 years, natural resource management in the United States has reflected a belief that the top-down application of science to predict and control the
natural world will, in the words of Gifford Pinchot, the Nation’s first head of the U.S. Forest Service, “support the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men.” However, over the past two decades, a growing number of critics have challenged
the technocratic optimism of this “conventional management”, arguing that the public should be more deeply engaged in the decision-making that drives natural resource management and policy. Part of the rationale for this argument is based on the growing recognition that Western, scientific management has discounted the value of local ecological knowledge (LEK), a system of knowledge developed over time through observation and interaction with the natural environment. Although advocates have expounded the benefits of using LEK, in practice, LEK is rarely integrated into the scientific assessments that drive management decisions.
To understand what affects whether or not LEK is incorporated into management science, this thesis examines: 1. What are the particular barriers to integrating LEK into management science? 2. When LEK is integrated into management science, why is it used and how are specific barriers to its use overcome? These questions are addressed through an intensive examination of two U.S. cases: the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan in Pima County, Arizona and the evolution of fishery management science in the New England groundfishery. This study confirms academics and practitioners’ claims that a major barrier to incorporating LEK is a “language” divide: LEK is rarely presented in scientific terms and thus it is difficult for scientists to understand its relevance or confirm its accuracy. Furthermore, scientific studies are often too complex for untrained locals to understand and thus engage with. However, this study also reveals that conflicting interests and values between scientists and bearers of LEK are not only common in resource management, but also significantly discourage knowledge exchange by embedding risk in the very acts of eliciting and divulging LEK. Furthermore, although individuals who are able “translate” between the local and scientific communities can overcome the language divide, interest and value conflicts are rarely overcome by similar translation. Instead, this analysis suggests that incentives must be created to encourage the sharing and eliciting of LEK and outweigh the associated perceived risks. Collaborative research programs in the New England fishery provide one such model. Based on these findings, recommendations for improving knowledge sharing and incorporating LEK into natural resource management are made.

Trading Pollution for Water Quality: Assessing the Effects of Market-based Instruments in Three Basins

by Katherine Wallace

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Since its passage in 1972, the majority of pollution education under the federal Clean Water Act has resulted from technology-based limits imposed on point source dischargers. However, most U.S. water bodies are unmonitored and of those that are, between 4.0 and 50 percent remain impaired. Given this limited progress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, multiple state agencies, and non-governmental organizations have proposed water quality trading as a cost effective means to achieve pollution reductions from point and nonpoint sources. To determine whether these programs actually achieve cost-effective pollution reduction in practice that they promise in theory, I evaluate direct and indirect outcomes associated with three water quality trading cases: the Grassland Area Farmers Tradable Loads Program in California’s San Joaquin Valley; the Tar-Pamlico River Basin Nutrient Offset Program in North Carolina; and the Long Island Sound Nitrogen Credit Exchange in Connecticut.
The major contributions of market-based instruments across cases were facilitating dischargers’ willingness to accept more stringent regulations and increasing the institutional capacity for watershed management by encouraging formation of organizations along hydrologic boundaries and information collection and dissemination. These benefits are attributable to the decentralized governance structure in general rather than economic incentives specifically, suggesting that policymakers should consider other decentralized approaches to watershed management. If policymakers want dischargers to actively trade, they should design parameters that mitigate uncertainty, market distortions, and political transaction costs.

Collaborative Approaches to Using Geographic Information Systems in Science Intensive Resource Management Planning: Implications for Practice from the Lesser Prairie-chicken Working Group

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Ric Richardson and Jennifer Peyser

This paper identifies key problems and opportunities encountered when citizens and experts confront disagreements about technical and scientific questions in managing land and natural resources. (Susskind and Dunlap 1981) (Sullivan et al. 1996) (Ozawa and Susskind 1985) The authors explore the forces that drive differing interpretations of scientific fact and argue for the role of citizen-based, non-objective judgments (Rittel and Webber 1973) (Fischer 1993) (Daniels and Walker 2001) In early 2002, a multi-party stakeholder Working Group, representing ranching and grazing interests, state and Federal regulatory agencies, sportsmen and recreational interests, oil and gas industries, conservation groups, and county and municipal governments, was formed to develop a Conservation Strategy for the Lesser Prairie-chicken and Sand Dune Lizard (LPC/SDL). Both species were listed as threatened species in southeastern New Mexico and the Fish and wildlife Service (FWS) was considering listing both.

Technology and Public Participation in Environmental Decisions

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Basilia Yao

The federal government has embraced web-based technology as a means of improving upon the traditional NEPA public participation process. Electronic participation has generated considerable interest among policymakers and scholars due to its potential to
facilitate more efficient and more deliberative interaction between citizens and government. This paper analyzes a pilot program by the Bureau of Land Management to integrate electronic participation into its decision making process. I evaluate four cases involved in the ePlanning pilot to understand the extent to which recent electronic participation efforts build upon established best practices in traditional, or offline participation. While there are some encouraging signs, most cases indicate that technology is applied mostly as a means of digitizing existing steps in the decision making process, rather than as a tool for enhancing the communicative and deliberative aspects of participation. The democratic potential of web-based technology lies not in the automation of existing practice, but in the support of established best practices.

 

RESULTS FROM NEPA PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT STUDY

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Marina Psaros and Lindsay Campbell

Increasing public involvement and engaging in more collaborative decision making have, over the past few decades, become priorities for Department of the Interior (DOI) natural resource management bureaus. But efforts to incorporate more collaborative processes in environmental decision making have been hampered by uncertainty about how to proceed within the existing
NEPA regulatory framework. Because collaborative approaches are relatively new, some personnel are unsure of how, when, where, or why to use them in the decision making process.

The purpose of this NEPA Public Involvement Study (“the study”) is twofold: 1) to gain a better understanding of how DOI bureaus have responded to the abovementioned policy directives and guidances within the existing NEPA framework; and 2) to identify what additional resources could help field staff further improve public participation processes. Understanding what’s happening “in the field” will help OEPC and CADR develop programs, tools and policies to support DOI’s resource management bureaus.

MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative
Decision Analysis and Joint Fact Finding

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Lindsay Campbell

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has invested resources in investigating a number of different decision-making processes and decision support systems both through its Science Impact program and through individual research projects. The purpose of this memo is to explore and compare the two processes of decision analysis (DA) and joint fact finding (JFF) in terms of their origins; main assumptions and theoretical parameters; and current forms and uses. In so doing, it becomes evident that DA and JFF have distinct, though potentially complementary, approaches to problem solving. The most notable distinction between the two is that DA is designed as a rational model to support a unitary decision-maker while JFF recognizes decisions as being constantly negotiated and challenged, even in situations of clear authority. DA involves modeling probabilities of expected outcomes in a linear fashion while JFF involves organizing a multiparty negotiation over disputed scientific and technical information. Therefore, DA and JFF are not interchangeable processes; they serve distinct functions, involve different audiences, and produce distinct outcomes. There are, however, potential vehicles for the integration of DA within a JFF process or a JFF process within a DA model that should be further explored.

How Does Participation in the Framing, Review, and Incorporation of Scientific Information Affect Stakeholder Perspectives on Resource Management Decisions?

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Jennifer Peyser

The conventional environmental impact statement (EIS) decision-making process, governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), represents the prevailing practice with regard to public involvement in science-intensive policy disputes. The efficacy of the
current system, however, has been widely criticized in terms its methods of public involvement. One shortfall is that, although agencies solicit public input at various points, they do not involve stakeholders in a meaningful way in the scientific work associated with environmental decision-making. In particular, agencies give the public only a small role in framing scientific studies and no role in research interpretation or incorporation of science into decision-making. Further, agencies’ attempts to involve stakeholders in technical questions, while well intentioned, are seldom designed in such a way as to maximize legitimacy of the process or credibility of the science used to craft the plan or policy.
Joint fact finding is a process by which stakeholders work with scientists and decision- makers to frame, review, and incorporate scientific information into policy decisions. Through literature review and case studies of three approaches to public involvement, joint fact finding is explored as a process with the potential to improve the legitimacy and credibility of environmental assessments.

"Arguing, Bargaining and Getting Agreement", Oxford Encyclopedia of Public Policy

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Lawrence Susskind

In the public policy-making arena, stakeholders and decision-makers are engaged in a never-ending process of trying to influence each other’s thinking and behavior. Sometimes, this is accomplished through option one: conversation in which one party seeks to convince another to do something (i.e., lend support, change their mind) on the basis of evidence or argument. More often than not, though, an exchange of views – no matter how elegantly presented – is insufficient to alter strongly held beliefs. Because of this, many parties resort to option two -- hard bargaining -- in which threats, bluff, and political mobilization are used to gain the outcomes they want. Particularly if political power is unevenly distributed, powerful parties can often use hard bargaining to pursue their objectives. In many democratic contexts, however, confrontations that flow from hard bargaining lead to litigation (or other defensive moves), which typically generate less than ideal results for all parties.

There is a third option: “mutual gains” negotiation, or what is now called consensus building. In this mode, parties seek to make mutually advantageous trades -- offering their “votes” in exchange for a modification of what is being proposed or for a promise of support on other issues. So, while arguing and bargaining – the first two approaches to dealing with conflict in the public policy arena -- can sometimes produce the desired results, they often generate a backlash or lead to sustained confrontation. Only when parties feel that their core interests have been met, they have been treated fairly and they know everything possible is being done to maximize joint gains (i.e. through consensus building) will agreements be reachable and durable enough to withstand the difficulties of implementation.

Joint Fact Finding for Public Involvement in Wind-Permitting Decisions: Beyond NEPA

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Jennifer Peyser

NEPA has helped to improve federal agency responsiveness and public accountability. However, many criticize NEPA’s efficacy, particularly its methods of public involvement. One shortfall is that, although agencies solicit public input at various points, they do not involve stakeholders in a meaningful way in the scientific stages of the process. In particular, agencies give the public only a small role in scoping scientific studies and no role in the research and data interpretation stages, at which many critical decisions are made. While agencies comply with NEPA guidelines, they do not strive for the balance of environmental, economic, and social concerns advocated by NEPA Section 101. Further, poor communication and efficiency have led to public dissatisfaction with decisions and a loss of agency credibility. These issues prevent agencies from realizing the full potential of NEPA as a tool to craft effective and stable environmental policy.