Evaluating Community-Based Collaboration on Federal Lands and Resources

in
Send this page
Patrick Field and Matthew McKinney.
Society and Natural Resources, May, 2008

 

As we enter the 21st century, the idea of collaboration is rapidly becoming one of the dominant ideas in natural resources policy and politics (Kemmis 2001; Bricket al. 2001; Keiter 2003; McKinney and Harmon 2004). This trend has provoked both enthusiasm and skepticism.

The proponents of collaboration claim, inpart, that it allows participation by all interested and affected parties; takes less time and costs less than more conventional public participation and public dispute resolution processes; results in more informed, creative, and adaptive solutions; builds individual and social capacity to prevent and resolve public disputes in the future; and improves environmental outcomes (Susskind et al. 1999). The skeptics claim, among other things, that collaboration delegitimizes conflict; co-opts environmental advocates; excludes or disempowers national, urban, andother interest groups; and leads to compromise and lowest common denominator solutions (Kenney2000).

The objective of this article is to shed light on some of these claims bypresenting evidence on the merits of CBC on federal lands and resources in the Rocky Mountain West. It also presents a low-cost, yet comprehensive and robust, method to evaluate the relative successor progress of any collaborative process and its outcomes.

Public Policy Research Institute, the University of Montana