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Smedstad, J. A., and H. Gosnell. 2013. Do adaptive comanagement processes lead to adaptive comanagement outcomes? A multicase study of long-term outcomes associated with the National Riparian Service Teamís place-based riparian assistance. Ecology and Society 18(4): 8.
, part of a special feature on Exploring Opportunities for Advancing Collaborative Adaptive Management (CAM): Integrating Experience and Practice
Do Adaptive Comanagement Processes Lead to Adaptive Comanagement Outcomes? A Multicase Study of Long-term Outcomes Associated with the National Riparian Service Teamís Place-based Riparian Assistance
1Oregon State University
Adaptive comanagement (ACM) is a novel approach to environmental governance that combines the dynamic learning features of adaptive management with the linking and network features of collaborative management. There is growing interest in the potential for ACM to resolve conflicts around natural resource management and contribute to greater social and ecological resilience, but little is known about how to catalyze long lasting ACM arrangements. We contribute to knowledge on this topic by evaluating the National Riparian Service Teamís (NRST) efforts to catalyze ACM of public lands riparian areas in seven cases in the western U.S. We found that the NRSTís approach offers a relatively novel model for integrating joint fact-finding, multiple forms of knowledge, and collaborative problem solving to improve public lands riparian grazing management. With this approach, learning and dialogue often helped facilitate the development of shared understanding and trust, key features of ACM. Their activities also influenced changes in assessment, monitoring, and management approaches to public lands riparian area grazing, also indicative of a transition to ACM. Whereas these effects often aligned with the NRST's immediate objectives, i.e., to work through a specific issue or point of conflict, there was little evidence of long-term effects beyond the specific issue or intervention; that is, in most cases the initiative did not influence longer term changes in place-based governance and institutions. Our results suggest that the success of interventions aimed at catalyzing the transformation of governance arrangements toward ACM may hinge on factors external to the collaborative process such as the presence or absence of (1) dynamic local leadership and (2) high quality agreements regarding next steps for the group. Efforts to establish long lasting ACM institutions may also face significant constraints and barriers, including existing laws and regulations associated with public land management.
Key words: adaptive comanagement; collaborative processes; evaluation; U.S. West
Paradigms guiding natural resource management during the previous century, based on assumptions of regular and predictable ecological patterns, are no longer considered sufficient for addressing dynamic and uncertain future environmental threats (Armitage et al. 2009, Lawler et al. 2010). The reliance on command-and-control governance for regulating environmental use, for example, is regularly called into question by scholars and practitioners, and is seen as insufficient for equitably addressing the diversity of social and ecological interests, needs, and pressures on environmental resources (Ansell and Gash 2008, Armitage et al. 2009). Alternative approaches to governance of natural resources are needed to enhance the resilience of social-ecological systems (SESs), improving their capacity to adapt to complex and uncertain environmental threats.
One approach to the governance of natural resources receiving increased attention is collaborative adaptive management, commonly called adaptive comanagement (ACM). ACM combines the learning and experimentation aspects of adaptive management with the linking and participation features of collaborative or cooperative management (Olsson et al. 2004, Armitage et al. 2007). Hailed as a novel approach to natural resource governance, ACM is thought to build the resilience of SESs, thereby enhancing system adaptability (Tompkins and Adger 2004). Although there is an extensive literature on institutional transformation toward more collaborative processes (e.g., Ostrom 1990, Schneider et al. 2003, Ostrom and Basurto 2011), the processes by which governance arrangements transition to ACM in particular are not well understood (Huitema et al. 2009, Plummer 2009). Adaptive comanagement is considered a self-organizing process that is not easily implemented from the top down (Olsson et al. 2004, Folke et al. 2005). Certain conditions are thought to influence the self-organizing process of adaptive comanagement, including the presence of a real or perceived crisis, policy windows and enabling legislation, and existing system variables related to culture, knowledge, and power (Plummer 2009). A number of processes thought to enable the transition to adaptive comanagement characterize it at the same time. For example, social learning, cross-scale networks, and the development and deployment of social and human capital are essential features of adaptive comanagement; but these same characteristics are also thought to be processes through which adaptive comanagement can emerge (Plummer 2009). As more academics, practitioners, and government officials alike become interested in strategies for enhancing the adaptability and resilience of SESs, these processes offer guidance for creating opportunities for adaptive comanagement to emerge. It is unclear, however, whether simply employing the recommended processes will result in enduring ACM institutions.
In this paper we seek to contribute to a better understanding of the opportunities and limitations outside interventions face in catalyzing the emergence of ACM. To this end, we employed an empirical case study approach to evaluate a government-led initiative aimed at enhancing place-based capacity for ACM of public land riparian resources in the western U.S. The approach employed by this initiative aligns with a number of processes cited in the ACM literature, including a context-specific focus on power sharing, trust building, social learning, and problem solving. By comparing outcomes of this initiative to those described in the ACM literature, our research produced empirical findings that contribute to scholarship on the processes and conditions that shape the emergence of ACM. Our findings also point to practical applications for governments, practitioners, and organizations seeking to facilitate more lasting adaptive and collaborative approaches to natural resource management.
In the following pages we present findings from seven case studies of the National Riparian Service Team’s (NRST) activities in public rangelands contexts throughout the U.S. West. We hypothesized that what the NRST refers to as “multi-phased riparian assistance” might serve as a model for efforts to catalyze ACM in certain geographic contexts. Our research focused on the following questions: (1) Does the NRST’s assistance help catalyze ACM of riparian resources?; (2) What factors contribute to or detract from the success of outside interventions designed to build capacity for ongoing ACM?
The National Riparian Service Team
The National Riparian Service Team (NRST, or Team) is a federal interagency unit charged with implementing and coordinating a joint initiative of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). The initiative is implemented through a variety of approaches, including coordination of a network that includes multiorganizational, interdisciplinary teams in a number of western states and Canada. One of the more innovative aspects of initiative implementation is through the NRST’s riparian assistance program, called “Multi-Phased Service Trips” (Service Trips).
Service Trips are a series of place-based interventions in which assistance is provided to agencies and communities across the U.S. West as they confront conflicts over rangeland riparian management issues. Service Trips focus on “providing training and assistance in implementing successful collaborative adaptive management processes for riparian areas which are dependent upon blending biophysical and social dimensions” (NRST 2009:7). A Service Trip generally involves multiple visits to one site to assist community members and agencies dealing with specific challenges surrounding riparian management. The request for NRST’s assistance can be initiated from within the local federal land management agency, e.g., a USFS district, or by community members or groups. Based on the results of a situation assessment, and in coordination with a local ad-hoc planning group, a multiphased assistance process is developed that includes meetings, workshops, trainings, and field days that occur over the course of months or, in some cases, even years.
Service Trips are designed to guide diverse groups through a process of identifying issues, learning about the issues and each other, and developing place-based strategies to collectively move forward. Most Service Trips begin with a day or two of indoor sessions in which a significant portion of time is dedicated to exploring various perspectives and information pertaining to the current state of knowledge regarding the resource concern or issue. The Team then uses field-exercises in which the group participates in dialogue and discussion and practices a field-based assessment method to assess the current condition of the riparian area(s) in question and identify factors limiting riparian function.
The ultimate goal of Service Trips is to build capacity to create change. Service Trips strive to build technical and social capacity within a group to improve issue-specific decision making and coordination in a fixed time and place. Although it is not their primary purpose, the hope is that the NRST’s assistance will result in longer term outcomes that align with the principles of ACM. In this study we investigate the extent to which, if at all, Service Trips influence the emergence of institutions that support ongoing ACM of riparian resources.
A framework for evaluating adaptive comanagement
Berkes (2009) contends that adaptive management and collaborative management practitioners and scholars are evolving toward practices reflective of ACM because “adaptive management without collaboration lacks legitimacy, and comanagement without learning-by-doing does not develop the ability to address emerging problems” (Berkes 2009:1698). No single framework or prescription defines ACM; rather, ACM arrangements are typified by shared characteristics that manifest in different configurations according to the place-specific context (Plummer and Hashimoto 2011). Characteristics of ACM common across the literature include: an emphasis on cross-scale networks; self-organizing institutions and governance arrangements capable of supporting cycles of learning-from-action (adaptive management); decision-making through communication and negotiation; the formation and deployment of social and human capital; and processes of social learning (Olsson et al. 2004, Folke et al. 2005, Stringer et al. 2006, Cundill and Fabricius 2010).
The heterogeneity of ACM processes and outcomes pose a challenge for evaluation. Plummer and Armitage (2007) propose an approach whereby outcomes thought to contribute to the attainment of ecological sustainability and sustainable livelihoods, the ultimate parameters of concern in ACM, are assessed. Their approach closely follows that of Innes and Booher (1999), who developed an evaluation framework that identifies process characteristics and first-, second-, and third-order outcomes of consensus building processes. First-order outcomes occur immediately after an intervention and commonly include increased individual knowledge, development of shared understandings, and improvements in trust, relationships, and communication. Second-order outcomes, such as behavioral change, are closely connected to the specific assistance, while third-order outcomes are longer term effects that extend beyond the problem domain being addressed but can still be attributed, in part, to the process in question (Innes and Booher 1999). Plummer and Armitage adapt Innes and Booher’s framework by including characteristics specific to ACM, such as connections across multiple scales. Many of Innes and Booher’s indicators for evaluating collaborative planning and consensus building processes remain pertinent, in large part because they situate their approach to consensus building within a complexity science perspective, emphasizing feedback loops and the self-organizing features of adaptive systems. We adopted features from both of these frameworks to guide our analysis (Table 1).
A multicase study approach was chosen that allowed us to make comparisons between cases and identify variables that contributed to or impeded the achievement of outcomes reflective of ACM. Case studies were purposively selected based on their representation of the diversity of situations addressed and assistance types provided. Each Service Trip is referred to by the name of the nearest town (Table 2).
A combination of purposive and quota sampling was used to select past-participant interviewees. Approximately half of all interviews were with agency personnel, a quarter were with ranchers, and a quarter were with individuals representing environmental or other interests. In total, 54 interviews were completed; names of interviewees are not included to protect confidentiality. We also conducted focus groups with NRST staff and primary consultants for each case study and analyzed a large array of background documentation for each Service Trip. Review and analysis of this documentation helped provide a deeper contextual understanding of processes employed in each case, and allowed us to cross-check interviewee perceptions of the process with documentation from those events.
We used QSR NVivo 9 software to code and analyze the data. The coding strategy utilized both predetermined and emergent codes (Patton 1997, Berg 2004); predetermined codes were based on the evaluation framework presented in the previous section, and open coding was utilized to identify emergent themes relevant to situational characteristics of each case. Coding of interviews and focus groups and analysis of background documentation informed the development of the seven individual case studies. Cases were then analyzed in aggregate to identify commonalities and differences.
Service Trip processes employed by the NRST, by-and-large, reflect processes characteristic of ACM. Table 3 outlines our findings for each process criteria included in the evaluation framework.
We identified a number of first-order outcomes, including improved knowledge, relationships, and trust. Table 4 provides exemplar quotes for two of the three first order outcome variables assessed in this study.
Completion of formal riparian assessments using joint fact-finding was a tangible outcome of many Service Trips that helped develop “agreed upon data” (Innes and Booher 2010) and shared understanding. Table 5 describes riparian assessments completed during each of the seven case studies.
In regard to the final first-order outcome listed in our conceptual framework, i.e., resolution and development of agreement, the NRST’s inclination and ability to facilitate agreement or ‘next steps’ that groups would take after the assistance concluded differed in each of the cases. In two of the seven cases (Enterprise and Lewistown), the Service Trip included processes specifically designed to facilitate the development of informal agreement on how to move forward. In the five other cases the NRST helped facilitate dialogue and the development of creative suggestions for problem solving, but not deliberation or negotiation over specific steps that could be taken to improve the situation. None of the Service Trips profiled here directly facilitated the development of formal agreements or compacts.
Second- and third-order outcomes
Changes in practices
Changes in individual practices influenced by Service Trip participation varied across each case. For example, a number of Springerville interviewees felt that their ability to implement monitoring activities had improved. In the Lewistown case, agency staff reported that the NRST assistance had improved their ability to perform a riparian assessment on a large river system. Other interviewees noted that although they had not made any specific changes as a result of their Service Trip participation, they took riparian area function into consideration now more than before. Only a handful of interviewees cited specific changes they had implemented in their grazing management that were attributable to their Service Trip participation, and a small number of individuals also reported changes or improvements in their approach to facilitating and working with diverse groups of stakeholders.
Service Trips also influenced changes in agency or group practices. Table 6 provides examples of improvements to riparian monitoring that can be attributed to NRST assistance. Similarly, Table 7 describes ways in which NRST assistance has influenced riparian management activity, as related to the objectives of the specific Service Trips.
Last, it is unclear the extent to which groups and agencies who implemented monitoring or management changes integrated them into an adaptive management cycle, particularly as part of a collaborative approach. In some cases it is too early to tell if groups and agencies are using information gained from these activities to later evaluate and collectively learn from the effects of management changes. Such is the case in Springerville and Lewistown, where significant inroads to developing monitoring protocols were made quite recently.
In all cases, Service Trips were found to strengthen or increase linkages between participants, organizations, and resources at varying levels. Strengthened vertical linkages, i.e., hierarchical connections between local and regional/national actors and institutions, were especially evident in the Springerville case. Here, the NRST provided a forum for participants to interact not only with others from their immediate area, but also with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, staff from University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, and the Region 4 office of the USFS. These connections continue to be supported and developed outside of the NRST’s assistance through the local ranching group that was formed.
Service Trips also helped to strengthen horizontal linkages between different groups at the local level, which in some cases improved their ability to mobilize resources. As a result of the Lewistown Service Trip, for example, the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument (UMRBNM) BLM staff was able to enlist the support of the Friends of UMRBNM group in the installation of a test exclosure fence along the Missouri River, in spite of their historically adversarial relationship. Other examples of horizontal linkages include involvement from county soil and water conservation districts, county commissioners, and local environmental groups.
Extension of cross-scale networks beyond the scope of the NRST’s assistance, however, most often occurred among individuals rather than groups. Where relationships between actors representing diverse interests were strengthened, there was continued sharing of resources and expertise among the individuals. For example, in one case a fish biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service became more familiar with a rancher-permittee involved in the Service Trip; the more trusting relationship that developed continued beyond the Service Trip. According to the fish biologist,
I have since been in contact with [the permittee] at other meetings, and I've called him a couple of times to try and gain that trust and maintain, you know, some sort of relationship with that person. So without ... that opportunity to meet him [at the NRST Service Trip] I would have never done that. [C-1]
Such linkages, however, generally did not extend beyond individual relationships. Springerville and Lewistown offer notable exceptions to this, where some portion of these groups have continued to work together on additional issues within the original problem domain. Furthermore, the focus of the Springerville group has expanded beyond the original problem domain (riparian management). Through a self-organizing process, the Springerville group now provides educational opportunities related to a wide range of sustainable ranching practices and concerns such as Mexican Gray Wolf and elk issues, economic opportunities related to niche marketing and certification, and upland range management. By addressing issues beyond riparian management concerns, an expanded network has developed.
Modified or new governance arrangements
We conclude our presentation of results by assessing the extent to which Service Trips influenced changes in governance arrangements capable of supporting ongoing collaborative adaptive management processes. Table 8 provides a summary of our findings.
Springerville presents the most compelling evidence that the initiative influenced lasting changes to a group’s collaborative and adaptive approach to riparian management. One of the effects of the first Springerville session facilitated by the NRST was the participants’ idea to develop a ranching collaborative, which eventually became the Ranching Heritage Alliance (RHA). The group subsequently requested the NRST’s assistance to help them improve their collaborative capacity. As a result, a number of NRST consensus building techniques and tools have been integrated into the RHA’s approach. The NRST’s assistance provided a forum for the future group’s ideas to surface, and, significantly, self-organize into an entity that integrates some of the practices characteristic of ACM, e.g., a focus on collaborative learning and improved monitoring.
In regard to the Lewistown case, it is too early to tell how, if at all, the NRST’s assistance has influenced lasting changes to governance institutions. A spin-off group did self-organize as a result of the Service Trip assistance and is now seeking to address a more complex issue, coordinating changes in the timing of flow releases from hydroelectric dams on the Missouri River to address problems associated with lack of cottonwood regeneration in riparian areas, among other flow-related issues. The time-horizon for the group coordinating the dam flow discussions is unclear; depending on the outcome of negotiations, this group may phase out, or it could continue to self-organize as a longer-term cross-scale network. If the group does continue into the future, it is too early to tell the extent to which it will support processes of ACM.
In contrast to Springerville and Lewistown, our other cases displayed little evidence of the formation of spin-off groups or altered institutional arrangements. In the Enterprise case, a collaborative approach was already in existence, so it was unclear if the NRST’s assistance had an effect on their approach to collaborative riparian management. Because the majority of the NRST’s assistance in this case was focused on addressing technical aspects because of the group’s existing collaborative capacity, it is unlikely that the Service Trip had a high degree of influence on the group’s collaborative capacity. Conversely, in the Colville case, the high degree of community conflict over grazing on the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge remained unchanged after NRST’s work there, most likely because of antecedent conditions involving a lawsuit; when the elimination of grazing on the Refuge was upheld by courts in the middle of the NRST’s three-day community workshop, the NRST’s assistance was no longer desired by the community.
In sum, few of the case studies exhibited evidence that the NRST’s assistance had a lasting effect on the specific processes these groups and agencies used to make decisions, engage stakeholders and work with diverse groups. New or altered long-term approaches to governance that support ongoing learning and collaboration have typically not emerged.
The NRST’s Service Trip approach offers a relatively novel model for integrating joint fact finding, multiple forms of knowledge, and collaborative problem solving to improve public lands riparian grazing management. With this approach, learning and dialogue often helped facilitate the development of shared understanding and trust. Service Trips have also influenced changes in assessment, monitoring, and management approaches to public lands riparian area grazing. Although these effects often aligned with the immediate objectives of the Service Trip, i.e., to work through a specific issue or point of conflict, there was little evidence of long-term effects beyond the specific issue or intervention; that is, in most cases the initiative did not influence longer term changes in place-based governance and institutions.
Despite these findings, it is important to note that the Service Trips did have a significant effect on other more intangible first-order outcomes. These outcomes, which are considered essential to the overall collaborative adaptive capacity of groups, included increased trust, improved relationships, joint learning, shared understanding, and development of new partnerships. All of these outcomes are likely to increase the ability of groups and individuals to work together more effectively in the long term, and in a number of cases they contributed to the achievement of site-specific management and monitoring outcomes. Although processes supporting the ongoing maintenance of these outcomes were generally not embedded in governance institutions, they may still have resulted in cumulative effects that were undetectable to us considering the array of variables and factors that contribute to and detract from system adaptability. Thus, the cumulative effects that the NRST’s interventions influenced across larger scales may be significant.
Our findings echo existing scholarship on collaborative governance, by demonstrating that factors external to the collaborative process influenced their outcomes (Koontz 2005, Ansell and Gash 2008, Campbell et al. 2011). In the Springerville case, local leaders served as change agents willing and able to leverage resources; a critical factor in the emergence of the self-organized learning group. Without leaders serving as local change agents, NRST’s ability to build capacity would have been greatly diminished, and the emergence of an alternative governance arrangement unlikely. In the Enterprise case, existing collaborative capacity was thought to be high; this was critical to the NRST’s ability to work with the group to overcome an impasse regarding a technical/scientific disagreement. Conversely, the Lander, Colville, and Winnemucca Service Trips were subject to high levels of existing conflict and distrust, and thus resulted in fewer lasting outcomes. These cases all point to the importance of antecedent conditions, context, and situational factors; in places with existing forms of capacity and capital, be it the presence of facilitative leadership or a history of collaboration, interventions are more likely to be effective in the long term.
Second, the temporal scale of the issue being addressed may be a factor influencing longer term outcomes. Perhaps one of the reasons the Service Trips, save for Springerville, yielded few second- and third-order outcomes was because they typically focused on a site-specific riparian area management issue. The capacity-building aspect of the assistance may be overlooked when the issues being addressed have a limited time-horizon. Agency managers and stakeholders may view Service Trips simply in terms of another compliance exercise designed to achieve near term objectives. Once a “solution” to the issue at hand is devised, there may be little incentive to continue collaborative processes into the future.
The Springerville case provides a notable exception to this, where the focus was on developing tools for sustainable grazing and collaborative management, rather than on resolving one particular riparian management conflict. Here, many participants from the ranching community felt that their long-term livelihoods were threatened by a multitude of factors, including the potential that grazing could be eliminated from riparian areas on the National Forest. The potential for crisis may have led some to see the need to self-organize and explore options for learning new practices and approaches to ensure that ranching on public lands remained sustainable in the long term. Thus the temporal scale of the issue may be an important factor determining the likelihood of ACM arrangements emerging.
Last we consider the extent to which the development of high-quality agreements influenced longer term outcomes. In five of our seven cases, the NRST’s efforts to facilitate agreement generally ended with the development of ideas and recommendations by individuals in the group; in only two cases, Enterprise and Lewistown, did the groups discuss how to use these ideas to move forward. We suggest that the absence of high-quality agreements, plans, or other forms of agreed-upon actions from Service Trip outcomes may limit self-organization toward ACM. When a process closes prior to reaching agreement, information and outcomes developed during the process are likely to be channeled back into the original hierarchical governance arrangement rather than becoming embedded in new processes developed and agreed upon during the assistance. If information and ideas generated during the intervention end up being ignored, delayed, or altered, no system for accountability will be in place, thereby eroding trust and social capital generated during the process. To effect longer term changes, assisting groups with the development of explicit agreements, both formal and informal, may be critical. This relates to findings by Bonnell and Koontz (2007) regarding the importance of organizational development in forming and maintaining new institutions associated with collaborative watershed management.
In a public lands context, however, where existing regulations and protocols limit the types of agreements that can be made, developing explicit agreements is challenging (Koontz and Bodine 2008). Because NRST members are employees of the USFS and BLM, both multiple use agencies, they are compelled to limit the discussion of options to those feasible within the current regulatory environment. For example, unless specific on-the-ground criteria were met, the elimination of grazing from riparian areas on multiple use public lands was generally not an option considered. This runs contrary to the conditions necessary for authentic dialogue, in which, according to Innes and Booher, “all participants can challenge any assumptions or any assertions. Nothing is taken for granted, and nothing is off the table” (2010:37). This limit to authentic dialogue may have reduced the ability of groups to self-organize; a key feature of adaptive systems.
Overall, our findings suggest that the potential for an outside intervention to catalyze the emergence of ACM arrangements through the facilitation of place-based problem solving may be limited. The facilitation of place-based problem solving, using approaches that reflect adaptive comanagement processes, will not necessarily yield lasting adaptive comanagement arrangements. As such, adaptive comanagement as a process should not be conflated with adaptive comanagement as an outcome; one does not necessarily lead to the other. In addition to working through specific environmental conflicts, improving the lasting capacity of communities to adapt to uncertain environmental threats will require a more targeted approach that builds on existing capacities and expands beyond a specific problem-domain.
Using a framework adapted from Plummer and Armitage (2007) and Innes and Booher (1999), we compared the outcomes of the NRST’s Service Trips to those forwarded by the ACM literature. The Service Trip model proved to be an effective approach for building relationships of trust, developing shared understanding, and facilitating improvements in natural resource planning. Our findings indicate, however, that the usefulness of such interventions for catalyzing ACM may be limited. Service Trips infrequently influenced the emergence of self-organized governance arrangements characteristic of ACM that are capable of supporting cross-scale networks and ongoing learning.
Our findings highlight the importance of institutional arrangements capable of supporting dynamic learning processes. It is not enough to instigate an intervention reflective of adaptive comanagement processes; for the longer term governance arrangements to be transformed, those processes must become embedded within the community of practice or governance institutions. Many existing institutions are incapable of supporting such processes, thus the need for modifications or the emergence of new governance arrangements.
Outside facilitators such as the NRST will continue to play a pivotal role in assisting communities as they work through periods of change and conflict. Much opportunity exists, however, to improve our understanding of how practitioners can strengthen the adaptability and resilience of public lands social-ecological systems. We suggest that striving to understand linkages between ACM processes and outcomes is one promising line of research that will contribute to this effort.
We would like to thank all of the interview participants from the seven cases studies, the staff of the National Riparian Service Team, as well as the U.S. Forest Service Western Wildlands Environmental Threat Assessment Center.
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