Forest Policy - Forest Practice

My Wars Against Economic Fundamentalism Dave

I spent most of my working life in the US Forest Service, battling fundamentalism. Most of the battles dealt with economics. My first job was to coordinate use of a linear programming model (FORPLAN) in the development of forest plans. The model may (or may not) have been useful in projecting overall timber sales volumes from big-timber forests, but to have used it as an overall planning model was a mistake. Forests are not factories. Multiple uses for timber, recreation, wildlife, minerals and oil and gas, livestock grazing (and so on) must be carefully balanced against preservation and conservation efforts in the dynamic self-organizing systems that we call Nature—forest and grasslands in particular. That balancing act is not the stuff of simple, formulaic problem solving.

I remember one day in 1979, before I joined the Forest Service, having lunch with FORPLAN developer K. Norman (Norm) Johnson when a memo came down from the Forest Service Washington Office declaring FORPLAN to be the primary analysis tool for forest planning. Norm said, "My God, we've just lost the war." No truer prophecy was ever uttered. But that was just the beginning of my nightmares with what I call economic fundamentalism. The problem extended beyond the FORPLAN follies, into project and program cost-benefit analysis generally. When passion for this type fundamentalism began to wane, a new threat appeared in the form of free-market fundamentalism. That latter threat is still very real, while the two former threats have faded into memory.

The FORPLAN Fiasco
During the early years of US Forest Service "forest planning" (1979-1985, generally) there was a big problem with what we then called "analytical determinism." The problem, simply stated entails placing too much faith in narrowly framed analysis, with too little synthesis, ignoring broader contextual relevance. It is a problem that plagued the Forest Service practice of Operations Research, narrowly focused on the linear programming model FORPLAN (Forest Planning). No matter how hard some of us tried to get beyond mindless application of the FORPLAN model — set up with a maximize "present net value" objective function — the message never took hold. In retrospect, the whole agenda was wrong-headed, as Oregon State University Dean of Forestry John Beuter and I finally tried to show in a Critique of Forest Planning by contrasting FORPLAN with a model we called MARVIN. [See: Beuter, J.H. and Iverson, D.C. (1987): FORPLAN: an economic perspective. In: T.W. Hoekstra/Dyer A.A./LeMaster D.C. (Eds.) "FORPLAN: an evaluation of a forest planning tool," U.S. Forest Service General Technical Report IRM-140, pp. 87-95] Marvin was not a real model, in particular not an algorithmic or formulaic model, but rather the name of a wise fellow who used to manage the Oregon State University school forests. No model was ever going to replace Marvin. Finally, the Forest Service abandoned FORPLAN in favor of simulation models projecting forest ecosystem trajectories. FORPLAN died with a whimper, with no death announced. But by then I had moved on to other wars against fundamentalists.

Rational-Planning Economics
In about 1983 I took a step upward (so I thought) in the Forest Service, moving from Regional Operations Research Analyst to Regional Economist for the Intermountain Region. I was hoping for higher standards than were common among the Operations Research crowd. Instead, I found the broader economics practice at minimum every bit as backward. During that era, the Forest Service Manual and Handbook championed an obsolete branch of economic thinking called Neoclassical/Rational Planning (See Alan Randall's classic article on resource economics schools of thought, 1985). Interestingly, Alan Randall had already declared "economic rational planning" dead just about the time I arrived on the scene. I spent a couple of years trying to get my Forest Service economic colleagues to recognize the death, or a least to engage in dialogue about various schools of economic thought—and what each school believed relative to other schools. But it was not to be. Nobody wanted to hear that message, neither to engage in that conversation. Instead they just wanted practice their economic priestcraft, narrowly framed around so-called "efficiency analysis"—concocting Present Net Value indices, alongside "economic impact assessments," trying to associate jobs and income with forest-related programs. My major "beef" was with the "efficiency analysis." I left equally vexing problems with "impact assessment" to my colleague Hank Robison. Since I could not practice what the Forest Service Manual and Handbook mandated, I set out to develop an alternative practice. I initially set out my "advice" in a small publication that I handed to people whenever/wherever I felt the need. I finally framed my advice (Economic Advice for Forest Managers) as part of a three-part series that I aired on Eco-Watch,1995.

But long before then I began research into who else was in the battle against government rational planning economics. It turned out that many were (and had been for a long time) waging a similar war in broader government settings. I compiled their findings and reconfirmed my view that I would not help people jinn-up formulaic, cost-benefit analysis numbers. I also advocated against the practice: Cost-Benefit Analysis: Wonder Tool or Mirage?

Leaving stuff around on the internet became my common practice, since I'd grown weary of trying to publish in so-called "refereed journals"—each associated with its own narrowly framed version of economics. Of course, none of it would make a dent in economic practice in the Forest Service, since FS Manual/Handbook materials were considered gospel. I often referred to it as the Gospel According to Marx, not Karl but rather Groucho. Finally though, just before my retirement in 2007, we whittled the Forest Service Economics Manual/Handbook down to two pages, that said in essence, go forth and practice economics according to the ideas/philosophies/methods of whatever school of economic thought a practitioner aligned themselves with. (Assuming that the court of public opinion could sort out economic wheat from chaff). I wonder what has happened since? [Note: In a world of my design, I would have just banished the Economics Manual and Handbook, right alongside almost all (or all) of the rest of Forest Service Manuals and Handbooks. But that was not to be]. This saga doesn't end here, there was yet-another fundamentalism to deal with, the fundamentalism of right-wing free-market fundamentalists.

Free Market Fundamentalism
About the time my rational planning wars were winding down, the Republican "right" gained much power in the United States and around the world (late 1990s – 2008). Part of their pitch since at least the time of Ronald Reagan was that markets will free us, government with its red-tape will bury us. In short: Markets Rock! Government Sucks! The agenda, according to spokesperson Grover Norquist was to "Shrink Government down to the size that we can drown it in a bathtub." These some call free-market fundamentalists, or market fundamentalists, some call them theoclassical economists. In the mid-1990s, Dick Behan called them Economic Taliban.

Free-market fundamentalists believe that individuals are supremely qualified to make all value decisions — or at least almost all — and that allowing government to interfere is pretty much a slippery slope to socialism. They do allow for voluntary collaboration of individuals—as long as it is done outside the purview of "government." They elevate "the market" to the end-all-be-all for providing for social benefits (allowing minor space for faith-based and other non-government institutions), and denigrate government wherever possible. To earn the title free-market fundamentalists, practitioners must subscribe to some form of market worship.

Ed Cone sums up the idea of "market worship", talking about the 2007-2008 financial implosion:

[T]he latest iteration of the old boom-and-bust story has reached the part where a few people get led away in handcuffs, while the legal crooks on Wall Street slink into the background until the next promotional cycle begins. The plot is timeless even as the details change with the decades.

This time it was supposed to be different. This was the millennium of the market. That may yet prove true in some ways, as the market economy is not about to join communism on history's ash heap. But things look depressingly familiar here in the era of capitalism triumphant. America's near-religious faith in the magic of the market has been revealed as idol worship.

The truth is that markets and corporations are not good or evil. They are machines, often very powerful and useful machines, but no matter how well you build them, they are run by human beings, and they are thus subject to the frailties of their designers, owners and operators. Only a think tank economist could be surprised to discover that business people are venal more or less in proportion to the general population. Certainly this is not news to anyone who has ever spent time in close proximity to an actual business.

Market worship goes way beyond the belief that private property and open economies can do the most good for the most people, or the assumption that there is a moral quality to economic freedom. Even the no-more-business-cycle claptrap of the Internet bubble was just an offshoot of the ideological view of markets that took root in this country during the '80s, flourished in the '90s and was last seen buried beneath a pile of worthless WorldCom shares.

The greatest impact of this market cult has not been on the economy, which is, after all, treading a beaten path, but on politics. A corollary of market perfection has to be the undesirability of nonmarket forces, especially in the form of government. Whatever else was driving the anti-government fervor of the late 20th century, the certainty that markets always knew best was part of the equation.

Some have argued that Free-Market Fundamentalism died sometime in 2007-2008 with the implosion of world financial markets. But that tragic event more likely emboldened free market fundamentalists in their quest to return the world to what they perceived as the wonderworld of yesteryear, with small shopkeepers and other independent entrepreneurs—as if that could happen in a world ever-more globalized—ever-more dominated by large global corporations.

I believe that free market fundamentalists helped lead us to that 2007-2008 day of financial reckoning, postponed at minimum by bad decisions by the US Federal Reserve—led by a supposedly reformed free market fundamentalist, Alan Greenspan. Many of us thought that the financial market bubbles would burst in the late 1990s, but even with the dot-com bubble burst, the markets (with the help of the government) were just catching a second breath. And no, I don't let other government players off the hook either, neither Wall Street's self-proclaimed "titans of finance," nor the so-called independent ratings agencies. There is plenty of blame to go around, but free market fundamentalists get their fair share of this blame. The battle against free-market fundamentalists goes on. I do my small part.

Free-market Environmentalism
A curious branch of free market fundamentalism attached itself to public lands and the environment. It was/is called "free-market environmentalism."This group too are fundamentalists: too narrow a perspective, too much emphasis on exorcising devils they believe they know, while allowing devils they don't know to gain power.

Free-market environmentalists, like their broader libertarian fellows seem to cluster around a narrow "Austrian School" or "Classic Liberalism" view of economics.

Practitioners tend to demonize the role of the state, and champion the workings of the market, based on deeply help principles necessitating, then elevating to near divine stature the idea of private property ownership. They leave little room for public ownership or control—mostly just the military. The Cato Institute, a hotbed of Austrian economic thought and "dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace"—sounds good so far—favors abolishment of these branches of the US Government (partial list): Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Department of Interior, Department of Transportation.

As for the public lands, they want the government to disappear. Specifically they advocate for either privatization of public lands, else some kind of fiduciary trust where money is a main driver. See, Chapter 23 of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, 2009 (pdf). Or for a shorter version, see here. And it's not just Cato. The whole crowd of self-proclaimed free-market environmentalists have a similar agenda.

Given Cato and fellow travelers' "abolishment agenda" I find their public lands ideas disgusting. Wallace Stegner once declared the national parks our nation's best idea. The national forests/grasslands are just a step removed, and often provide a scenic/re-creational "context boost" for the national parks. Call me a public lands fundamentalist if you wish, but I find no meaningful rationale for Cato's stand. I can not stand idly by and let CATO and friends denigrate our public lands institutions based on a flawed reasoning. It is the stuff of a "leap of faith," justified in the main by a predetermination that "Markets rock! Government sucks!" that seems to drive them into their dreamland. Instead I side with Thomas More in his paper "Privatization of Public Lands," which ought to be subtitled "A bad Idea,"

[Note: For more on why some things ought to be dealt with as "public interest" and not left to the vagaries of the market, see in particular Mark Sagoff's The Economy of the Earth, Elizabeth Anderson's Value in Ethics and Economics, and Margaret Jane Radin's Contested Commodities. Note too that not all who are heavily influenced by Austrian economic thought fall into the fundamentalist trap. To fall into that trap, one must, like CATO, declare government to be the enemy.]

I continue a long-standing joust with the free-market environmentalists, which for me began many years ago at Utah State University, and will not end soon. I fully expect them to once-again serve up the public lands for privatization (in whole or in part) as the Congress begins to grapple with US national debt that has for too long been ignored. If/when that prospect becomes reality I'll be back on the battleground. In the meantime I'll continue my studies in heterodox economics.

Heterodox Economics
As for me, I believe in economic heterodoxy. Like Stephen Jay Gould I view economics as a history of technology and development, not as some formulaic quest to tame wicked social problems via mathematical economics. I believe we can learn from various schools of economic thought, as long as we remember that much of our study is to "avoid being deceived by economists" as Joan Robison once put it. I've learned much from various schools of economic thought including Austrians, Marxists, Keynesians and Post-Keynesians, practitioners of Ecological Economics, Institutionalists (including Evolutionary Economics), Behavioralists, Complexity Theory economics, from Information Economics. I base my own practice on a belief in separation of powers. Markets AND governments are both beneficial and necessary, but both also tend to abuse power. I believe that a natural tendency (in our age) is for business/industrial combinations to get big and powerful and corrupt. So too with government. The best we can do is to be ever mindful of power and its tendency toward corruption. We can not abolish either government or markets by administrative or legislative fiat. On the other hand we can work toward ever-better checks and balances on abuse of power wherever it arises.

Twenty Years of Forest Blogging Dave

It was 1989 and the "timber wars" were raging. Having failed to gain voice on any important issues in the Forest Service via traditional channels, a few of us joined with Jeff Debonis to form a non-profit called the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (AFSEEE, later FSEEE). We adopted a three-part mission: to speak up as concerned citizens, to organize, and to protect whistleblowers. Not long thereafter, I began to blog as a Forest Service employee on government time. Not a blog, really, but an email list, that I later named Eco-Watch. I simply passed along forest policy-relevant materials to a rather large email list. By 1992 I began to compile a feedback list of comments and "comments on comments," that I passed along via my mailing list. The list caused quite a stir in the Forest Service Intermountain Region leadership team, and maybe "higher up."

Eco-Watch and I somehow managed to be a topic of conversation at many a Regional Leadership Team meeting. Interestingly, the "leadership team" was pretty much split, with a lot of the members supporting my attempt to open up communication via email. Deputy Regional Forester Bob Joslin once told me, paraphrasing: "If [the Regional Forester] mentions your stuff once more time, the next message is going to come from my inbox. … I don't agree with all you write, but do believe that we [the Forest Service] need to discuss these things."

I remember numerous tense meetings with my boss, the Regional Planning Director, about feathers that were being ruffled, not only by my emails, but also by my being on the board of that nonprofit organization FSEEE. It got worse once I became president of FSEEE's board. I once told our Planning Director that if the Regional Forester had a problem with my being a part of FSEEE, I would gladly have lunch with him to discuss it—but that I did not talk about my FSEEE role at work since it was an exercise in free speech as a citizen, not as a public employee. As FSEEE board members and Forest Service employees we knew we were walking a fine line with the FSEEE stuff. Another time I was asked to talk to our Director of Information Systems about the email list. So I did, and he told me that the Forest Service email system had been set up for multi-way communications (after a proposal for top-down communications had been batted about, then batted down by either the Department of Ag or the Forest Service). He also told me he was not going to be a "DG cop" [the DG was then the Forest Service's computing platform]. He also wanted to know more about FSEEE. He was curious about our daring venture.

Eco-Watch
By 1992, I began to send out follow-up comments and "comments on comments" to my email lists. Eco-Watch was born. The rough and rocky road that connected me to both the Forest Service and FSEEE was paved, in part by my Listserv. And finally near the end of the FSEEE-friendly Clinton Administration, I got approval to take Eco-Watch to the next phase, making it into a Forest Service-blessed Policy Dialogues Forum, via Hypernews. With Mark Garland's help we put all my email listings on the internet, along with emergent policy dialogue threads. The tracks of this era still reside on the Forest Service servers, here, with numerous broken hyperlinks. Sadly, all the policy dialogue threads are lost, although I did manage to salvage most of them and have them on my own Forest Policy site as Eco-Watch [retaining much of the character of the old site, but linking to "discussion threads" of the past, rather than to ongoing discussion forums]. During this same era we tried to get Mark Garland's Forest Service in the News to be a partnership between FSEEE and the Forest Service, even a three-way partnership adding in a timber industry group. That discussion was a non-starter. Mark continues to this day with his Forest Service in the News, hosted by FSEEE.

Eco-Watch Policy Dialogues Forum ran from 1999 until its demise in the Spring of 2005—right in the middle of the Bush/Cheney Administration War Games /Homeland Security—when the chant was "If you are not with us. You are against us."

Why did the Forest Service drop its love affair with Hypernews? I don't know, but suspect it had to do more with Homeland Security paranoia, than with FS internal politics. But maybe it was simple paranoia over Internet viruses, etc. All I know is that one day the forums were dead, and so too with all other forums that were being hosted on Forest Service Hypernews software. My inquiries into the matter led me to an odd dead end—something like, "It was just too hard to maintain the software." I still believe that similar software powers many internet forums today, and maybe even Wiki sites. But I let it go. After all, we were at war in the wake of the Sept. 2001 World Trade Center bombings.

Forest Policy - Forest Practice
Early in 2005 I threw together a real blog, Forest Policy–Forest Practice, subtitled 'A communities of practice weblog.' My goal was to emulate what others had done by then, in other fields far from natural resources—to engage practitioners in policy/practice dialogues. I reached out to a few old friends and let it fly, this time on my own dime and on servers that couldn't be shut down by FS bureaucrats, whether by design or by neglect.

We started out OK, but never got it up to steam—just couldn't muster the participation needed to make it a strong platform for "voice." Maybe it was me, being my usual flaky self, not getting anything "real" going. But I think not. I think that it was just too new, and some of the "academic" friends I courted were too busy with traditional meetings, publications, trade associations, etc. to be bothered with blogs. Oddly, there are still very few, maybe only one, active discussion blog on forest policy.

A few of us did kept the discussion alive for several years, but it just wasn't the "in your face" immediate gratification that the email list or the Hypernews forums had been. I tried a few other things, like a blog tied to Adaptive Forest Management, a theme I continue talking about today. On another blog I chronicled the rise and fall of what I like to call "Planning cast up as Environmental Management Systems" or "EMS cast up as Planning." Among other things I unveiled in my Forest Environmental Systems blog was a clever little powerpoint about why bureaucrats don't want to "mess with anything". Policy wonk Ron Brunner told me that it was the best example ever of why bureaucracies can't change. The EMS/Planning love affair was short-lived, and the blog only ran for about a year.

A New Century of Forest Planning
Today a few of us are blogging forestry and forest policy, under the guise of "forest planning" here. It will prove interesting to see if/when the Forest Service joins other agencies that allow/encourage many blogs and wikis, by individuals or groups. But it doesn't seem likely just now.

-------------------------------
I continue to cross-walk to my earlier blogs, but realize that they are pretty much just a place where I store stuff. I also continue to blog matters at the confluence of complex systems, wicked problems, politics, finance, economics, and ecology at Ecology and Economics: a cross-disciplinary conversation and Economic Dreams-Economic Nightmares. Mostly I just dabble at the edges, and continue to hope that more folks will jump in to re-frame politics, science, and public administration in the US and around the world.

From Forest Planning to Adaptive Governance Dave

"If planning is everything, maybe it's nothing." Aaron Wildavsky

Let's face it, the "forest land and resource management plan" is an anachronism—an artifact of a bygone era. That era was in its heyday when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reigned supreme after President Richard M. Nixon consolidated rule-making and other powers in the OMB via executive order in 1970. Economics-based, comprehensive rational planning was the rage. It is no surprise that The Renewable Resources Planning Act was passed in 1974, just after Nixon consolidated power under the banner of rationally planned and carefully audited governmental process. Twenty years later Henry Mintzberg penned The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994). Mintzerberg's classic pretty much laid a tombstone atop rational planning exercises. Or at least it should have.

The Forest Planning Era
Following passage of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 as an amendment to the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, it was thought that forest program management decisions could be adequately fit into a forest plan "decision container"—that somehow each forest could develop a forest-wide plan that would integrate programs now and into the future in a such a way as to allow disclosure of environmental consequences that might flow from said decisions. Project level National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) disclosure would disappear with proper forest planning and environmental disclosure at the forest level.

Allowance was made for FS administrative region plans, and for a national RPA Program plan. Given the upper two tiers, it was believed that decisions would be integrated vertically, and cumulative effects—according to NEPA standards—could be adequately disclosed.

It was a relatively innocent era, when viewed through the "green-eyeshaded accounting lenses" of OMB over-see-ers. The innocence collapsed relative soon in the forest arena as litigation proved that the three-level administratively-bounded review was not going to pass muster in the courts. Not only were projects not going to be shielded from NEPA review by a forest plan, there was increasing evidence that at least one level of planning/disclosure might be needed between project and forest.

An initial remedy to the seemingly endless process gridlock brought about by too many levels of planning was to eliminate regional plans. I referred to this then as the Texas two-step solution (forests/projects), since at that time the Forest Service's National Planning Director was from Texas. But that was a solution looking for a problem, or better still a "non solution" not looking for anything but an easy way out. The problem between forest and project remained. Another problem was to be found elsewhere, framed larger than forest plans but not fitting into regional plan containers.

Spotted Owls, Roadless, and more
Much time and effort was now spent in the 1970s, 80s, 90s on above-forest policy making, brought about by actors and actions taken either against the Forest Service or from within the Forest Service responding to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. They were, "Spotted Owl Management Plans," "The Roadless Rule," "The Northwest Forest Plan," and more. These decision containers were bounded as regions, not FS administrative regions but geographical regions more appropriately suited to the issues and the actors petitioning for problem resolution. Note that the policy-level decision making was largely about curtailing timbering and roading, but the Forest Service chose to name the efforts after the initiating issues, not the federal actions being considered.

Forest Planning Proves Resilient, if not useful
The forest planning paradigm still captured much attention, but the three-level planning process swirling around the forest plan—projects/mid-scale/forest—was felt by forest planners and the Forest Service generally to be too cumbersome. Something else needed to be done. While the rest of the world was waking up to complex systems, wicked problems, and adaptive management, as was part of the Forest Service via the Northwest Forest Plan, the Forest Service via the NFMA rule was still stuck in the wonderful, if overly complex and somewhat bizarre world of capital P "Planning." And the Forest Service was always trying to force-fit things into forest-level and project-level decision containers. But times were changing by 1990 and at least for a time, the Forest Service seemed to be ready to catch up to the rest of the world.

Adaptive Governance: Emergence in the Clinton Era
Adaptive management seems to be evolving in name to Adaptive Governance, following a path laid down early on by Kai Lee in Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (1993). For a time the Forest Service seemed inclined to follow. [Note: Today, the "adaptive governance" path seems already well-discussed, if not well traveled. That is if my "adaptive governance" Google search is an indication. But my Wikipedia search didn't give me much. Recognizing that the only viable adaptive management for dealing with public lands management has to deal with both Kai Lee's Adaptive management compass and his civic-engagement gyroscope. I'll go ahead and use the term "adaptive governance" hereafter.]

In what we might call Clinton era management, Chief Michael Dombeck sought to bring about a Leopoldian awakening (see, e.g. here, here) to Forest Service thinking. That "awakening," as per Leopold's earlier thinking, was about adaptive governance. But the largely Republican-dominated Forest Service resisted. Chief Dombeck was never accepted by Forest Service managers since he was from the BLM and appointed by an environmentally left-leaning Clinton administration. Things didn't get better under Chief Jack Ward Thomas, himself a huge fan of Leopold. The road from Pinchot to Leopold was not going to be an easy one. Adaptive governance thinking was soon on the chopping block along with pretty much all else from "new forestry" to "new perspectives," etc. following the election of George W. Bush as a new Administration came to Washington.

Adaptive Governance: Bush/Cheney Backlash
The Bush/Cheney public lands legacy can be viewed as a legacy of war—war on the environment and war on anything the previous Clinton Administration had built under the rubric of "ecosystem management" (See generally Bob Keiter's Breaking Faith with Nature: The Bush Administration and Public Land Policy). Under Mark Rey as Undersecretary of Agriculture, the Forest Service moved into its "Healthy Forests Initiative," followed soon thereafter by the "Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003." As Bob Keiter notes, the names could be viewed as cynical, as part of a well-orchestrated backlash against Clinton era reforms. To Keiter:

By using the Healthy Forests Initiative to expand the scope of NEPA categorical exclusions and to alter the ESA consultation process, the Forest Service has further enhanced its authority and reduced the potential for judicial review of its decisions, which is also what the [Aquatic Conservation Strategy] and species inventory revisions to the Northwest Forest Plan would have done. Congress has abetted this de-legalization effort by including NEPA provisions in the HFRA and the Energy Policy Act that either eliminate or reduce environmental analysis requirements for timber thinning and energy exploration projects.²⁷⁹ Add to this the Bush administration's approach to its ESA responsibilities—which include an overt hostility to new listings, a rush to delist species, and contemplated revisions to the section 7 consultation process and critical habitat designation and critical habitat designation criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield the agencies from any meaningful accountability. It is a return to an era when discretion reigned supreme. [Footnote in original]

All good things come to an end. So do all bad things. The Bush/Cheney regime and its war on the environment ended in January 2009, although effects (and federal judges) linger. [Personal aside: My friend from the early "planning days," Dale Bosworth served as Forest Service Chief early in the Bush/Cheney Administration. I believe Dale did what he could to curb the worst of the what might have been done to the Forest Service during that era, but didn't take my advice the be take a firm stand and be the first Chief since Gifford Pinchot to be fired for standing up against the powers that be. Had I been in his shoes I might not have taken that advice either. Who knows? But it wasn't in Dale's nature to work that way. I don't find fault with Bosworth's leadership/management during that era.]

Adaptive Governance: Obama's 'Audacity of Hope'
Unfortunately for Leopoldian dreamers, incoming President Barrack Obama's audacious plans have not yet been focused on matters environmental, other than green energy. Nor will they likely anytime soon, even if Obama or anyone in his Administration were prone to do so—which itself is in question. Obama is too distracted with two wars, emergent unrest in the Mideast and Middle America following Tea Party elections in statehouses and the US Congress. Not to mention continued after-shocks from the near-disaster of the financial meltdown that arrived coincidentally (or not) right as Obama was entering the White House.

Obama cut his political teeth on community organizing, and that is in a sense Kai Lee's gyroscope to accompany his adaptive management compass. So we can at least hope for endorsement from Obama if planning is replaced with adaptive governance. Whether or not it will be a good thing depends largely on whether or not untoward devolution happens—or is perceived to likely happen—under adaptive governance schemes. Time will tell. But I get ahead of our story. The Forest Service hasn't yet embraced adaptive governance, although I hear they are flirting with it. Instead they are still wedded to capital P "Planning." As Andy Stahl noted, the recent Draft NFMA "planning rule" (pdf) (as the Forest Service likes to call it), stages up a rational planning exercise. The difference is that this time it is driven by ecological rationality instead of the earlier economic rationality from the OMB era.

Adaptive Governance: Absent in the NFMA Draft Planning Rule
I suspect it was because the Bush/Cheney era NFMA rule was thrown away by the courts, but for whatever reason the Obama Administration chose to rewrite the "NFMA rule." There has been a flurry of commentary on this blog and elsewhere about the rule and associated planning. But does anyone really care about this type planning anymore? What decisions are really contained by a forest-level plan? Despite the language of the draft rule, I find no "ecological resilience" decisions, neither "ecological or social sustainability" decisions, nor any "species viability" decisions, nor … that can be contained in a forest-level plan. All such considerations will well-up at scales different from forest boundaries.

As I've argued before, these are wicked problems. Wicked problems are not amenable to rational planning resolutions. Part of the "wicked problem" problem is that they are shape-shifters, they vary in problem identification and resolution across both time and space. They just won't stand still, and will not be force-fit into predetermined "decision containers."

In addressing wicked problems, I believe that scale-dependent futuring, and/or puzzle solving, is in order alongside scale-dependent assessments and monitoring. We ought to add in scale-dependent standard setting. They all fit under a header “puzzle solving.” Where scale-dependent is really the stuff of framing decisions/actions according to a “Garbage Can Model” wherein issues, actors, and arenas self-organize across the landscape into various and sundry decision containers. We all need to think hard about wicked problems and, e.g. Cohen, March, and Olsen’s garbage can decision model. Here’s a pdf of CMO’s 1972 article: "A Garbage Can Theory of Organizational Choice."

See too Pritchard and Sanderson’s chapter in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002), “The Dynamics of Political Discourse in Seeking Sustainability.” After setting stage for adaptive governance, complete with "wicked problem identification" and "garbage can" resolution mechanisms, Pritchard and Sanderson conclude:

[Testing hypotheses and applying lessons learned] to the thorny puzzles of environmental management and governance are [noble] goals. The greatest promise lies in addressing political issues directly, rather than in avoiding or submerging them. The fondest hope might be that individuals, communities, and formal organizations engage the spirit of adaptation and experimentation, by allowing a set of contingent ideas to shape "the gamble" of democratic resource management, and citizen experts to report on the results. Of course, for such a profoundly disorganized and multiscale approach to thrive, government, market, and citizen must share a common vision—that all must address these puzzles in order that they might be engaged and worked on—not solved forever; that “expertise,” popular voice, and power are separable, and none holds the dice [from a "floating crap game" model of politics] for more than a pass.

A Few Questions Linger
Is an ecologically framed rational planning rule what we need to resolve controversy? Or is it time to embrace adaptive management, even adaptive governance in an attempt to tame wicked problems? Yes, I know that the preamble to the Draft NFMA rule claims that forest planning will be driven by adaptive management. Really? Read the rule and explain to me how the draft rule stages for more than rational planning.

---------
Related:
The Forest Service as a Learning Challenged Organization, Iverson, 1999
US Forest Service Deeply Flawed Planning Culture, Iverson, 2004

Planning: The View from Plato's Cave Dave

A "forest planner" friend called me the other night to chide me for missing one of the best powder skiing days ever. As our conversation progressed I shared my frustration with the Forest Service's thirty years failed national forest planning efforts. My friend said that I ought not to expect forest planning types, including those charged with writing "new rules," to do anything other than minor tweaking of older rules. After all, that's what they know and where they find comfort. My friend has a point! Sometimes, however, there is Danger in the Comfort Zone.

Keep in mind that most people, both managers and employees prefer bondage in bureaucratic power-play organizations, "psychic prisons," to the freedom and responsibility of adaptive management learning organizations. I prefer the empowerment of the latter.

Digging deeper into the FS comfort zone, I believe the Forest Service's "comfort" is much like that Plato talked about in his Allegory of the Cave (Wikipedia). In short, Forest Service top brass are too often like the inhabitants of Plato's cave, chained in some way to see only the shadows of outside reality flickering on the cave walls, but unable to encounter that reality themselves.

I admit that I too am blinded by ideology/methodology, taking too much comfort, for example, in adaptive co-management. None of us is immune to this failing. Still, questions linger: Which frame serves best, planning or adaptive management? Or are both bankrupt? If not these, then what? And if an adaptive co-management frame is better, how can the Forest Service ever get there? In answering the last question, remember what Kristen Blann and Stephen Light told us a decade ago, Adaptive ecosystem assessment and management will be The Path of Last Resort (doc)!

Links, for those unfamiliar with Plato's Allegory:
Allegory of the Cave, Wikipedia
Plato's Allegory of the Cave: A short summary (Warning: Not for those offended by the "f-bomb" and other "street talk")
The Cave: 8 min. audio (with text), that explains Plato's allegory well in contemporary context

New Planning Rule Fails as Adaptive Management Dave

What is a forest plan?  A committee of scientists once said that a forest plan is simply a loose-leaf compendium of all decisions large and small that affect the administration of a national forest.  Following adaptive management principles and practices, "decisions" can and are made at multiple scales: international, national whether or not made by the US Forest Service, regional and local. So too with assessments, and monitoring and evaluation measures.  All these are the workings of adaptive management, not planning.  The whole of the Forest Service ought to be charged to work together to accomplish broad conservation, preservation, and use goals through adaptive management.  Framing needs to be changed to do this. A central planning frame has failed for 30 years.  Why continue down this path?

In an adaptive management frame, forest supervisors oversee the day-to-day workings of a national forest administrative unit. But decisions affecting that unit are made in various ways at various scales, whether as part of laws, policies, programs, or activities.  There are no administrative "kings" in this worldview.  Instead we have various actors, some within the Forest Service and some without, working in interrelated systems that frame the workings of a national forest. We have whole organizations working together to accomplish the work of adaptive management.  The task is not left to "planning."

Now let's begin to parse the most recent "proposed rule" for developing a forest plan.  Note first that the three levels of administrative decision-making outlined in the proposed rule -- national, forest, project or activity -- don't fit the adaptive management model outlined above.  Why does the Forest Service continue to pretend that managing a national forest comes down to three levels of decision-making?  I can see no reason, beyond tradition for maintaining this hierarchy.  Can you?

If the Forest Service is incapable of understanding adaptive management, is there any hope in trying to fit adaptive management into the Forest Service culture?   After thirty years watching and attempting to participate in rule development for the RPA/NFMA I am once-again left to doubt whether any progress can be made.

Adaptive management is about organizations learning to adapt to ever changing environmental and social systems. Adaptive management is not about "planning."

Perhaps I'm too old to dabble in this stuff anymore.  Perhaps the "devil in the details" ought to be left to those younger.  But I believe I've seen this same rhetoric before -- since 1979 -- and it appears, broadly speaking, pretty much the same to me.  The Wilderness Society gives the proposed rule a B.  I give it, once again, an F. The Forest Service simply doesn't get adaptive management. The F is for "frame blindness," and other decision traps.

If I were a forest supervisor I would feel victimized by this (and earlier "planning rules").  Forest supervisors are asked to act as "forest kings," not forest administrators.  The Washington Office of the Forest Service does a disservice to both forest supervisors and regional foresters, as well as many in the so-called "staff" program areas of the Forest Service by continuing this tradition of laying it all at the feet of forest supervisors.  We might as well call them "forest scapegoats" if this tradition continues.  The Forest Service seems intent to continue its 30-year tradition of gridlock unless and until there is an awakening.

I will not comment here on the many process failings leading up to this proposed rule.  I've done it before. Suffice it to say, despite many pleadings, the Forest Service once again gathered some input in the early stages, then went into the isolation booth to hatch a rule.  It should surprise no one that it closely resembles earlier rules.  No "real" blogs,  no wikis, no true collaboration in rule development.  Why not?  Other government organizations use them. What we got instead was administrative politics as usual, with associated administrative gridlock.

It is likely too late to change this rule.  Despite billing it as Draft, we all know that only minor tweaking will be allowed between Draft and Final Rule. It would be refreshing for the Forest Service to admit that it botched this effort.  But American politics will not allow it. Too bad! Peter Drucker once remarked that one key measure of the worth of a decision is how rapidly it can be changed in light of new information.  Would that the Forest Service could "see the light," and change this rule.

The Frame Game Dave

There is power in “framing” political discourse and policy development: Those who control the frame, control the content, the context, and more. In short, “He Who Sets the Frame Controls the Game”.

What just happened in the NFMA Rule Development game? The comment period closed yesterday. The frame was set by rehashing experience in planning, then constructing five “Substantive Principles for a New Rule” and three “Process Principles” (each with a battery of related questions). How many people, do you suppose, chose to respond outside that frame? How powerful was the frame?

In my formal comment I said that I wish the Forest Service had simply established a blog, and begun with a simple question, like: “Given the noble ideas embedded in RPA/NFMA (Wikipedia link) and other principal laws related to the Forest Service, how might the planning/management process of the USDA Forest Service be improved?” Then I said that I hoped someday the FS would indeed engage the public in meaningful inquiry as to its operations and the management of the national forests. Not yet, though. I added:

Unfortunately but not unexpectedly given the RPA context, these regulations have been dubbed a “planning rule.” If one looks at RPA/NFMA through the lens of adaptive management, the process outlined in Section 6 looks much different than if one views it through the lens of comprehensive rational planning. Unfortunately, all previous “NFMA rules” (and associated forest plans) have been developed under the “comprehensive rational planning” frame.

We must remember that the Clinton era Committee of Scientists recommended that a forest plan be viewed through an adaptive management lens — viewed, figuratively, as a loose-leaf compendium of all assessments, decisions, monitoring and evaluation efforts, etc. that affect an administrative unit of the national forest system. …

If so-called “planning rule” development is viewed, once again, as yet-another comprehensive, rational planning exercise, the agency will be mired again in analysis paralysis and process gridlock. If viewed as a mandate for adaptive management with a heavy dose of collaborative engagement on the part of other agencies, other governments, and citizens, then a whole new world of opportunity and challenge opens up to the Forest Service.

Please do not fall into the ‘planning trap’ again.

Now we wait for “next steps” and for a “Draft Rule.” And we hope that we — all of us, both the Forest Service and the public — won’t be trapped in an inappropriate “frame.” It is not that I believe that the Forest Service deliberately manipulated the “frame” in this case. Just the opposite. I believe the Forest Service fell into common decision traps: “frame blindness”, “lack of frame control”, “plunging in”, others?

Related:
Adaptive Forest Management blog
Earth to FS Planning: Get a Blog!
The Forest Service as a ‘Learning Challenged’ Organization, (1999)

From A New Century of Forest Planning

The Blame Game Dave

How often do we resort to blaming others for our own problems/failings? Think first of international relations and war. Think second of our own families. Think third of the organizations we work for and with. Admittedly, everything depends on everything and relationships are a two-way street. But I still believe that much of our undiscussed, and often undiscussable conflict derives from our own inability to see ourselves as others see us. This too, is a two-way street. Anyone or any groups we are in conflict with usually have the same problem, which we might think of as a special case of "frame blindness."

(See generally Chris Argyris' Action Science ideas. For the Forest Service specifically, see my Catch-22 and Maladaptive Organizations, and on "frame blindness" and other decision traps, see How to Avoid Harebrained, Cockamamie Schemes.)

Not only do we too-often think of ourselves as victims, but usually "frame" ourselves as well-meaning heroes — hardworking, fair and sensitive heroes — stopped in our tracks by those who we vilify as enemies, or malcontents, who we to-often view as lazy, inconsiderate, unappreciative, and insensitive. The problem gets worse as each side digs in, nurturing a co-dependency. In organizations the problem spreads as more and more people buy into the blame game, setting up a contagion that afflicts entire organizations.

I just finished a little book, Leadership and Self-Deception (2000, Second edition 2010, Amazon.com link) that captures the organizational "blame game" well. Importantly, the authors give hints on how to move beyond victim/blame both in interpersonal relations, management and leadership, and organizational effectiveness measures.

One key toward organizational betterment is to learn appreciate people as people, not as cogs in organizational machinery. Another key is to learn how to accept and share responsibility for organizational problems. In an afterword, the authors describe how in applying lessons learned from the book a CEO instituted a new way of tracking and dealing with problems in a company:

Whereas before, he would go to the person he thought was causing the problem and demand that the person fix it, the CEO began to consider how he himself might have contributed to the problem. He then convened a meeting including each person in the chain of command down to the level where the problem was manifest. He began the meeting by identifying the problem. He laid out all the ways he thought he had negatively contributed to the culture that had produced the problem and proposed a plan to rectify his contributions to the problem. He invited the person directly below him to do the same thing. And so on down the line. By the time it got to the person most immediately responsible for the problem, that person publicly took responsibility for his contributions to the problem and the proposed a plan for what he would do about it. In this way, a problem that had gone on literally for years was solved nearly overnight when the leaders stopped simply assigning responsibility and began holding themselves strictly accountable.

See too: Difficult Conversations (1999) (Amazon.com link) (Google Books preview)

None of this is new, of course, both the aforementioned books were written around 2000. In a 2006 Forest Policy-Forest Practice post titled Perplexed by Principles for Process Improvement , I alluded to the "power-over" v. "power-with" dilemma, and reiterated my 2003 suggestion to get us beyond gridlock by beginning the journey toward true collaboration.

Maybe I was planting seeds of thought, maybe I was whistling in the wind. Maybe the time is right now, or is yet to come. But maybe it will never come!

Why ? Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Capital P "Politics" is a power-over game, and US government agency administration is "political". It used to be that the Timber Barons and their Congressional and Administration lackeys were never far from earshot of anything that the Forest Service did (remember especially the 1950s through 1970s or 80s). Now the game has shifted, and Fire Money (and assoicated power) has more sway, as increasingly does Recreation Money. Maybe we will get a chance for better collaboration, even adaptive co-management as the Resilience Alliance folks call it.

But I won't be surprised if we don't. I have been hoping for a "collaborative future" for a very long time, but I'm beginning to wonder if I've not fallen into the insanity trap: doing (saying) the same things over and over, and expecting different results.

Returning to more optimistic thoughts, Leadership and Self-Deception got me to thinking about other books like Argyris and Schön's Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning, (1990) and Susan Scott's Fierce Conversations (2002). (See also my Fierce Conversations post). Only after learning to own up to and defeat the victim/blame game do we have any chance at other important organizational learning opportunities.

A key question: Is it really possible, or remotely likely that the US Forest Service (or any other large government bureau) will ever be able to move beyond the blame game?

Isn't 30 Years Enough Forest Planning? Dave

I smiled when I saw the title of a new blog: A New Century of Forest Planning. Another century of gridlock?

I think that Dick Behan said it first, and perhaps best in 1981:

… Idealized, perfect planning that is mandated in law [and Regulation], and constrained only by an agency's budget, will exhaust that budget. … There will come a time when the Forest Service can do nothing but plan …

RPA/NFMA cannot be made to work. Its flaw is fundamental: it is a law, and it needs to be repealed. We failed, in our collective problem solving, by placing too much faith in planning and placing far too much faith in statute. It is time to punt.

As I suggested in 2007, maybe we ought to use the NFMA rulemaking process to begin the journey of changing to a new approach to planning wherein we use scenario planning (Wikipedia link) simply to "rehash the past, and rehearse the future".

And to begin a journey to learn how to better practice adaptive management (Wikipedia link). Note that management is not directly linked to planning. Note that there is no "desired future." Instead, scenarios simply help guide strategic thinking as part of adaptive management, in part by keeping forest managers' minds open to an emergent future.

Here is a link to my Adaptive Forest Management blog for more.

Congressional "Pay to Play" Oversight Hearing Dave

On Wednesday (10 AM EDT) the House Resource Committee's Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands in concert with the Subcommittee on Water and Power is having an oversight hearing titled "Pay to Play: Implemention of Fee Authority on Federal Lands". Here is a link to the Committee's website where you can click on the Calander for hearing info. Or go directly to the hearing info.

Here is what I offered up as testimony, pleading that Congress find means to eliminate general access fees to our National Forests:

TESTIMONY OF DAVE IVERSON BEFORE JOINT SUBCOMMITTEES: NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS, AND PUBLIC LANDS and WATER AND POWER, COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES, JUNE 18, 2008

Chairman Grijalva, Chairwoman Napolitano and distinguished members of the subcommittees:

Thank you for the privilege to comment on the important matter of recreation access fees. My name is Dave Iverson. I recently retired from the US Forest Service after nearly 30 years work in planning, operations research, economics and social sciences. I served my entire career in the Intermountain Region. I am a founding board member for Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE.org), a non-profit based in Oregon. I have served as FSEEE's board president for the last 15 years.

I have spent a lifetime wandering around the national forests, national wildlife refuges, and BLM lands in Utah and surrounding Western states. Early experiences in the mountains and brushlands greatly influenced my choices to work as a conservationist and environmentalist. When growing up our family traditions were Nature-centered, with vacations and family reunions all staged in our national forests. For working class Americans, free access to our national forests played an important role in helping us develop as American citizens and members of the community of life on Earth.

In both my government and nonprofit roles, I have watched and participated in the "recreation fees" debate for many years. I see no problem with special use fees for campgrounds, picnic areas, and boat launch sites, in part because these are long standing traditions and use fees are low. I see no problem with entrance fee collection for some of our outstanding National Parks to help welcome and orient visitors, fund interpretation and upkeep of needed trails, bridges, roads, to fund law enforcement activities, and more.

But I am steadfastly against general access recreation fees as have recently surfaced in our national forests. Here is why: First, as owners of the national forests, people ought not to be charged to access their land.

Second, in our culture we are bombarded throughout their lives with markets and marketing. We have commercialized almost everything. People desperately need space for reflection and re-creation far apart from the maddening drone that symbolizes over-commercialization of everything. Public lands provide a perfect backdrop to provide such far-from-commercial-culture experience. For many years they provided this backdrop. Unfortunately, and particularly in the National Forests, public land managers are busily, even gleefully turning the national forests into theme park amusements. This is tragic.

Third, fees that are kept within bureaucracies distort incentives and distract public servants from important conservation and preservation concerns. There continues to be far too much focus on marketing and outright money-grubbing among US Forest Service managers and staff these days. This too is tragic.

Providing citizens free access to their lands has other spin-off benefits. If we can find means to encourage citizens to seek "back to Nature" experiences we might find a useful counterbalance to the ever-more-individual, ever-more-frenzied, pace of our gadget filled TV/computer culture that is driving our citizens, our young people in particular, away from both community and Nature.

It appears to me that at minimum the cumbersome nature of fee collection – likely the whole idea of fees – drives many away from our national forests at a time when we are seeing fewer and fewer children taking interest in Nature apart from TV feeds.

Providing free access to public lands is an idea whose time has come once again. The amount spent on such is a pittance in relation to defense, health care, education, welfare and just about any other government program. It can't possibly be a serious consideration when weighed against the benefits of helping citizens connect, once again, with the magnificent public places of the national forests, parks, and other public lands.

Please find means to rid the American people of the plague of generalized recreation access fees.

{Update 4/18: Hearing in Process}

As I watch/listen to the oversight hearing, I am impressed with what appears to be some progress on the "fee" front. In particular, I see that at least in theory general access recreation fees are disallowed. This is progress, to the extent that it is true. But it may not be true in practice--members of the second panel disagree with Administration spokespersons from the first panel in this point.

Additionally, there has been some progress on the cumbersome nature of fee collection. Maybe a general, annual federal pass may be the ultimate answer, with appropriate due consideration given to those lacking means to pay, and with due consideration to, e.g. foreign visitors, school children, etc. But that "resolution" in essence would be to charge for access to all public lands. If that is to be the case -- not my desire -- then at the very least we could get rid of the many, maddening signs (and backup enforcement officials) that now exist.

Note that as long as fees are kept at sites collected, perverse incentives continue to exist as federal managers will and do tend to over-emphasize developed over dispersed recreation, and will tend to over-develop popular sites. However, I do agree with USDA Undersecretary Mark Rey that hardening some over-loved sites is indeed necessary and fees do help defray some of these costs.

Mark Rey Dodges Contempt of Court Charges Dave

Missuola, MT — For several months Federal Judge Donald Molloy has threatened to throw the Forest Service's USDA boss Mark Rey in jail for foot-dragging relative to Molloy's specific judicial mandate to comply with NEPA relative to fire retardant drops on national forests. Molloy believed that an incarceration threat for "contempt of court" might spur the Forest Service into action to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act relative to fire-related government actions—specifically, in this case, fire retardant drops. Yesterday, Judge Molloy let Rey off the hook — for now — but took the opportunity to scold the Forest Service and Rey for what Molloy called "systematic disregard of the rule of law." Here's more from The Missoulian, Feb 28:

… U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy cleared Rey, the Bush administration's top forest official, and the Forest Service of contempt and withdrew his threat to jail Rey or ground all fire retardant air tankers until the agency evaluated the environmental impact of the chemical slurry.

Molloy did not rule on the merits of the Forest Service's environmental analysis, and the watchdog group whose lawsuit prompted the showdown said it planned to take new legal action to challenge the agency's finding that aerial retardant causes little harm to fish and other aquatic creatures.

"We accomplished what we wanted to do, which was to make the Forest Service follow the law," said Andy Stahl, director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, based in Eugene, Ore.

In his testimony, Rey apologized for the Forest Service's tardiness in following the judge's order to complete an environmental analysis of the potential harm from ammonium phosphate, the primary ingredient in retardant dropped on wildfires.

But Molloy was not mollified and forced Forest Service employees in their testimony to acknowledge their "systematic disregard of the rule of law."

Before announcing his ruling, Molloy delivered a blistering criticism of the Forest Service, saying only a threat of contempt prompted the agency to comply with the nation's top environmental laws - the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

The judge also questioned the federal government's battery of lawyers who handled the case, dismissing their "attempts" at explaining the delays and their "parsing of words to create unjustifiable arguments."

Rey and other Forest Service officials maintained they had acted in good faith, but Molloy said it was "shameful" that it took a threat of contempt to make the agency comply with the law.

"Something's remiss," Molloy said. 'I don't know if it's the lawyering or an institutional matter." …

I'm inclined to think it an institutional matter — the Forest Service believes it is on a divine mission to do good work — to do "good projects on the ground" — instead of rightfully seeing itself as an agency of government that must justify its work both to three branches of government as well as to the American people in complying with various environmental statutes. More details here, related to NEPA compliance responsibilites.