Natural resources issues are complex, often emotional, and almost always political. Efforts to improve natural resources management practices must take into account the scientific aspects of an issue plus these other dimensions. This book explains how to address and resolve the human issues underlying natural resources problems. It shows how the policy sciences -- a systematic method for analyzing and proposing solutions -- can be applied to any natural resources policy and management problem. The policy sciences approach proves flexible, widely applicable, and useful in developing realistic alternatives in diverse situations.

The book begins with a discussion of what natural resources are, how people make decisions about using them, and how the policy sciences can be used toward improving policy and management practices. Ten case studies inside and outside the United States follow. Policy science methods are applied to such problems as endangered species conservation, urban parks, the development of energy projects, the relations between national parks and p

Learning about Natural Resources Policy and Management

Tim W. Clark and Andrew R. Willard

Natural resources challenges are growing more complex as the human population expands, the reach of technology grows, and the stocks of many natural resources are drawn down. The best conceptual and applied tools are needed to address these challenges. The policy sciences offer a set of tools that are unparalleled in this regard. There are many ways to learn this set of tools including courses, workshops and short courses, field trips (Clark and Ashton 1999), and on one's own. Perhaps the best and easiest way to learn is through a formal course which systematically introduces and illustrates the tools and their practical utility in improving natural resources policy and management. Our "Foundations" course teaches the policy sciences approach to understanding and addressing natural resources policy and management problems. Used with insight, judgment, and skill, these tools can improve policy making in the management of natural resources toward the goal of sustainability. This chapter describes our course, introduces the policy sciences approach, and gives an initial evaluation of the course. This course offers a way to learn how to improve natural resources policy and management practically. The analytic outline in Chapter 2 and the case studies (Chapters 3-12), each of which follows the organization of the outline, will help newcomers as well as experienced professionals learn the policy sciences and apply them with skill.

Course Overview

We first offered "Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management" at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in the spring semester of 1996. It is taught by Tim Clark, a conservation biologist, policy scientist, and professor at the school, and Andrew Willard, a policy scientist, an anthropologist, and associate research scholar at the Yale Law School. We were both interested in the problem-oriented, contextual, and multimethod discipline for problem solving known as policy sciences and agreed that it would be a useful addition to the university's curriculum. This method is genuinely interdisciplinary. This chapter is based on three years' experience with this course and over two decades of experience with related courses, workshops, and field trips.

Background

The course grew from the conviction that sustainable human use of the biosphere is critical, but that efforts have been inadequate in clarifying what is meant by sustainability and what actions are needed to secure it. This was hardly a novel observation. Walters (1986), Lee (1993), and Gunderson et al. (1995) have detailed many pathologies in natural resources policy and management. Ludwig et al. (1993:17), for instance, reflecting on diverse policy and management experiences, suggested that many of the current plans for sustainable development "reflect ignorance of the history of resource exploitation and misunderstanding of the possibility of achieving scientific consensus concerning resources and environment." They concluded that "resource problems are not really environmental problems: They are human problems that we have created at many times and in many places, under a variety of political, social, and economic systems" (p. 36). This stimulating insight directed attention to alternative ways of thinking about natural resources policy and management and about sustainability in particular. When natural resources problems are seen in this new light as epiphenomena of human practices, it becomes necessary to apply new methods to identify, understand, and reshape those practices that generate, condition, and respond to natural resources problems. Presenting and applying such methods is the central task of the "Foundations" course.

The notion of sustainability is illuminated by the policy sciences theory central to the course (see Lasswell 1971; Lasswell and Kaplan 1950; Lasswell and McDougal 1992). For example, generally speaking, achieving sustainability in policy and management requires responding to the changing conditions that shape the national and global community and guiding them to the extent possible. It is desirable to have a smooth social transition from current short-term, exploitive policies to more long-term, adaptive and sustainable approaches. Thus, one challenge for scholars and natural resources practitioners is to look broadly in society and its institutions for rigidities in outlook and material conditions that might inhibit a smooth adaptation to a more sustainable future.

Many components of policy sciences can facilitate the student's ability to identify the relevant context of a problem reliably. Regardless of the subject-biodiversity, genetics, endangered species, population growth, oceans, fisheries, forests, parks and reserves, the atmosphere, outer space, or land and water use-every discipline and standpoint has something to contribute in the examination of problems and solutions. Learning how to integrate and synthesize specialized knowledge and contributions is central to the course.

When the policy sciences approach is applied to particular problems, it results in a realistic, reliable, operational "map" of the past and potential future of the policy system under consideration. In turn, this practical map can be used to assess the potential contributions of more specialized views and findings, determine overlooked issues for research, and locate the most likely sites of intervention to facilitate adaptation of the policy system to actual and future conditions. It offers its skilled users a means to contribute to clarifying and securing (achieving) the common interest.

Course Format

The purpose of the course is to help students improve skills in thinking more effectively and acting more responsibly. It is designed for students in any subfield of forestry, environmental studies, or other disciplines. Particular emphasis is placed on practical improvements in policy processes and on clarifying what is meant by sustainability in natural resources policy and management. Students are expected to discuss theory, applications, and cases. Once they gain familiarity with the core methods of problem identification, clarification, and resolution, they apply them to specific issues in natural resources policy and management. The class, fourteen weeks (one semester) in length, meets for three hours once or twice a week. The instructors have open office hours and meet with students individually and frequently throughout the semester. The course is designed to complement other courses in the curricula of the school and the university.

In the first eight weeks, comprehensive and integrated methods of thinking about problems and proposing solutions are explored. Instructors lecture and students summarize and critique readings. Discussion is both extensive and intensive, with students contributing subject matter (often from their case studies) to illustrate the methods in addition to case materials presented by the instructors. Each week's topic is introduced by a one-page description prepared by the instructors, and each week students read about five papers totaling approximately 100 pages. An additional bibliography is provided on the world environment, natural resources issues, and the policy sciences. Over the course of the semester, each student is asked to lead the class in discussing a few readings. The student is asked to answer three questions concerning the readings (Brunner 1997 a,b,c): (1) What did you already know about the material covered? (2) What important information (if anything) did you learn from it? (3) What are the most important questions you have about it?

Subsequent weeks are devoted to student presentations applying the methods of the policy sciences. This not only gives individuals a chance to analyze a case of their choice in depth but also gives all members of the class exposure to a wide variety of issues and applications. The students thus learn by doing. Each one-hour presentation is based on a draft of one student's term paper. The paper and presentation are expected to demonstrate explicitly the interdisciplinary problem-solving method studied in the course. (An outline for preparing individual papers is described in Chapter 2.) A concluding class session reviews the policy sciences and the semester's work.

A View of Natural Resources

The course is based on a functional view of natural resources. In the broadest sense, natural resources include the earth and its atmosphere, soils, minerals, energy, plants, animals, including humans, as well as the solar system, the galaxy, and beyond. The term natural resources is used to designate the biophysical environment in which social interactions are carried on and which may be directly involved in such interactions (Lasswell and McDougal 1992). The policy sciences can be used to study this social process and the effects of resources use in any society.

The significance or meaning of the biophysical environment is influenced by people's goals at specific times and places and by their expectations about the utility of particular resources for achieving their goals. For example, a forest is a resource that can be used for well-being (e.g., building homes), enlightenment (e.g., knowledge about ecosystem structure), wealth (e.g., increased financial income for users), or other values; a thousand years ago oil and gas, DNA, and the geosynchronous orbit were not resources as they are now.

Humans manipulate their environments, including other humans, and such operations are interwoven with the entire social and cultural context. Manipulating flint for stone tools, atoms for hydrogen bombs, and soils, plants, animals, or ecological processes (such as fire) are all examples of operations. Technology is the operational means people use to manipulate their material culture, which is the ensemble of these operations and the physical objects on which they are performed. When operations are associated with symbols of meaning, which is usually the case, we call them practices. For example, cutting down a tree may be associated with feeding one's family (i.e., well-being), making money (i.e., wealth), or some other mix of values. Operations plus these perspectives are practices. Sound natural resources policy and management call for operations, perspectives, and practices that serve the common interest-that is, those that provide people the mix of values they hold and offer a sustainable future (see Ascher and Healy 1990).

The objects of manipulation in natural resources policy and management are either culture or raw materials. Culture materials include axes, chain saws, bulldozers, domestic livestock and crops, rockets, and computers. Even some soils and whole landscapes may be culture materials if they have been altered significantly by human cultivation over centuries. Accordingly, culture materials change over time. Raw materials are potentially usable resources, such as unexploited grasslands, forests, or oceans, or even Antarctica. Of course, the largest reservoir of raw materials is composed of the not yet discovered realms and phenomena of the universe. Thus the material culture of a society or community, which consists of its technology and of all the operations performed on biophysical objects, is rarely static. Different cultures carry out operations differently. Some operations are intended for short-term value accumulation, which we call "exploitive" practices, while others are long-term, which we call "sustainable" practices.

The Policy Sciences Approach

Students and practitioners need a means to understand and participate in social processes pertaining to natural resources realistically, comprehensively, practically, and constructively. Such a means or method-policy sciences-already exists and has been applied to problems in natural resources as well as other policy arenas, including social services, science policy, communications, war, revolution, human rights, international law, and national defense (e.g., Arsanjani 1981; Ascher and Healy, 1990; Brewer 1988; Brewer and Kakalik 1979; Brunner and Ascher 1992; Brunner and Byerly 1990; Brunner and Clark 1997; Clark et al. 1996, in press; Johnston 1987; Lasswell 1948, 1965b; Lasswell et al. 1979-1980; McDougal and Burke 1987; McDougal and Feliciano 1994; McDougal and Reisman 1981; McDougal et al. 1963; McDougal et al. 1980; McDougal et al. 1994; Murty 1989a,b; Pielke 1997; Reisman 1971, 1981; Sahurie 1992). This method is part of a professional movement that, in the largest sense, is a global effort to address the increasingly complex problems of our time. Its basic aim is to improve the quality of life and policy decisions through genuinely comprehensive and integrated inquiry, and practical action.

From a policy sciences perspective, the ongoing interaction of people in their efforts to achieve what they value is the foundation of all policy, including that of natural resources. Public policy making is a never-ending process whereby people attempt to clarify and secure their common interests. Management is the actual manipulation of people and resources through programs.

Policy Sciences Method

The power of the policy sciences to generate practical and theoretical insight comes from its unique methodological integration and specification of the full range of problem-solving tasks. The main conceptual categories of policy sciences are illustrated in Figure 1.1. The framework has four principal dimensions: problem orientation, social process mapping, decision process mapping, and observational standpoint. In actual problem-solving situations, empirical data about each of these dimensions must be gathered, organized, and interpreted.

The policy sciences approach to problem solving is well documented in the social sciences literature (Lasswell 1971) and has been widely used with respect to international natural resources issues (e.g., Ascher and Healy 1990). The approach is directly and immediately applicable to any and all contexts wherein people interact (Lasswell and McDougal 1992). The approaches' integrated concepts make up a logically comprehensive set of elements that function as a "stable frame of reference." This stable frame of reference allows analysts and other participants to look not just at the technical particulars of any natural resources management issue, but, more important, at the functional relationships that animate them and all of human interaction. Policy sciences is not simply a "cookbook" approach that adds social science data to biological data in order to analyze natural resources problems or find solutions to them.

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Excerpted from Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management Copyright © 2000 by Yale University
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