This file was created by scanning the printed publication.
Errors identified by the software have been corrected;
however, some errors may remain.
A Welcome Reunion 1
Sidney Draggan 2
Bienvenidos, Bienvenue, Welcome to our Symposium
participants. For you who arejoining us for the first time; we
have come together for a working reunion among the participants in the First North American Symposium held in 1995
in Mexico City. Since that time, we have become more aware
of the number and the complexity of North American environmental concerns. The complexity of these concerns indicates clearly that rather then being amenable to absolute
remedy, many environmental concerns can be handled best
by more comprehensive and more practical management.
North American environmental managers need defensible,
comparable and credible data and information to achieve
this more comprehensive and more practical administration
of our valuable ecological systems.
National Research Council's Committee on Global Change
Research, notes that maintaining old-and establishing
needed-observational and monitoring systems will be especially challenging. This is due to their cost, and to the fact
that their components must serve the needs of the different
communities that use their outputs.
The third report-Using Stakeholder Processes in Environmental Decisionmaking:: An Evaluation of Lessons
Learned. Key Issues. and Future Challenges 5 by Terry F.
Yosie and Timothy D. Herbst-notes that, "Stakeholder
involvement in environmental decisionmaking by government and industry is inevitable and will continue to
expand".
The second report, Overview-Global Environmental
Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade 4 by the U. S.
The report shows clearly that calls for greater use of
stakeholder-sensitive processes over the past decade represents a clear societal need for more interactive forms of
decisionmaking. This third report is of most interest to us as
it appears at a time when some scientific and risk experts 6
are voicing frustration about the emphasis governments are
placing on the use of stakeholder decisionmaking processes.
These experts feel that this emphasis is leading to an
underreliance on technical and scientific information in
decisionmaking. This tension between the science community and non-scientific stakeholders must-somehow-be
addressed and reconciled. I hope that you-participants in
this SecondNorthAmerican Symposium-will help to achieve
measurable progress in this reconciliation during your work
this week. Again, thank you for joining us.
Ipaper presented at the North American Science Symposium: Toward a
Unified Framework for Inventorying and Monitoring Forest Ecosystem
Resources, Guadalajara, Mexico, November 1-6, 1998.
2Sidney Draggan, Ph.D. is Senior Science and Science Policy Advisor,
Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Washington, DC, USA. e-mail: Draggan.Sidney@epamail.epa.gov
31998 Prepublication Copy. Published book will be available from: NationalAcademy Press; 2101 Constitution Avenue; Washington, DC. Available
on Line at: http://www.nap.edulreadingroom/enter2.cgi?0309064171.html
4Available on Line at: http://www.nap.edulreadingroom/enter2.cgi?
ES.html
5American Industrial Health Council. 1998. Washington, DC. Available on
Line at: http://www.riskworld.comIN reports/1998/STAKEHOLDIHTMLI
nr98aa01.htm
6EPA Emphasis on Stakeholder Process Exasperates Risk Experts. Risk
Policy Report Volume 6, Number 10:6-7 [October 16,1998].
I want to call your attention to three recent reports that
encourage this view. New Strategies for America's Watersheds 3 , was prepared by the U.S. National Research Council's
Committee on Watershed Management. The committee found
that watershed-scale management can be difficult since it
requires cooperation-and informa tion sharing-across differentjurisdictions and agencies. Nonetheless, the Committee sees management at the watershed scale to be the best
way to address diverse resource management problems in
an integrated way. This is because watershed scale management draws together concepts from the physical, biological,
social, and economic sciences.
2
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-12. 1999