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Land Management Partnerships:
a Panel Discussion
Ann Moote, Session Moderator
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INTRODUCTION TO THE PANEL
Land management partnerships are organized groups of individuals and organizations working
together to address land use, natural resource, or environmental issues at the local level. Partners
may include government agencies, nonprofit organizations, professional societies, corporations,
landowners, and private citizens. Frequently, these people or organizations have not previously
worked together. Often they are traditional adversaries. They form a partnership when one or more
individuals or groups identifies a problem or need that they cannot address alone because they lack
adequate funding, skills, jurisdiction over the resource, or land ownership.
Partnerships are said to enhance land use and natural resource management by drawing
expertise and input from a wide range of individuals and groups who live in and intimately know the
resource base and the local economy. Getting more people involved in a project increases the
likelihood that it will be accepted and maintained over the long term. Working through issues with a
diverse group of individuals and organizations, partnership groups often come up with creative and
desirable projects. Furthermore, by pooling resources of several organizations, agencies, and
individuals, partnerships can achieve greater volunteer involvement and a broader base of financial
support.
DISCUSSION (SUMMARY)
Although a new concept in the United States, community-based conservation has had a longer
history in other countries, particularly in the developing world. In developing countries, almost all
conservation efforts are focused on the people living close to protected areas. Research has shown
that conservation projects that ignore local patterns of resource use or tenure relationships tend to
fail, as do those that depend on outside expertise. Yet in the U.S., conservation efforts traditionally
have ignored local residents and relied exclusively on agencies or private conservation groups to
manage the resources.
This is changing, however. With the advent of ecosystem management and increasing
restrictions on public lands access and use, communities adjacent to public lands have become
less willing to let outsiders make public land management decisions for those lands. New
concepts, like holistic resource management and coordinated resource management, also have
united many grassland communities around their resource base. Local communities are fighting for
equal consideration in land management decisions that effect them.
As described by discussants and illustrated in the Sonoita and Cascabel cases, successful
partnerships share some common characteristics. They are characterized by broad membership; a
common guideline for partnership groups is .. involve everyone." Working together, the participants
generate a commonly shared vision for natural resources and local communities that helps build
long-term support and can improve project implementation. Communication is the primary tool
used to solve problems and reach agreements. Decisions are typically made collaboratively or by
consensus, to ensure everyone's needs and concerns have been addressed. Through the process
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Water Resources Research Center, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ.
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of group decision-making, partnerships increase individual members' levels of responsibility,
involvement, and commitment.
Not all partnerships are successful, however. Discussants in this session identified several
reasons partnership groups have fallen apart, including: a history of extreme, unresolved conflict
among key interests; lack of a clear purpose; unrealistic goals or deadlines; failing to include key
interests and decision-makers; major inequity of power or benefits; and forming the group too late-after projects or proposals are already developed. All discussants considered communication-keeping everyone up-to-date and maintaining dialogue among partners--critical to building trust and
a sense of community. In Cascabel, the Management Committee addressed some of these
potential problems by setting a definite deadline, agreeing on a policy of limited consensus, and
keeping the partnership .. open, but not too open ... The Sonoita Valley Planning Partnership keeps
lines of communication open by mailing minutes of meetings to a large list of interested people,
and accepts written comments as well as input during meetings.
Commitment and trust were said to be critical to effective group processes. Discussants
stressed that all participants need to make a long-term, personal commitment. In Sonoita, for
example, all meetings are held on weekends, not weekdays when agency and organization
representatives would paid for meeting while self-employed people lose a day•s work.
Often, community members have been frustrated by past experiences and are leery of investing
their time and energy in these efforts. Participation and confidence often must be earned, primarily
by allowing sufficient time for partners to become acquainted on a personal level and discover
areas of agreement. Therefore, partnerships should tackle issues they can agree upon first, leaving
the contentious ones until they have developed some mutual trust. ~or example, the Cascabel
Management Committee agreed to avoid highly contentious issues like fire and grazing
management on private lands, but moved forward with planning for several other resource issues.
Both of the partnership groups discussed avoided private property rights issues by explicitly
limiting themselves to discussion of public land management. During the discussion, some
participants mentioned the tendency of private landowners to .. hide behind private property rights ..
and avoid partnering. Private property owners expressed a fear that increasing government
regulation and environmental zealotry will limit their use of their land. They agreed, however, that
with property rights come responsibilities.
Consensus is another highly contentious issue for partnerships. Many people insist that
consensus decision-making is the only way to ensure that everyone•s needs and concerns are
addressed. Offering another perspective, Eric Schwennesen stressed the difference between
common or collective agreement and consensus, describing consensus as .. a way to brow-beat
minority opinion into submission ... Other participants expressed the concern that consensus gives
any one individual veto power.
The appropriate role for traditional decision-makers (i.e., agencies, powerful interest groups) in
partnerships was also discussed. Agency representatives, in particular, may be viewed as arrogant,
led by their .. agency culture .. to believe they are the sole experts, and by bureaucratic rigidity to
believe they should be the sole decision-makers in public land management planning. Discussants
emphasized that agency representatives need to .. separate themselves from their uniforms.. as
much as possible. While still representing their agency and bound by some laws, they also need to
present themselves as individuals, with respect for other individuals.
Finally, reliable funding was mentioned as a critical factor in the success or failure of a
partnership effort. Both partnership groups presented here were funded by agency and interest
group participants. In general, however, government funding can only be expected in the short
term. Luther Propst noted that identifying innovative, long-term funding sources is one of the
greatest challenges partnership groups face.
As communities rally around their local public lands, agencies and traditional powers are slowly
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becoming more willing to share decision-making with them. In this session, presenters described
how the Bureau of Land Management is sharing its planning authority, and The Nature Conservancy
has evolved from a 11 Command-and-control 11 type organization to one that can share control. The
results are innovative partnerships characterized by broad-based local participation that utilize and
build on local knowledge to develop better land management plans.
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