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Stephen F. McCoolDepartment of Society and ConservationThe University of Montana([email protected])
A Social Scientist’s Perspective on the Evolving World of
Integrated Planning
From Staplers to Mylar to Roundtables:
State of Natural Resource Planning
• Paralysis• Conflict• Lack of trust• Anger• Morale
The Rise of Integrated Resource Management
• A response to– Mechanistic definitions of planning– Narrow definitions of public land values– Calls for thinking about the system as a whole
• Represents a response to the inadequacies of planning approaches– Adversarial– Marginalized forms of knowledge– Action requires many actors
Objectives
• Discuss how we have proceeded in developing paradigms of integration
• Raise questions and issues about these paradigms
• Suggest some lessons learned
The various titles could be subsection titles
• Land manager’s job is provide stewardship for public resources
• Public is deeply concerned about the future of these resources
• Broadening definitions of what roles public administered resources play in society– Ecosystem goods and services– Cultural, spiritual, and sustenance
Toward Integrated Planning
• Variety of attempts beginning in the 1980’s
• No real sense of what this meant, other than more than one discipline
• Learning has occurred, several generations of integrated planning
First Generation Integration:
The Stapler• Respond by involving a greater variety of
disciplines• Each approaches the planning issue from the
dominant paradigm of that discipline• Specialists pursue parallel, but separate courses• Extreme form, specialists compete to have their
values favored
The Results of First Generation Integration
• Separate chapters • Different metrics, scales, perceptions• Understanding of planning problem not
widely shared• Competition for financial resources among
specialists• Some appreciation that an action impacts
a wide range of values
Second Generation Integration:
Mylar, Maps and GIS• Initial attempts used mylar overlays to display
maps of different variables• Specialists attempt to display their fields
spatially• Emphasis on consistency in gathering data• What data to be gathered influenced by what is
available to display on maps• Evolved into GIS, and use of digital information• Spurred by advances in landscape ecology
Results of Second Generation Integration
• Better ability to understand spatial relationships of things that were measured
• Marginalized many values that are not expressed at a particular pixel size
• Spatial modeling into the future revealed a lot of assumptions
• GIS folks in control of the planning
• Disciplines developed out of a matter of convenience, but now interests and egos have formed around them
• The drive for integrated resource decision-making represents a critique of past approaches
• But what do we mean by integration?
More Important Outcomes
• Raised fundamental questions– What was to be integrated? Why? By Whom?
For what purpose? How? – For what reason do we integrate?– What things hinder and what things facilitate
integration?– Who decides when integrated planning is
appropriate?
Some Observations
• Staplers and Myla represent an operational perspective on integration
• Need a systemic view• Only values/interests represented by
experts included• Staplers and Mylar (GIS) only tools• Is the public interest revealed through the
application of expertise?
Third Generation Integration:
The Roundtable
• These questions stimulated development of a third generation
• Reasons for this paradigm:– Equality– Leadership– Used in other settings
Third Generation Characteristics
• Shared definitions• One puzzle, not several • Mutual respect• Systems focus• Notion of holism, emergent properties• Iterative thinking• Learning
Spanning, Balancing or Integrating: contemporary challenges in NRM
• Integration – balancing or accomodation?
Integrated Planning Issues
• Different paradigms operating• Some people don’t want to integrate• Few roundtables exist• Choice of paradigm• Role of science/expertise
What integration is not
• final step in a fragmented process• a book stapled together• a management plan• unequal treatment of values/uses• individual disciplines recommending
actions
Some Lessons Learned
• The better you know where you are going, the more likely you are to get there
• Outcomes are consequences of social processes
• Integration is continuous• Integration and complexity are linked
Some Lessons Learned
• Team members play by the same rules• Teams have a captain• Integration does not stop when report is
accepted• Acknowledge uncertainty
• Currently have a limited ability to predict consequences of actions at larger spatial and temporal scales
• Planning tends to be issue oriented rather than goal directed
• Responses to issues require, in many cases, collaboration and cooperation among many disciplines
What are characteristics of the pathway to the future?
• Complexity – different scales interacting with differing emergent properties
• Uncertainty – emergent properties we can’t anticipate• Non-linearly dynamic – small disturbances lead to large
changes• Instability – systems dynamic and difficult to predict• Learning – command control processes don’t work
Why integration?
• Stewardship involves relationships among people, processes and the environment
• Widening range of values must be considered in stewardship
• Limited ability to identify and predict change, particularly at larger spatial and temporal scales