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Appended is an article published today in the LA Times about collaboration and compromise.
It begins:
["Collaboration" is all the rage. In collaboration, diverse stakeholders (as they invariably tag themselves) -- environmentalists, developers, off-roaders, timber companies, county officials -- hash out an agreement on how to manage their local public lands and then submit it to Congress for approval.]
As a further introduction, I offer a few words from David Brower sent, in 1989, to Doug Scott, then Conservation Director of the Sierra Club.
From - David Brower 1989
[My thesis is that compromise is often necessary but that it ought not originate with the Sierra Club. We are to hold  fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else produce the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function....
The Club is so eager to appear reasonable that it goes soft, undercuts the strong grassroots efforts of chapters, groups, and other organizations -- as if the new professionalization and prioritization requires rampant tenderization. I go along with Ray Dasmann, when he speaks of those who want to appear reasonable to the Fortune 500 and allies, and who therefore go to lunches, or to other lengths, to demonstrate their credibility, access, insiderness, and reasonable strategy. Ray says it is a union between Bambi and Godzilla.]
Scott
"(Many) national environmental organizations, I fear, have grown away from the grassroots to mirror the foxes they had been chasing. They seem to me to have turned tame, corporate and compromising, into raging moderates replacing activism with pragmatic politics, and a willingness to settle for paper victories." --Michael Frome, 2000
--- begin quoted ---
January 24, 2008
From the Los Angeles Times
Environmentalists out on a limb
For a seat at the negotiating table, they are jeopardizing their true role.
By Erica Rosenberg
There's nothing wrong with a group of people historically at odds sitting down to find common ground. Or is there?
For decades, our public lands have been a battleground: Timber,
wildlife, recreation, wilderness -- which interests and uses should
dominate? But now,
A few deals already have been enacted, and another half a dozen are in
the works across the U.S. Collaboration has been touted as the solution
to "gridlock" on our national forests. Timber companies and their
allies gripe that the normal process -- extensive analysis, citizen
involvement and the right to challenge agency decisions -- has ground
all "management activity" (read: logging) to a halt. Western counties
surrounded by public land argue that they need room to expand. Others
believe lands worthy of protection are still threatened. The new
paradigm means everyone sits down with their adversaries.
But these collaborations are troublesome, particularly for
environmentalists, who risk undermining their mission as well as the
very laws that are the basis of their power, effectiveness and
legitimacy.
For example, a bill poised for introduction in Congress would turn into
law an agreement reached by one collaborative group on how to manage
Montana's 3.3-million-acre Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. The
stakeholders -- Montana Wilderness Assn., National Wildlife Federation,
Trout Unlimited and timber companies -- had one thing in common: They
hated the management plan proposed by the Forest Service. So they came
up with their own plan specifying which areas can be logged, which can
be opened up to off-roaders and which should be recommended to Congress
for wilderness designation.
Sounds reasonable enough. So what's wrong? To start, as owners of the
public lands, all Americans have a stake in their management, and they
have not designated these representatives. Even the most inclusive
collaboration can go bad: Outliers who pose a threat to consensus are
either not invited or made to feel unwelcome. And ultimately, decisions
are being made behind closed doors. But Congress loves a done deal.
With a local sponsor, Congress is inclined to rubber-stamp these
initiatives, overlooking the fact that they are an end-run around the
suite of laws that safeguard public lands and keep land-management
decisions an open process.
The Beaverhead bill, for example, triples the acreage where logging can
take place from what was in the Forest Service's plan. It requires an
environmental analysis only for individual logging projects rather than
the plan as a whole, thereby waiving the bedrock U.S. environmental
law, the National Environmental Policy Act. It also allows logging in
roadless areas -- a radical departure from the Roadless Area
Conservation Rule that environmentalists championed during the Clinton
era. Other deals have sold off vast acreage of public lands in exchange
for wilderness designations.
The collaboration prototype -- the 1998 Quincy Library Group
legislation -- illustrates the problem. That group, named for the
California town library where it met, came up with a plan for three
national forests in the Sierra affected by endangered-species listings.
The proposal increased logging while protecting pristine areas. When it
landed in Congress, California Rep. George Miller insisted on adding
one provision: All environmental laws would apply. That meant the
Quincy Library logging plan had to go through the same environmental
analysis a Forest Service plan would.
The Quincy Library proposal, held up at the time as a model of local,
consensus-based decision-making, has never been fully implemented. Why?
Primarily because it didn't jibe with Endangered Species Act guidelines
protecting the California spotted owl. In other words, it did not pass
scientific or legal muster.
That environmentalist "stakeholders" signed on to the Quincy Library
agreement in the first place highlights the danger of the collaboration
fad. After years of being tarred as obstructionist ideologues, some
environmental groups now have a seat at the negotiating table --
indeed, are seen as crucial to legitimizing any deal. Enjoying their
newfound popularity, these self-appointed decision-makers become
heavily invested in reaching an accord, regardless of the science, the
law or the long-term effect on the land.
For decades, environmentalists fought to get a more level playing field
and establish transparency and accountability in public-lands policy;
they continue to fight the Bush administration's relentless efforts to
dismantle these policies. How ironic it would be, then, if in their
eagerness to embrace the new paradigm, they craft and push through
Congress deals that undercut the very laws that got them to the table
in the first place.
Erica Rosenberg directs the program on public policy at Arizona State
University's law school and served as counsel to the House Resources
Committee from 1999-2004.
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