Moving Toward Community-Based Environmental Management

Abstract

As environmental protection efforts increasingly focus on land use decisions, local governments face mounting pressures to control development in wetland areas. These pressures are especially strong as citizens and environmental groups recognize the limitations of federal efforts to protect wetlands. Door County, Wisconsin, offers an interesting example of the perils and pitfalls associated with trying to move beyond federal and state wetland regulations. Door County, by adopting wetland districts as part of its county zoning ordinance, created greater protection of wetlands—but at the expense of increasing confusion about the various roles of town, county, state, and federal governments. Although the case reveals a high level of interest to protect wetlands among key stakeholder groups, bureaucratic inertia and political tensions between town and county governments hamper efforts to move beyond the existing program. Most striking is the tenuous nature of partnerships formed in the process of community-based environmental protection.

Public Participation and Environmental Policy: What Factors Shape State Agency's Public Participation Provisions?

“…The bedrock of this research stems from either democratic theory exploring the determinants and impacts of pluralism on democratic institutions (Dryzek, 1990; Pateman, 1970; Press, 1994; Williams & Matheny, 1995) and/or from the long‐standing exploration of collective action dilemmas (Moe, 1981; Olson, 1965, 1982; Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom, Gardner, & Walker, 1994). More recent work examines the impact of increased participation on actual environmental outcomes, such as water quality, air emissions, or natural resource management (Beierle & Cayford, 2002; Chess, 2000; Leach, Pelkey, & Sabatier, 2002; Lubell, 2004; O'Rourke & Macey, 2003; Scheberle, 2000; Teske, 2000), along with questioning the desirability of increased citizen input in highly technical areas (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004; Steelman & Ascher, 1997; Wood, 1989). This body of work is informative: providing insight into why individuals become civically engaged, along with providing information on the impact of citizen or stakeholder participation.…”

A survey-based evaluation of community-based co-management of forest resources: a case study of Baishuijiang National Natural Reserve in China

“…Based on the past performance of many implemented programs, it is clear that after decades of intrusive sanctions and top-down decrees, a centralized government-based approach is more likely to yield a dismal outcome (Scheberle 2000). Centrally planned natural resource management systems have often suffered from faulty design and have been marked by inefficiencies and even corruption (Jusoff and Majid 1995;Agrawal and Gibson 1999;Buckles and Rusnak 1999;Kull 2002).…”

Key Principles of Community-Based Natural Resource Management: A Synthesis and Interpretation of Identified Effective Approaches for Managing the Commons

“…Some of the most recent review papers (Armitage 2005, Bradshaw 2003, Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2003, Leach and others 1999, Olsson and others 2004, Scheberle 2000 suggest numerous key characteristics attributed to or foundational for effective CBNRM. Research has also been focused on concerns as to why some community-based environmental management efforts have been more successful than others (Bradshaw 2003, Butler and Koontz 2005, Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2003, Agrawal and Gibson 1999, Thompson and others 2003, Zanetell and Knuth 2004.…”

“…The principles were also informed by recent research in broad areas. For example the principle: "Adaptive Leadership and Co-Management" is based on Olsson and Allan research (Olsson andothers 2004, Allan andCurtis 2005) and the principle "Participatory Decision Making" arose from the work of Newsom and Chalk (2004), Scheberle (2000), Webler and others (2001).…”