UNCG: News from the Network — November 2009

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UNCG 2010 Meeting - From Reactive to Proactive: Implementing Collaborative Governance in Changing Times

UNC School of Government February 28 - March 2, 2010

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, School of Government

Co-hosted by UNC's School of Government and North Carolina State University's Natural Resource Leadership Institute

Please join the members of the University Network for our annual meeting in 2010!

We will begin with dinner and an opening session on Sunday, February 28th, continue with an all day meeting on Monday, March 1, and adjourn by 4pm on Tuesday, March 2. Meetings will take place at UNC Chapel Hill's School of Government and at the nearby Siena Hotel, where we are reserving a group of rooms for the rate of $84.18 (with tax) per night.

The deadline to reserve a room at this group rate is Friday, January 29, 2010. Reservations under the group code "University Network for Collaborative Governance" must be made by phone ( 919-929-4000).

Registration is now open through January 29, 2010. Download a registration form from the meeting webpage, which will include a full agenda and other materials as they are developed.

For more information, contact Sarah Giles at PCI or one of our three co-hosts, John Stephens (UNC), Mary Lou Addor (NC State), or Steve Smutko (NC State).

Announcement: Conservatives, Liberals, Dialogue, and Justice Work Group Welcomes New Members

The Democracy Imperative

This working group will consider the claims that more conservative perspectives are chilled on college campuses – as well as related claims about the political inclinations of deliberative democracy advocates and practitioners more broadly. We can probably all agree that we want to create neutral, welcoming spaces for all voices and perspectives, both in the classroom and in public life, but are we realizing that goal? Is it true that, for example, the term “social justice” implies a liberal agenda? How problematic is that – or are we just getting stuck in semantics? We’ll consider how we frame and manage matters for classroom and public discussion, particularly when those matters have implications for social and political equity and other core democratic values.

Organizers: Bob Stains, Public Conversations Project, and Nancy Thomas, The Democracy Imperative
Start-up date: Nov. 1, 2009
Duration and product: to be determined by the group
Means of communication: teleconferences, email, wiki, and Webinars

Find more information on other TDI working groups, many of which emerged from this summer's No Better Time conference.

Profile in Collaboration: Dr. Jane Lubchenco

Dr. Jane Lubchenco

by Linda Stamato, CNCR/Rutgers

The  appointment of Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the U.S. government’s premier science agencies, provides us with a superb example of a federal agency leader who is  advancing the process and heightening the visibility of collaborative decision-making.

A career marine ecologist and former faculty member at Oregon State University until her appointment, she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Lubchenco is widely regarded as tough, smart, and respectful of science and deeply committed to the survival and growth of America’s fisheries.

In 1997, as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Lubchenco called for an effort to help policy-makers take steps to sustain the biosphere.  The following year, she founded the Leopold Leadership Program that trains environmental researchers in communication, policy-making and related skills.  She helped to organize the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea, and was a founding member of Climate Central, a web site she describes as providing “credible and non-advocacy” information on global warming (New York Times: March 24, 2009). In 2004, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski appointed Lubchenco to co-convene an Advisory Group on Global Warming and develop recommendations on an Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reductions. The group utilized the services that the National Policy Consensus Center and the Oregon Consensus program at Portland State University provide as neutral forums for consensus-building.

Seeing science as a social contract, her approach to decision-making is collaborative, engaging the public and public officials in scientific and technical issues; she challenges the way science is typically practiced. As the New York Times editorialized,  “She will need all of these qualities and more when she confronts what could be her first major test—possibly the most vexing of her tenure—devising a workable and broadly acceptable solution to the grave threats facing the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest” (April 11, 2009).

And, it could have added, ending overfishing in America’s coastal waters.

In New England, she created a system in which fishermen work together to decide who will fish and where—a cooperative venture to remedy “the race to catch the last fish”--in which fishermen spend more time, money and fuel to catch fewer and fewer fish.  A “catch share” system, apportioning catches decided through collaboration, gives fishermen a powerful motive to fish “sustainably,” because the value of their share rises as fish stocks increase.  Both the process and the method are collaborative.  The model, sector fishing (also known as “dedicated access” fisheries), is being applied to halibut fishing in Alaska and to surf clam fishing in the mid-Atlantic; eleven additional fisheries are in development.  The impact of this approach is already proving to be significant, and her convening role in bringing fishing communities, scientists, regulators and others together was commended for overcoming "a legacy of bitterness and distrust, to make good decisions on the nation’s fisheries" (New York Times: April 11, 2009).

During the summer, Lubchenco announced that her agency would provide $16 million to finance collaborative research efforts by fisherman and scientists on fish abundance, gear design and other issues and, as well, for fishing monitoring systems to support the sector approach. A global assessment of the world's saltwater fish and their environments that appeared in Science, “Rebuilding Global Fisheries," proposes that two groups normally at odds with one another, ecologists and fishing management specialists, collaborate to both safely exploit specific natural resources and conserve them (July 31, 2009). The paper was prepared by and represents the view of both groups and, thus, is likely to generate more influence.  Indeed, according to a NOAA representative,  “Getting a strong statement from those communities that there is more to agree on than to disagree on builds confidence”  (New York Times: July 31, 2009).

Now, as the Obama Administration calls for a comprehensive national system for regulating the use of federal waters, administered currently by a hodgepodge of federal, state and other agencies with goals that often conflict, Jane Lubchenco is in the lead carrying the banner for a more integrated approach.

Both the private Pew Oceans Commission and the federal US Ocean Commission had urged the establishment of a wide-ranging federal regulatory regime for the coast in reports in 2003 and 2004.  In a statement, in September of 2009, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, a collaboration between these two commissions, said Obama’s new effort would “significantly advance the effort to develop a strong, cohesive and effective” management system for federal waters.

With Lubchenco in place, it’s likely to be a collaborative effort.

Resources, Tools, and Reports : Blog from the Road to Copenhagen, New Book on Building Support for Participatory Government, and Studies on Early Childhood Needs

tools

 

Please send comments and suggestions.