Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
PART II
Participation: Collaboration
Increasingly common in natural resource and ecosystem management, collaboration
is a process that requires an ongoing relationship between trusting partners who are
willing to surrender their own positions, if necessary, to reach shared goals. It is partic-
ipatory in a deeper sense than volunteering, networking, coordinating, or even coop-
erating because it demands more from the partners and the partnership. While not
easily achieved, collaboration is often the basis for moving forward in otherwise in-
tractable or litigious situations (i.e., “wicked problems”) as well as in settings where
people from various disciplines (e.g., ecology and social sciences) come together to
solve a common problem.
Javier Escalera Reyes introduces the collaboration theme with a theoretical discus-
sion of collective identification and building social group resilience. He then com-
pares two case studies—a failed participatory process from the Andalusia region of
Spain and a successful collaboration at a cooperative in rural Costa Rica. In these
cases, the key differences were style and scale of governance—the first being control-
ling and hierarchical, the second inclusive and heterarchical. Escalera Reyes con-
cludes, “the participation of local citizens is a critical factor in creating a sense of ter-
ritory and, ultimately, in increasing the resilience of the system as a whole.” Next, Nils
D. Christoffersen of Wallowa Resources, a local, nonprofit organization in northeast
Oregon, shares his experiences in collaborative, community-based restoration in a
case study of public land watershed restoration within a transforming rural region.
This chapter highlights the importance of trust and constructive relationships to suc-
cessful restoration under socially divisive circumstances. Christoffersen wraps up his
case study with an excellent list of lessons learned and keys to successful multiparty
collaboration. Mark S. Andre describes how citizens of the small town of Arcata, Cal-
ifornia, are engaged in the restoration of community-owned redwood forests. He
shows how a unique tenure arrangement provides opportunities to build new relation-
ships between people and degraded lands in need of restoration. Karen Hardigg's con-
cluding chapter explores the possibilities of a community-driven transition from wood
fiber extraction to ecological restoration in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Because
