Healthy Ecosystems...Healthy Communities

  Ruth McWilliams
  Session: Wednesday, April 19, 2000, 8:45-10:00 a.m.. Author Info 

ABSTRACT

The USDA-Forest Service has significant authorities and responsibilities for the stewardship of the nation’s forests and range lands, and is committed to the goal of sustainability. The agency works in urban and rural America; and is concerned about management on all the nation’s 736 million acres of forestlands?not only the 191 million acres of National Forest System lands. Sustainability links the health of ecosystems to the needs of people. Challenges today demand comprehensive responses, and the agency must collaborate with others to plan and implement actions. Progress will include our relationships and procedures as well as the results on the ground.

SUSTAINABILITY IS THE GOAL

The Forest Service (FS) has significant authorities and responsibilities for the stewardship of the nation’s forests and range lands, and is committed to the goal of sustainability. Sustainability is the foundation for planning, decision-making, natural resource management, and community development in the FS. It establishes a link between the health of ecosystems and the needs of people as well as a moral obligation to pass a healthy ecosystem and human society on to the next generation. It does reframe our approach to natural resource management and society’s approach to development.

Sustainability does imply limits. We are undergoing a fundamental change in our vision of what ecosystems are and how people appreciate, use, and interact within them. The best ecological approaches, however, will not maintain or enhance ecosystems unless they are integrated into a human context. Humans are an integral part of ecosystems. We must account for their involvement in built community settings as well as natural places out in the countryside and on private lands as well as public lands. And as leaders, we cannot myopically turn away from the effects of our decisions on local communities or other countries.

U.S. Commitment to Sustainability

In 1993, the United States (U.S.) declared its commitment to the sustainable management of the nation’s forests. Now 12 countries on 5 continents, representing 60 percent of the world’s forests, have agreed to use a common set of criteria and indicators to measure progress. The Criteria and Indicators (C&I) for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) describe forest conditions, benefits associated with environmental and socio-economic goods and services that forests provide, and the overall policy framework, institutions, and processes that enable society to achieve sustainable forest management.

Range and mineral interests are developing criteria and indicator frameworks as well. This work will give us a common language for integrating efforts across sectors, land ownerships, geographic areas, and scales.

When Americans think of the FS, many have in mind the 191 million acres of the National Forest System (NFS). The FS, however, works in urban as well as rural America and is concerned about management on non-Federal as well as Federal lands. America’s forests cover 33 percent of the nation’s land area, totaling 736 million acres owned and managed by a variety of Federal and non-Federal entities. Two-thirds are non-Federal?managed by tribal, State, and local units of government, corporations, plus nearly 10 million non-industrial private landowners. About 60 percent of the total forest acreage are privately owned.

In 1996 Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman formally recognized and reinforced the scope and importance of sustainability to the whole Department. Secretary’s Memorandum 9500-6 states support for policies, programs, activities, and education in sustainable development related to agriculture, forest management, and rural community development. These are three arenas in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has the lead within the Federal government.

Leadership Challenges

The need to work together is great and the potential is largely untapped. Today, leadership at all levels is challenged to work collaboratively. We must:

Leadership will take many forms. It is not necessary for leaders to have all the answers; and in fact, some suggest it is not about finding the solution, but increasing the capacity of individuals, organizations, and communities to work together to respond to constant changes. In the context of sustainability, leadership should focus on: COLLABORATION IS THE APPROACH

We believe there is a Federal role and national interest in working with tribal, State, and local governments as well as private landowners, organizations, and others to understand problems and make informed decisions about land use and natural resource management.

Diverse stakeholders and customers are coming together through a variety of ways. Nationally, there is a Roundtable on Sustainable Forests that strives to achieve active and meaningful participation by all sectors with an interest in sustainable forests. It is initially focusing on implementing the C&I for SFM.

In addition there is a growing number of organizations that focus on place-based approaches including: Communities Committee of the 7th American Forest Congress, National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, National Network of Forest Practitioners, Alliance for Community Trees, and many more. They bring together diverse interests concerned about sustainability, linking concerns about natural resource management and community development. They use a variety of planning, management, and education tools to accomplish their work in towns, cities, watersheds, and other geographically defined places all across the country.

Communities are Key

Increasingly, communities — communities of interests and communities of place — are being seen as the key. Interest-based communities include people who interact and link through networks and values they share. Place-based communities consist of people who reside in and identify with a specific locality, interact socially, and cooperate to meet common needs. As a Federal agency we must build stronger and more trusting relationships with and between interest- and place-based communities to make progress on national issues as well as to address local management needs.

Approaches to planning, decision-making, natural resource management, and community development vary greatly depending on land ownership and management responsibilities as well as the issues confronting different parts of the country. In the east, for instance, where most forestland is privately owned, forest fragmentation is a big and growing issue especially in urbanizing areas; and very much part of "smart growth" discussions in places like Atlanta and the Washington D.C./Baltimore area. In the west, where much forestland is managed by the Federal government, a big issue is watershed restoration and fire protection related to fuel loading on public lands. A continuum of collaborative approaches is being used — from informal to formal and local to national.

Benefits of Collaboration

Collaboration is the way to accomplish most planning. The benefits are tremendous. Over the last ten years we have identified the following benefits through case studies and lessons learned workshops:

Some common characteristics of these collaborative planning activities include: We also recognize that collaboration is not always the best approach to use?especially when the deal is already done, there is no decision space, unrealistic goals and deadlines exist, immediate action is needed, or interested parties are just too polarized.

Currently, the FS is revising the regulations for NFS Land and Resource Management Planning. They include sustainability and collaborative participation in the goals.

Commitment to Action

Using collaboration to talk, learn, and plan, however, is not enough for the FS. It must include a commitment to action, resulting in purposeful work being done on the ground and in communities. The diversity and number of individuals, agencies, and organizations that care about and share stewardship responsibilities is huge.

The FS is committed to improving the agency’s credibility, desire, and capacity to collaborate with all forest users, owners, and interests as a way to improve relationships among stakeholders who share stewardship responsibilities. In practice, efforts fall short when we work in isolation, manage along administrative lines, and ignore how our activities affect other landowners, managers, communities, and other neighbors in the watershed.

Collaborative stewardship to the FS is:

People working together, sharing knowledge and resources,
to achieve desired goals that can’t be reached individually. Examples from the east and west demonstrate our ability to focus on healthy ecosystems and healthy communities in collaborative ways. The roles and responsibilities from one place to another greatly differ among public and private landowners as well as government and non-government organizations. There have been successes and failures within each. Each evolved organically to address its own reality.

Example. The Ponderosa Pine Forest Partnership (PPFP) in Southwest Colorado is forging new relationships among communities and government agencies to restore a forest. It is addressing economic and ecological problems with community resources. The roots of the partnership go back to 1992 when it became clear that the national forest timber program was declining and there were growing land use conflicts between ‘Traditional West’ and ‘New West’ constituencies. No roadmap existed to show answers to demands for forest health and community support of the local timber industry. The effort is part of a larger Community-Public Land Partnership that is guided by a set of six principles: Transformational Leadership, Building Relationships, Sharing Knowledge,

Sharing Values, Constructive Action, and Adaptive Management. The PPFP is doing ecological assessments; using demonstration sites to treat segments of the forest with combinations of controlled fire and tree thinning and to monitor impacts of restoration on vegetation and wildlife; doing product development and marketing research for small-diameter pine; and making linkages with broader regional restoration initiatives as well as the administrative policies and collaborative capacities of the FS. Their lessons were shared with a Committee of Scientists appointed by the FS to make recommendations for revising the NFS Land and Resource Management Planning regulations. A case study was published in April 1999 by the Office of Community Services at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

Example. The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) is an interagency regional partnership that directs and conducts restoration and management of the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay watershed encompasses 41 million acres of land in six states and as of 1990, forests accounted for more than 58 percent of its land area. Governance is provided by an Executive Council of three Governors (Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia), the Mayor of Washington, D.C., and the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The CBP involves 13 Federal agencies and a multitude of advisory committees representing local government, citizens, and scientists. A Forestry Work Group is harnessing the abilities and networks of forestry interests to accomplish forest protection, restoration, and stewardship. The FS joined the CBP in 1989 through a Memorandum of Understanding and serves as the facilitator and convener of the Forestry Work Group. Lessons learned include: build a scientific foundation, lead by setting goals, ensure a diversity of participants, inform the public, adapt and reassess direction, provide incentives for collaboration, use a balanced approach, and demonstrate results. The forest issues being addressed include land consumption and land use conversion, quality versus distribution of forests throughout the basin, integration of forest retention with land use planning and development, and retaining the Bay’s forests. Published reports about the CBP are available from the EPA and the FS.

Breadth of Opportunities

There are lots of ways for us to work together on challenges that demand comprehensive responses. Three emerging opportunities exist to work in partnership to address significant environmental, social, and economic issues. These efforts can help achieve important national goals as well as solve local problems.
 

  1. Through Large Scale Watershed Restoration Projects we are using collaborative planning and stewardship to demonstrate innovative ways and new approaches to improve watershed, forest, range, water, and habitat conditions at a large scale in ways that can help reconnect communities to their watersheds. Through combined national and local funding we are helping accelerate implementation in 12 priority watersheds that involve multiple counties and multiple states (e.g., New York City watershed, Chesapeake Bay watershed, Lower Mississippi Valley, Upper South Platte River, Pacific Coastal watersheds, etc.).
  2. Using a ‘working lands’ concept we are partnering with a variety of organizations to protect farm, ranch, and forest lands, especially in urbanizing areas. A commitment to maintaining ‘working lands’ as part of the landscape underpins the "Keep America Growing" effort being led by the American Farmland Trust and other organizations to raise awareness about the importance of prime farm, ranch, and forests lands. A national conference was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in June 1999, to better understand the different perspectives and begin to integrate disparate efforts.
  3. A number of agencies and organizations are committed to helping communities integrate ‘Green Infrastructure’ in local and regional plans. ‘Green Infrastructure’ is our country’s natural life support system of watersheds, woodlands, wildlife habitats, parks, and open spaces, including farm, ranch, and forest lands. A growing network of government and non-government organizations, including the American Planning Association, is working together to incorporate ‘green’ like the ‘gray’ infrastructure of roads, sewers, and water systems into planning and investments. A basic course, known as ‘Green Infrastructure 101,’ will be pilot tested by the State of Maryland.
MAKING AND MEASURING PROGRESS

Making and measuring progress together is critical to our success. Progress will be made if we:

When collaborative processes are used, progress needs to be measured objectively in ways that inform us all. Progress includes relationship and procedural issues as well as substantive issues. ‘Relationships’ and ‘procedures’ serve as the foundation for dealing with the content of conflicts or the tangible issues and problems to be resolved. The ‘relationship’ component includes the stakeholders and their positions and interests, their relationship histories, incentives for being involved, the knowledge and skills they possess, and the level of trust among them. The ‘procedural’ issues are the processes used to make decisions or the rules that govern the interaction.

The FS has land management decision authority on NFS lands. Our vested interest, however, in sustainable forest management is much broader. We can provide science-based information, technical specialists, and additional support through funding and other resources.

Together we can connect people and work as well as link and measure progress across the landscape — from specific sites, to communities, to states, and to large watersheds.

We must make the connections and investments if we are to pass healthy ecosystems and healthy communities on to the next generation.

Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2000 By Author

Ruth McWilliams
National Sustainable Development Coordinator
Office of the Chief
USDA - Forest Service
Washington, D.C.

Ruth is a native of New York State. She was raised on a family-owned dairy farm along the St. Lawrence River in the heart of the Thousand Islands region.

She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Ecology from Cornell University in 1976. In graduate school she focused on public policy, obtaining a Master of Science degree in consumer economics from the University of Maryland in 1978.

Since 1978, Ruth has worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During the last 22 years, she has worked for 3 different agencies in 3 different mission areas of the Department (rural development, marketing and inspection, and natural resources).

In November 1989, Ruth joined the Forest Service where she now serves as the agency's National Sustainable Development Coordinator. This is a new position for the Forest Service as of January 2000. Ruth reports to the Chief Operating Officer who chairs a multi-stakeholder forum called the Roundtable on Sustainable Forests. In this job she also serves on USDA's Council on Sustainable Development and is helping lead Federal sustainable development work. During the last year she acted as USDA's Deputy Director of Sustainable Development. In this capacity, she worked with agencies throughout USDA to pull together a package of commitments made by Deputy Secretary Rominger at the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America in Detroit, Michigan, in May 1999.

Prior to taking the new assignment, Ruth worked for 10 years in Cooperative Forestry. During those years she was responsible for programs related to Urban and Community Forestry, Landowner Assistance, Economic Action/Rural Community Assistance, and Conservation Education. Through these programs the Forest Service assists private landowners and communities (rural and urban), helping to make sustainable forest management real to people where they live and work.

Ruth's background and experiences give her a strong foundation and a broad, yet practical understanding of Federal policies and programs from varying perspectives. She can be contacted by e-mailing to rmcwilliams@fs.fed.us or calling (202) 205-1373.