Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

Good intentions, bad legacies: A history of why natural resource management sometimes fails

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

In the latest issue of Ecology and Society (open access), Colin Beier and colleagues provide an interesting case study of the Tongass National Forest (Alaska), examining the social-ecological dynamics of resource systems and why they often fail–in the long term–to deliver either improvements in public welfare or ecological sustainability. It’s important to note that they’re talking about a paradigm typical of 19-20th Century USA (i.e., post-colonial people of European descent in North America).

What I like about this case study is its generality to several kinds of natural resources and the lessons it offers when considering development in the modern world.

You’ll see at the end that they describe a solution similar to the growing Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) movement promoted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  And you’ll see an example of the changing focus of The Nature Conservancy as they work to promote sustainable development alongside conservation.

An excerpt:

Government efforts to stimulate the development of natural resources for public benefit often seek to implement a vision at grand scales that, over time, creates a cycle of dependency that undermines the original social purpose as well as the resource base that was intended to be sustained. In the United States, this has occurred with respect to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, water, and many other types of resource systems.  Similar cycles of dependency have emerged through international aid programs to developing nations that were intended to create self-sufficiency through resource development. Although the goals of these programs are often socially admirable and provide an economic stimulus to initiate changes that would otherwise lack the resources to emerge —i.e., to escape from poverty traps —they often result in challenging social traps that can constrain options for future generations. Why have these governance efforts failed so consistently, and what lessons can be learned that would enlighten efforts to address new frontiers of resource governance and public welfare in a rapidly changing world?

What did they find?

First, a little history.  They broke down the story of the Tongass National Forest into four periods:

(1) Organization

• Federal managers developed broad visions of a self-sufficient economy based on timber.
• Primary forests were to be converted to secondary forests used for lumber and pulp.
• Timber demand by WWII war effort provided catalyst for large-scale clearcutting.
• An alliance was forged among Tongass managers, national policymakers, and the timber industry.  A common vision of industrial forestry was established. This was deemed to be the best path for economic development and ecological management of forests.  These stakeholders would become the “policy monopoly.”

(2) Growth

• Passage of the Tongass Timber Act (TTA, 1947) triggered full-scale infrastructure development.  Timber harvest rose to 20 times the level during the organization phase.
• The TTA solidified the policy monopoly of the above stakeholders.
• Land leases were heavily subsidized and distributed noncompetitively to the forest industry.
• The policy monopoly was eventually challenged by passage of environmental protection laws in the 1960s and 70s, including the Multiple Use Sustained Yield (MUSY) Act, which opened new avenues for rule making and policy debate.

(3) Conservation

• First ruling against clearcutting were passed in 1975 in the Tongass NF.
• National Forest Management Act affirmed MUSY policy, but left implementation objectives open to debate.  This had the effect of transferring the venue of debate to federal courts, where a strategy of legal obstructionism began paralyzing national forest management.
• Preservation of 1/3 of Tongass lands under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA, 1981) drew opposition from the traditional policy monopoly, which won a concession stipulating 4.5 billion board feet of timber harvests per decade (450 million per year)–irrespective of external market forces.
• Increased global competition started to cause declines in demand for Tongass timber.
• Despite these challenges, the policy monopoly was able to maintain control in the face of growing conservation demands and increased global competition because of the large concessions they gained through ANILCA.

(4) Collapse

• The non-competitive basis of lease allocation eventually drew criticism, and the passage of the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA, 1990) dismantled the policy monopoly.
• This resulted in (1) the 450 million board feet harvest per year concession being replaced by a policy to supply timber at a rate in accordance with market demand and (2) increased competition within the regional timber industry.
• In response, investors and the industry viewed the Tongass as no longer being profitable and predictable.  This occurred because of the loss of the concession mandating 4.5 billion board feet per decade, increased age and lower efficiency of Alaskan mills, a decline of timber exports in the world market, and high operating costs in southeast Alaska. Closure of paper and pulp mills became widespread.
• The Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP, 1997) brought about ecosystem management, species conservation, and wilderness preservation.

Some concluding excerpts from the authors:

Policy mobilized much of the initial growth, provided much of the stability during the conservation phase, and served to destabilize—at first incrementally and then rather suddenly—the industrial forestry regime of the Tongass. The changing economic context dictated the timing of policy implementation (growth phase) and eroded the resilience of the Tongass system during its collapse. We found that, in both the initiation and collapse of the Tongass system, transformative change occurred only when the adaptive cycles of two or more subsystems were in coherence—in other words, when some synergy existed in economic, political, and institutional components.

….As the glue that held the entire governance system together—i.e., coupling the institutional, economic, and policy subsytems of the Tongass into a rigid configuration—the dissolution of lease contracts had catastrophic consequences. Rigidity in the system, created initially to promote growth but increased over time as a mechanism to resist external changes, precluded any efforts to adapt or transform. Since collapse, Tongass governance has been largely incapable of reorganization.

….During the first severe price depression faced by the Tongass-based
industry, although the long-term leases and subsidies were considered safe, market volatility resulted in similar fluctuations in harvest output. When market prices recovered and stabilized, harvests rebounded to previous levels. In other words, when the policy subsystem was resilient, it afforded resilience to the economic subsystem by assuring investor confidence in the long-term leases and future profit potential. In contrast, when a second, but less severe, market downturn occurred in the early 1990s, the entire system collapsed, triggered by closure of the regional pulp mills and the subsequent termination of both lease contracts.

The Tongass adaptive cycle illustrates how “command-and-control” management–the attempt to control system variability, and the assumption that outcomes would be static and predictable—may emerge in the organizing principles of a resource system, be successful for a period of time, but eventually yield to catastrophic failure.

Overall, this approach created intrinsic vulnerabilities that were largely masked during the boom years of Tongass timber, but have left a multifaceted legacy that includes the current political stalemate, a less competitive regional industry, and concerns about capacity of managed forest watersheds to sustain local production of resources—including timber—essential for subsistence and commercial economies. Each of these outcomes points to the existence of “rigidity traps” preventing reorganization of the Tongass system to address new challenges and opportunities.

A more-sustainable future?

Recent developments suggest a potential pathway out of these rigidity traps and reorganization toward more sustainable governance of the Tongass. In 2000, with the cooperation of a regional environmental advocacy coalition, forest managers began a “microsale” program that offers very small quantities of very high-grade timber, relative to historical sales. These offers involve up to 50 000 board feet per sale, which may equate to as few as 10 individual trees; in contrast, standard clearcut harvest units typically range into several millions of board feet across hundreds of acres. With microsales, trees are harvested using selection logging and aerial yarding methods that have minimal ecological impact compared with the large clearcut harvests of the past five decades. Tongass microsales also meet local demand and provide opportunities for value-added manufacturing, and perhaps most importantly, all sales have involved competitive bidding and none have been challenged in court. Further advancements in cooperation and building trust among stakeholders are also evident. In 2006, the Tongass entered into its first-ever institutional partnership with an environmental organization—The Nature Conservancy of Alaska —to support community-based management of second-growth forests for improving wildlife habitat, future timber values, and several other ecosystem services. Both programs suggest an institutional change that may allow adaptation to new conditions. while allowing forest managers to continue to produce economic benefits for local communities, in part through timber production. At the same time, globalization and changes in national and global values have altered the economic context (e.g., through expanded ecotourism) and provided new ways in which the Tongass can provide valuable ecosystem services to society.

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/ / CC BY-SA 2.0