Ecosystem management, decentralization, and public opinion

Global Environmental Change 11 (2001) 119}131

Ecosystem management, decentralization, and public opinion Brent S. Steel *, Edward Weber
Department of Political Science, 307 Socieal Science Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-6206, USA
Department of Political Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4880, USA Received 23 March 1999

Abstract In recent years there has been a movement by administrators and policymakers across the country to reorganize and reinvent government to improve program e$ciencies, to harness resources outside government in the service of public policy goals, and to better facilitate the input of a!ected interests and the general public. Central to this e!ort are innovative, decentralized institutional arrangements which delegate signi"cant authority either to private citizens, program managers within existing bureaucracy, or market-based mechanisms. Ecosystem- and watershed-based management, which seek to both prevent pollution and sustain development, are in the vanguard of this movement. This paper examines this trend toward decentralizing environmental policy and the use of ecosystem management from the perspective of the public. Planning and implementation of devolved environmental policy will require the support of local stakeholders and citizens. Using data from a national public opinion survey conducted during the summer of 1998, the paper examines factors associated with public acceptability of ecosystem management and the preferred level of government and citizen participation that should be involved in the implementation of such management strategies.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The emergence of the United States as a postindustrial society has led to an increasing array of social and political problems which confound federal agencies' ability to implement e!ective policy decisions. One of these problems is what may be termed the `democracy and technocracy quandarya, or the democracy and science quandary (Pierce et al., 1992). As a postindustrial society, the US faces many policy problems that are highly technical and increasingly scienti"c in nature. Issues that "t this description include, among others, proper use of dwindling natural resources and environmental degradation. Similarly, policy-making related to managing ecosystems involves complex issues in which substantial amounts of technical and scienti"c information are critical to decision-making processes. At the same time the United States is a democratic system of governance that, over the past several decades, has experienced a notice-

* Corresponding author. Tel.: #541-737-6133; fax: #541-737-2289. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B.S. Steel), edweber@mail. wsu.edu (E. Weber).

able growth in distrust of government, traditionally conceived (i.e., elected representatives and expert bureaucracy), and increasing public demands for citizen involvement in governance (Steel and Lovrich, 1997; Orren, 1997). The concern is that the relationship between participation (democracy) and scienti"c expertise (technocracy) is mutually exclusive in character. On the one hand, placing too much emphasis on science and expertise as the ultimate determinants of policy outcomes risks the erosion of democracy (Kuklinski et al., 1982, pp. 615}616). On the other hand, too much democracy (i.e., direct involvement of citizens in policymaking and implementation) may relegate technical and scienti"c information to a peripheral role and increase the probability that complex problems will either be ignored or addressed in a suboptimal manner. As well, there is concern that the public's distrust of the scienti"c community (Steel, et al., 1992}1993; Steel and Lovrich, 1997) will translate into less public funding for the study of ecosystems and other complex phenomena, further hindering capacity to make e!ective policy. The question is: can technocracy and democracy be reconciled? Will the American public support more technocracy (science) and more citizen participation/control (democracy) at the same time?

0959-3780/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 3 7 8 0 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 6 2 - 5

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These questions are important for the study of environmental and natural resources management because recent developments highlight and exacerbate the tension found within the technocracy}democracy quandary. The growing embrace of ecosystem management (EM) across agencies and levels of government elevates the role of science as a tool for understanding environmental policy issues/problems. EM is the key that deciphers the relationships within nature, and between humans and nature. Within this management approach, science and scienti"c experts necessarily exert critical in#uence on policy choices and program design. Yet there is a concurrent movement toward more democracy as administrators and policymakers across the country reorganize and reinvent government. Central to this e!ort are innovative, decentralized institutional arrangements which delegate or share signi"cant authority with private citizens, program managers within existing bureaucracy, or other agencies with similar jurisdictional and policy concerns. The "elds of environmental, natural resources, and public lands policy have been notably a!ected by the larger reinventing government movement as the limits of top-down regulatory approaches to environmental protection have been promulgated by academics and practitioners alike (Beardsley et al., 1997; Weber, 1998). Many now contend that e!ective environmental programs require complex, collaborative partnerships among diverse government, civic, and business actors at the state and local levels (Chertow and Esty, 1997; John, 1994; Knopman, 1996). Clearly, both EM and the movement to devolve, or share, authority with local citizens and other stakeholders `reinventa the existing model for managing the environment. Yet are the twin e!orts to reinvent natural resources management working at cross purposes such that the technocracy}democracy quandary is becoming more di$cult to resolve? Can the co-evolving trends of EM and decentralized control of environmental policy be reconciled one to the other? Moreover, successfully changing the way we manage nature is likely to require broad public support, especially from local stakeholders and citizens, each of whom will play far more substantial roles in policymaking and implementation. Does the American public support EM? What about devolution? This paper examines the dual trends toward ecosystem management and decentralized, participatory environmental policy from the perspective of the general public. Using data from a national public opinion survey conducted during the summer of 1998, the paper examines factors associated with public knowledge and acceptability of ecosystem management and devolved environmental management in the United States. Before examining survey results, however, we will present a brief historical perspective concerning the reinvention of public lands and natural resources management in the

United States, followed by a discussion of the possible correlates of public acceptability of such new approaches. The next section will examine public orientations and preferences concerning EM and the preferred level of government for implementing environmental policy. A concluding section provides some discussion concerning the questions posed above. Our "ndings indicate that signi"cant numbers of citizens support the EM approach, devolution (state and local government as the best levels to implement EM), and citizen participation in EM. What this suggests is that institutional arrangements focused on EM, but implemented with the involvement of state and local governments is likely to "nd broad support from the public in large part because such institutions meet the technocracy}democracy quandary head on.

2. Devolving authority and reinventing government Administrators and policymakers across the country are reorganizing and reinventing government to improve program e$ciencies, to harness resources outside government in the service of public policy goals, and to better facilitate the input of state-level interests, private sector groups, and the general public (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993). The move to share bureaucratic decision-making power with citizens and personnel in the lower reaches of organizational hierarchies, to embrace collaborative public}private and public}private}NGO (non-governmental organization) partnerships, and to reject dense rule structures and hierarchy as necessary components of an e$cient and/or accountable public administration is occurring across a broad range of policy areas, including community policing (Bayley, 1994), tax administration (Sparrow, 1994), education (Matthews, 1996), elements of the federal Job Opportunities in the Business Sector (JOBS) program (Bardach and Lesser, 1996, pp. 206}207), rural development (Radin et al., 1996), and public health (Walters, 1997, pp. 160}162). To date, it is clear that reinvention has not only taken hold and gained a signi"cant foothold at all three levels of American government, it now enjoys considerable political backing (Lan and Rosenbloom, 1992), not the least of which comes from Vice President Al Gore's concerted e!orts to `reinventa the federal bureaucracy. The propensity to adopt alternative institutional arrangements premised on decentralization, collaboration, and citizen participation is especially pronounced in the environmental and natural resources policy world (Kraft and Scheberle, 1998). Regulatory negotiation, which actively involves a broad range of stakeholders in the speci"cation and implementation of regulations, has become more widely used for federal pollution control programs (Weber, 1998, p. 256). EPA has developed the

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Common Sense Initiative (CSI) in league with corporate America, state regulators, national environmentalists, and locally based environmental justice groups. Their goal is to encourage innovation by providing #exibility and to rationalize existing regulatory rules for each industrial sector through the use of a place-by-place approach to achieving pollution control standards (US EPA, 1994). EPA's Project XL (Excellence and Leadership), announced in 1996, is a series of pilot projects that follows the lead of CSI. Project XL authorizes site-based stakeholder collaboratives `2to allow industrial facilities to replace the current regulatory system with alternative strategies if the result achieve[s] greater environmental bene"tsa (US Congress 1996, p. 10). In the Western United States, more than 100 coalitions of environmentalists, ranchers, county commissioners, federal and state government o$cials, loggers, skiers and o!-road vehicle enthusiasts are cooperating in an attempt to improve ecosystem and public, as well as private, lands management arrangements (Johnson, 1993; Jones, 1996; McClellan, 1996). The decentralized, collaborative grass-roots ecosystem management arrangements work within the larger framework of national laws, not in lieu of them, to prevent degradation, to provide long-term, holistic solutions to complex local problems, and to enhance the degree of local oversight and implementation expertise. Collaboration is viewed as a way to customize one-size-"ts-all national laws to the particular conditions of individual ecosystems and communities (Applegate Partnership, 1996). Dan Daggett, a member of the Toiyabe Wetlands and Watersheds Management Team in Nevada, not only "nds hope in collaborative consensus-based mechanisms, seeing them as harbingers of progress in the battle against environmental degradation, he decries the futility of conventional politics, lawsuits and, by implication, traditional administrative arrangements used to manage the environment. Explains Daggett: [t]hat's why ... when it's time for the biennial bloodletting we call elections, I won't be lea#eting neighborhoods, calling voters or putting up signs. I'll be out in the world of trees and grass and bugs and streams. Sleeves rolled up, I'll be with one of a number of groups of ranchers, vegetarians, wise-users, and Earth First!ers I've been working with for a couple of years now. Together, we'll be celebrating small successes that can be measured in green meadows, healing riparian areas and increased biodiversity2 I had been a soldier in the environmental wars for so long}22 years}I had forgotten how uplifting it is to be part of a group of people who don't paint the world in shades of guilt and look for someone to blame2 And we get better results than the politicians do when they try to solve our problems for us (Daggett, 1995, pp. 1}2).

Government o$cials at the state and local level also have ample incentive to try something new. Brown and

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Marshall (1996) report that: [s]tates began considering alternate and #exible management techniques during the mid-1990s to address the inadequacy of standards set primarily for human health, environmental impacts across multiple media, and the carrying capacity of entire water bodies or ecosystems. In addition, state agencies recognized the need to coordinate their e!orts with those of local governments, business, and private landowners. State environmental directors have become vocal about the lack of #exibility a!orded by the US EPA in the programs it delegated to the states. Some problems the directors cited included excessive oversight, unrealistic standards, and lack of #exibility for implementing the programs in arid and/or rural regions (p. 721).

Others like Daniel Kemmis, the former mayor of Missoula, Montana, endorse the burgeoning use of collaborative e!orts by pointing to the limited capacity of centralized, federal management, and the futility of the con#ict-based `us versus thema approaches adopted by ideologues on both sides of environmental issues: I do not believe ... that any solution coming from one end of the political spectrum or the other is going to have the capacity to do what this landscape requires. The danger is that one ideology or another will win a temporary victory because we did not work hard enough to "nd common ground (as cited in Jones, 1996, p. 2).

The use of decentralized collaborative methods is growing at other levels of government as well. Barry Rabe's (1994) book, Beyond NIMBY, examines the phenomena in the United States and Canada within the context of local hazardous waste siting decisions. DeWitt John (1994), in Civic Environmentalism, explores state-level collaborative games designed to resolve environmental issues associated with wetlands in the Florida Everglades, pesticides in Iowa, and energy conservation in Colorado. Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland

 In a study of government e!orts to site hazardous waste facilities, Rabe (1994) demonstrates the e!ectiveness of locally based collaborative e!orts. Decision-making arrangements involving industry, government, and the a!ected communities have produced positive results in siting such waste in the United States and Canada. The key is that these collaborative e!orts are constructed at the local level, rather than imposed by a central government whose experts identify the `besta location for the waste site. Direct participation of the general public in the process has been essential to the success.  John (1994) argues that the real innovation and progress in environmental protection * a `new paradigma of environmental policymaking called civic environmentalism * is centered at the state-level of governance. Civic environmentalism relies on the collaborative dynamic and, much like the collaborative games described herein, emphasizes bottom-up participation and assistance in policy design, informationsharing, iterative negotiations, and a willingness to choose from a broad variety of non-regulatory and non-coercive policy approaches. Cases of policymaking examining pesticides in Iowa, energy conservation in Colorado, and wetlands in Florida are used to make the point that signi"cant future progress in the battle against environmental degradation may well require broader application of the new collaborative paradigm.

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(forthcoming) document the growth of collaborative methods in natural resources decision-making as part of a larger project focused on the emergence of a more participatory, inclusive, and deliberative form of democracy. In the Ricelands Habitat Venture involving Ducks Unlimited, the National Audubon Society, the California Commissioner of Reclamation, and the California Rice Industry Association, among others, rice farmers agreed to alter traditional practices so that their "elds can be turned into wetlands during the winter months, thereby providing critical wintering habitat for migrating waterfowl along the Paci"c Flyway (Reinhold, 1992). In New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation has conducted joint exploratory ventures creating integrated pollution management and prevention programs.

3. Managing ecosystems and watersheds Over the past 10}15 years, EM has gained a growing legion of supporters in the political arena and the natural resources management "eld (Haueber, 1996). President Clinton and Vice President Gore have consistently supported EM through policy initiatives like the Northwest Forest Plan (in response to the Northern Spotted Owl) and the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan (ICBEMP), which covers over 60 million acres in several western states. Katie McGinty, President Clinton's director of the Council on Environmental Quality, created and managed the federal Interagency Ecosystem Management Task Force, which sought to identify and promote successful cases of ecosystem management. Bruce Babbitt, Clinton's Secretary of the Interior, promotes EM any chance he gets, whether through BLM's resource advisory councils, US Fish and Wildlife's habitat conservation plans under the Endangered Species Act, or in policy statements. Governors John Kitzhaber of Oregon and Gary Locke of Washington have endorsed the principles of EM as central components of their attempts to save declining Paci"c salmon and steelhead stocks (Oregonian, 1998). Oregon, Idaho, and California have adopted legislation encouraging the application of EM principles at the watershed scale. Moreover, Ya!ee et al. (1996) have identi"ed over 600 cases of what they call cooperative EM in the US, while Weber (forthcoming) describes the emergence of hundreds of grass-roots ecosystem management initiatives over the past 10 years (see also Rieke and Kenney, 1997). In short, EM has rapidly become the management

 Testimony of Thomas Jorling, Commissioner of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Taking Stock hearings (1993, pp. 158}159).

philosophy of choice for many national and state natural resource agencies, including the US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, among others. While EM has many de"nitions, the former head of the US Forest Service Dale Robertson describes it as `a multiple use philosophy built around ecological principles, sustainability, and a strong land stewardship ethic, with a better recognition of the spiritual values and natural beauty of forestsa (Robertson, 1991, p. 19). According to Brunson (1992, p. 8), Robertson's description implies that management practices on public lands must meet certain requirements, including: (1) they must be ecologically sustainable, directing public lands toward a desired future condition which embodies the complexity of ecosystem interrelationships at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, (2) they must be economically feasible, meeting societal demands for the myriad products of forests and public lands at a cost that does not exceed the priced and unpriced bene"ts gained, and (3) they must be socially acceptable, re#ecting a sensitivity toward recreational, aesthetic, spiritual, and other noncommodity values of public lands. The acceptance of an environment and economy approach to managing nature is facilitated in part by the science underlying EM. EM science borrows from the `impacta science approach and the chaos model of ecology. In the former case, the interactive e!ects of societal decisions are judged according to how they impact the whole of the ecological complex. As such, impact science evokes an overriding concern with the quality of nature * biodiversity matters * as opposed to a conservationist focus on the commodi"cation and quanti"cation of nature. EM explicitly recognizes the value of the ecological `servicesa provided by healthy nature (e.g., #ood and water quality control by wetlands, waste assimilation, nutrient recycling) and the detrimental impacts of habitat

 Grazing reform regulations issued in 1995 (August 21) incorporate ecosystem management principles, such as socially de"ned goals and objectives and collaborative decision-making (see Haueber, 1996, p. 3).  The August 1996 volume of Ecological Applications contains the endorsement of ecosystem management by eight senior federal o$cials, including chief executives for the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, and US Fish and Wildlife. Although ecosystem management is not the dominant management paradigm at EPA, the agency has established a Sustainable Ecosystems and Communities Clearinghouse (SECC) which is run by the O$ce of Sustainable Ecosystems and Communities (OSEC). OSEC views itself as a broker, educator, advocate, analyst, and "nancier with the primary objexctive of `2foster[ing] the implementation of an integrated, geographic approach to environmental protection that emphasizes ecological integrity and the associated improvements in economic sustainability and quality of lifea (Kraft and Scheberle, 1998, p. 141}142).

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fragmentation on biodiversity (Costanza and Folke, 1997, p. 17; Haueber, 1996, p. 2). Moreover, ecosystem management implies more collaboration among stakeholders, public and private, as established legal and administrative jurisdictions are ignored in favor of biophysical and ecological boundaries. The new focus encourages existing institutions to work together for the purpose of achieving ecological sustainability. From the perspective of a growing number of federal and state resource managers, EM is both a pragmatic attempt to solve increasingly intricate and complex problems of natural resources management and an opportunity to improve government performance by catalyzing as many resources as possible in support of public goals.

4. Determining support for devolution and ecosystem management The widespread embrace of EM by managers and the accompanying trends toward the devolution of policymaking authority and implementation responsibilities simultaneously increase the importance of citizens and local communities (democracy) and science (technocracy) in the policy process. In both cases, programmatic successes as well as long-term program viability are highly unlikely without broad public support. It is therefore important to understand public perceptions and the degree of acceptability of ecosystem management as applied to public lands and natural resources. It is also important to test the level of (dis)comfort citizens have with various levels of government, particularly as it applies to the use of ecosystem management. The following section "rst describes the sources of public orientations toward ecosystem management, and then explains the methodology and units of measurement employed in our national public opinion survey on EM conducted in the summer of 1998. 4.1. Correlates of support for EM A number of authors have addressed various aspects of the relationship between social values and attitudes toward natural resources and the environment (e.g., Brown and Harris, 1992). These discussions imply that the current debate about the disposition of ecosystems in the US is, at heart, not only a professional and technological debate, but a debate about how forest ecosystems should be de"ned philosophically. The di!erences between the more traditional, anthropocentric view of forests and the emerging biocentric view thus cannot be settled by an appeal to facts alone (see Greber and Johnson, 1991). Factual information does not speak for itself; it exists in a cultural context, within a set of assumptions about its relevance, and these assumptions include important

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value orientations (Dake and Wildavsky, 1991). It is a society's underlying values, to a large degree, that determine which facts will count as important. For these reasons, it is important to understand what those values are and determine their connections with other relevant social, political and cultural factors. Based on a number of recent social assessments, it is our judgement that public orientations concerning EM are in#uenced by a variety of factors (e.g., Steel and Lovrich, 1997). Primary in#uences include sociodemographic characteristics, self or group interest, and value orientations. 4.2. Sociodemographic factors Group-based social attributes have been found to be important determinants of environmental values and behavior (Milbrath, 1984; Siegelman and Yanarella, 1986; Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980, 1981). Among the most commonly employed measures are gender, age, and education. Age is a widely used variable in evaluating environmental orientation. Citizens in Western democracies born after World War II are considered to be more likely than older persons to focus on environmental concerns (Dalton, 1988; Inglehart, 1991; Pierce et al., 1992); consequently, age (as an indicator of cohort) is an important background factor in any environmental study. In addition, there may be a link between orientations toward EM and gender. There is some evidence to suggest that women are socialized to perceive moral dilemmas in terms of interpersonal relationships, and to seek to resolve them by an ethic of care. Men, in contrast, may tend to perceive moral dilemmas in terms of more impersonal features of situations and to resolve them by appeal to rules of justice and rights (Gilligan, 1982). This di!erential socialization experience might lead women to take a more (personally) protective and biocentered view toward nature (see Mohai, 1992; Steger and Witt, 1989) and therefore more supportive of EM while men would tend to be more negative in their orientations. Level of formal educational attainment is included in this analysis because it is broadly associated with having a strong impact on environmental orientations (Milbrath, 1984; Steel et al., 1990). Those individuals with higher levels of educational attainment are signi"cantly more likely to have value orientations sympathetic to environmental concerns when compared to individuals with less formal education. According to Howell and Laska (1992), this relationship is not surprising because `2the evidence on both sides of an environmental issue frequently addresses a very complex etiology of causes comprehended more easily by the better educateda (p. 141). We hypothesize this relationship to hold true for orientations toward EM, with higher levels of formal education associated with acceptance of EM.

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The last sociodemographic variable included in this study is place of residence * rural versus urban. Some studies have suggested that urban populations are much more likely to have pro-environmental values as a result of better access to information and educational opportunities, and because they `are more likely to experience environmental problems "rsthand due to industrial activities and high concentrations of peoplea (Howell and Laska, 1992, p. 141; see also Brunson et al., 1997). If this relationship holds true for orientations toward EM, then we hypothesize more positive orientations in the relatively tree-less urban areas than in the countryside. This is consistent with the idea of wilderness as a desirable place and interest in wilderness preservation has grown out of our urban culture (Nash, 1973). 4.3. Interest factors Two important factors which would obviously a!ect value orientations toward forests are attachment to a natural resource extraction industry or membership in an environmental organization. An individual's orientation toward EM may very well be in#uenced by where they stand in relation to the productive arrangements of society (see Steel and Lovrich, 1997). Persons who rely on natural resource extraction or agriculture for their economic well being, for example, are more likely to look at commodity interests as most bene"cial and may be cynical concerning EM because of its focus on sustainability and ecosystem protection. Environmentalists, on the other hand, may tend to view forests and watersheds in terms of broader public goals and to promote the preservation of natural resources (Dennis and Zube, 1988; Hendee et al., 1969). Because EM attempts to balance ecological sustainability with human use environmentalists may well be cynical about EM as well. A third interest factor included in this study is the degree to which people use public lands and forests for recreation. We would expect frequent visitors to public lands and forests to be more understanding of the multiple bene"ts provided by forests and therefore have a more positive orientation toward EM. 4.4. Value orientations Orientations toward EM also are likely to be in#uenced by (or are a component of) general political and social values. For example, the liberal-left perspective has been identi"ed with support for natural resource preservation (Steel et al., 1990b) and higher levels of environmental risk perceptions (Steel et al., 1990a). Other research suggests that citizens on the left-liberal end of the political spectrum support `policy proposals emanating from the environmental movementa, while those on the right-conservative side of the spectrum have been found to be `less supportive or even hostile to

environmental concernsa (Calvert, 1987, p. 2). We hypothesize that those on the left would be more likely to have positive orientations toward EM while those on the right would be more negative. In part, this is due to conservative attachment to the status quo and use of the market place to allocate values. Liberals are more likely to critique the existing economic and political system and to support a wider range of noneconomic uses of public lands. Another correlate of potential support for EM would be the growth of biocentric values toward the environment (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1981, 1980). Many observers have argued that in contemporary America (and other advanced industrial societies), a `New Natural Resource Management Paradigma has emerged which emphasizes protection of ecosystems and the participation of citizens in the management of public lands (Brown and Harris, 1992). This is a change in emphasis from more anthropocentric value orientations * often called the `Dominant Resource Management Paradigma * toward public lands management which stressed the production of goods and services bene"cial to humans. We expect that citizens who indicate of support for the NEP will have more positive orientations toward EM than those who are more supportive of the Dominant Social Paradigm.

5. Methodology and measurements 5.1. Samples In order to investigate public views of devolved environmental and ecosystem management among citizens, a national random digit dial survey was conducted during June and July, 1998. The response rate for the survey was 54% with 904 completed interviews out of 1658 households contacted. Survey design and implementation followed Dillman's (1978) `Total Design Methoda. 5.2. Dependent variables The indicators used to assess public beliefs about EM asked respondents to identify their level of disagreement or agreement with six statements listed in Table 2. The statements were developed by Brunson et al. (1996) to cover various dimensions of views toward EM. The "ve

 These questions were included as part of a larger national survey concerning public orientations toward government and politics. The survey was designed by Washington State University and Oregon State University faculty and was implemented at Project Vote Smart o$ces in Corvallis, OR.

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response categories for the EM index ranged from `strongly disagreea to `strongly agreea. After recoding items so that higher numbers re#ected a positive orientation toward EM and lower numbers re#ected a negative position, the responses were summed to form an indicator of support for EM ranging from 6 to 30. The reliability coe$cient (Cronbach's Alpha) for the index was 0.74 suggesting that respondents were mostly consistent in their response patterns for the additive scale and that scale components were intercorrelated.

5.3. Independent variables The independent variables used to assess the impact of demographics, interest factors, and value orientations are presented in Table 2. The demographic factors examined as predictors of value orientations concerning forests include age in years, gender, level of formal educational attainment, and an indicator that assesses the city size where each respondent resides (URBAN). To assess an individual's perspective or interest concerning public lands and forests, three indicators were used. Respondents whose families depend on the natural resource extraction or agriculture for their economic livelihood were categorized as resource dependent (RESOURCE) while those belonging to an environmental organization were classi"ed as environmentalists (GREEN). An additional interest indicator assessing the frequency of visits to public forests for recreation is also examined for its impact on orientations toward EM (RECREATE). The indicators used to assess the value orientations of respondents include the Van Liere and Dunlap (1981, 1980) indicator of the New Environmental Para-

 The question used was, `What is your highest level of education?a The following response categories were provided: (1) never attended school, (2) some grade school, (3)completed grade school, (4) some high school, (5) completed high school, (6) some college, (7) completed college, (8) some graduate work, and (9) an advanced degree.  Respondents were asked: `Which of the following best describes your place of residence?a The response categories provided were: (1) rural area, (2) city of 2500 or less, (3) city of 2501}25,000, (4) city of 25,001}50,000, (5) city of 50,001}100,000, (6) city of 100,001}250,000, and (7) city of 250,001 plus.  The question used was: `Do you or any of your immediate family depend upon the timber industry for your economic livelihood?a.  Respondents were asked if they were `a member of an environmentalist organizationa.  The question and response categories used were: `how often do you visit public lands and forests during your leisure time?a (1) never; (2) rarely, no more than once or twice a year; (3) occasionally, several times a year; (4) somewhat frequently, at least once a month on average; (5) very frequently, at least once a week on average.

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digm (NEP) and a self-assessment measure of general political orientation (IDEOLOGY). Summary measures for the various independent variables used in the forthcoming multivariate analyses are presented in Appendix A.

6. Ecosystem management from the perspective of citizens 6.1. Univariate xndings One of the "rst things asked of respondents was to indicate their level of informedness concerning EM. It was assumed that a lack of familiarity with the issue would lead to ambiguous responses to EM issues. Therefore, a brief statement describing EM from Brunson et al. (1996) was provided (slightly revised) and then respondents were asked how well informed they were concerning EM as a management philosophy. The data displayed in Table 1 provide some insight into general levels of informedness among our national random sample. Twenty percent of the respondents said they were `not informeda concerning EM. Only 12% said they were `very informeda while 17% said they were `informeda. Overall, the level of subjective informedness appears to be very high on such a new, complex, and sometimes controversial issue.

 The measure of environmental attitudes used to predict environmental behavior and participation is the Dunlap and Van Liere (1981, 1980) New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) indicator. The measure of NEP employed contained a subset of six of the 12 items found in the original inventory and has been found to generate results virtually identical to those of the 12-item version. The items are as follows: (1) the balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset by human activities; (2) the earth is like a spaceship with only limited room and resources; (3) plants and animals do not exist primarily for human use; (4) modifying the environment for human use seldom causes serious problems; (5) there are no limits to growth for nations like the United States; (6) humankind was created to rule over the rest of nature. A Likert-type response format was provided for each item, taking the following format: `strongly agreea, `agreea, `neutrala, `disagreea, and `strongly disagreea. A pro-NEP position consists of agreement on the "rst three items and disagreement on the last three items. After recoding items so that higher numbers re#ected a biocentric position (New Environmental Paradigm) and lower numbers re#ected an anthropocentric position (Dominant Social Paradigm), the responses were summed to form an indicator ranging from 6 to 30. The reliability coe$cient (Cronbach's Alpha) for the NEP was 0.79, suggesting that respondents were consistent in their response patterns for the additive scale.  The question and scale used to ascertain subjective political ideology was, `On domestic policy issues, would you consider yourself to be:a

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Table 1 Self-assessed public informedness concerning ecosystem management In recent years many federal and state natural resource and environmental agencies, have increasingly emphasized Ecosystem Management on public lands. Ecosystem Management is a shift in the philosophy of managing America's public forests and undeveloped lands. It has been described as blending social, economic, and scienti"c principles to achieve healthy ecosystems and maintain biological diversity over long periods of time, while at the same time allowing production of the many valued resources our society seeks from its public lands and forests. How well informed would you say you are concerning Ecosystem management? 1. Not informed 20% 2. Somewhat informed 19% 3. Moderately informed 32% 4. Informed 17% 5. Very informed 12% N"868

Table 2 reports the distribution of responses for six indicators of public beliefs concerning EM. The statements were designed to cover both positive and negative views attributed to EM by opponents and supporters (see Brunson et al., 1996). Respondents who indicated that they were `not informeda about EM are not included in these results because of a lack of familiarity from which to make judgements (see Table 1). The mean scores for three of the six items (the last three items) suggest that the average respondent is `neutrala concerning the statements (mean scores range from 3.01 to 3.33). In fact, the

distribution of responses for these items are fairly normally distributed. For the "rst three statements respondents were slightly more likely to agree than disagree (mean scores ranging from 3.68 to 3.95). At the bottom of Table 2 an additive scale mean and reliability coe$cient are reported. For the additive index assessing public orientations toward EM, the last three items were recoded so that higher numbers re#ect a positive perspective toward Ecosystem Management and lower numbers re#ect a negative perspective. This indicator will be used in the forthcoming multivariate analyses. 6.2. Multivariate analyses Ordinary least-squares estimates for the EM additive index are presented in Table 3. F-test results indicate that the model is statistically signi"cant, however, the adjusted R suggests that only 22% of the variation in public beliefs about EM is explained by our model. For the demographic variables in our model, we "nd that all four have a statistically signi"cant impact on orientations toward EM. Younger respondents and women are significantly more likely to have positive orientations toward EM than their older and male counterparts. Education also has a signi"cant impact with the more highly educated having more positive beliefs about EM than their less formally educated counterparts. For the variable URBAN, respondents living in urban areas are signi"cantly more likely to have positive orientations toward EM than those from smaller cities or rural areas.

Table 2 Public beliefs about ecosystem management Only respondents who answered they were `somewhata to `very informed' about ecosystem management (Table 1 above) were asked to respond to the following statements: Statements: [1"strongly disagree to 5"strongly agree]

Mean

S.D.

N

Ecosystem management helps us think about public lands as a whole instead of focusing on single resources such as timber.

3.95

1.34

689

Ecosystem management lets us protect endangered species while continuing to harvest resources from public lands.

3.84

1.18

691

Ecosystem management will enhance the long-term health of public lands.

3.68

1.21

691

Ecosystem management is being used as an excuse to extract natural resources from areas previously closed to resource extraction.

3.33

1.07

691

Ecosystem management is a misguided attempt to reduce public complaints without any scienti"c basis.

3.21

1.18

691

Ecosystem management is an attempt by environmentalists to stop natural resource extraction on public lands.

3.01

1.01

691

Additive index mean"18.97 Additive index S.D."4.22 Cronbach's Alpha"0.74 N"689 For the additive index assessing public orientations toward Ecosystem Management, the last three items were recoded so that higher numbers re#ect a positive perspective toward Ecosystem Management and lower numbers re#ect a negative perspective. The Ecosystem Management statements are revised from Brunson et al. (1996).

B.S. Steel, E. Weber / Global Environmental Change 11 (2001) 119 }131 Table 3 Ordinary least-squares estimates for support of ecosystem management Variables:

b

Age Gender Education Urban Resource Green Recreate Ideology NEP

!0.07*** !0.14 0.32* 0.09 0.37** 0.13 0.13* 0.08 !1.34*** !0.17 !0.04 !0.03 0.44* 0.09 !0.41** !0.11 0.92** 0.15 R-square"0.23 Adjusted R-square"0.22 F test"34.76***

{

Note: *signi"cant at p(0.05; ** signi"cant at p(0.01; *** signi"cant at p(0.001.

127

Table 4 Preferred level of government to implement ecosystem management Which level of government * federal, state, or local * do you most trust to implement ecosystem management? Federal 11% State 29% Local 38% Trust all equally 22% N"691 Only respondents who answered they were `somewhata to `very informed' with ecosystem management (Table 1) are included in this table.

of environmental organizations are very supportive of EM.

7. The preferred level of implementation and public participation In regard to the interest variables, as expected those respondents who depend on natural resource extraction and agriculture for their economic livelihood are signi"cantly less likely to have positive orientations toward EM than their non-resource-dependent counterparts. However, environmental organization members are not any more positive or negative concerning EM than those respondents who are not members of such organizations. In fact, when additional analyses were conducted of this group we found much skepticism concerning EM as a way to increase resource extraction on public lands. For the variable assessing the level of individual recreational activity on public lands, we "nd that those respondents who visit public lands and forests frequently for recreation were signi"cantly more likely to have positive orientations toward EM than their counterparts who visit infrequently or never. This supports the notion that those individuals who visit public lands and forests are potentially more familiar with the need for sustainable use and development * a notion promoted by EM. The "nal two variables concern dimensions of political orientation and are statistically signi"cant in explaining orientations toward EM. When controlling for the independent e!ects of other variables, those respondents who identi"ed themselves as liberal are more likely to have positive beliefs about EM than self-identi"ed conservatives. The second value indicator shows that supporters of the NEP are more positive in their orientations toward EM than those respondents who identify more closely with the Dominant Social Paradigm. It is interesting to note, however, that when members of environmental organizations (who scored very high on the NEP indicator) were removed from the analyses, the coe$cient for NEP had an even greater e!ect on orientations toward EM. Strong supporters of the NEP who are not members

The data presented in Table 4 provide some information concerning the level of government the public most trusts to implement EM. Most respondents trust the level of government most closest to themselves * local government. Only 11% most trust the federal government, 29% trust state government, and 38% trust local governments. The remaining respondents trust all level of governments equally (22%). These results are consistent with recent attempts to decentralize environmental policy making and implementation at lower levels of government and consistent with the Western Governor's Association attempt to have states and localities more involved in the implementation of environmental and natural resource policy (Oregonian, 1998). Another question asked of respondents was their view of what a realistic role for the public would be in ecosystem management. As discussed above, new devolved attempts at environmental management seek to partner and cooperate with communities. The results presented in Table 5 provide some insight into the public's perception of their proper role in EM. Only 3% of the respondents indicated that resource professionals should have full authority without public participation in EM. In addition, only 14% are willing to allow the public the ability to `provide suggestionsa and then give resource professionals full discretion in decision making. The remaining 83% of respondents believe that public should play a more prominent role in EM from serving on advisory boards to actually making management decisions. Thirty-"ve percent of respondents believe that the public should have the ability to serve on advisory boards and comment on decisions while 36% believe the public should `act as a full and equal partnera in EM. The remaining 12% of respondents believe the public

128

B.S. Steel, E. Weber / Global Environmental Change 11 (2001) 119 }131

Table 5 Public participation in ecosystem management In your opinion, which of the following would be the most realistic role for the public in ecosystem management? None, let resource professionals and managers (e.g., US 3% Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, etc.) decide. Provide suggestions and let resource professionals and 14% managers decide. Serve on advisory boards that review and comment on 35% decisions. Act as a full and equal partner in making management 36% decisions. The public should decide management issues and resource professionals and managers should carry them out. 12% N"691 Only respondents who answered they were `somewhata to `very informed' with ecosystem management (Table 1) are included in this table.

should decide management issues and then have resource professionals carry out their decisions. Clearly, the results presented in Tables 4 and 5 indicate a strong preference by the public to have state and local governments involved in EM and to have the public involved in that process in some manner as well.

8. Conclusion Overall, it appears that many citizens are reasonably informed about EM. Slightly over 60% consider themselves at least `moderately informeda to `very informeda. When you add `somewhat informeda to this percentage it increases to approximately 80%. In addition, there is only a small segment of the citizenry who unequivocally approve of EM absent state and local government involvement. However, the results presented in this study document some skepticism among key constituencies. Rural and natural resource-dependent citizens were signi"cantly less supportive of EM than their urban and non-resource-dependent counterparts. Additional analyses with the data indicate that these key constituencies are supportive, however, of devolved management approaches. This result suggests that mobilizing a broad array of citizens to embrace simultaneously the science of EM and enhanced citizen participation in the policy process may well be a matter of getting the institutions right (see also Miller, 1992; Scholz, 1991; Weber, 1998). In this respect, a grass-roots application of EM that builds on the existing core `naturala constituency for devolved EM arrangements may be able to bridge the gap or reconcile the technocracy}democracy quandary for those citizens who support one element * either science (EM) or democracy (devolution and citizen participation) * but not the other, thus expanding the number of citizens

willing to accept and support EM in a devolutionary format. Moreover, recent state and federal proposals to employ collaborative, decentralized, watershed/ecosystem management-based e!orts to save salmon and steelhead in the Paci"c Northwest have elicited strong support from stakeholders across the board, from the National Marine Fisheries Service, a traditional proponent of top-down, prescriptive, command-and-control regulation, to President Clinton, to the most traditional of opponents to new regulation * homebuilders and timber interests. Even environmentalists are taking a Await and seea attitude, rather than automatically adopting a litigation strategy (Brinckman, 1999, p. A12). There is also evidence suggesting that the public will actively resist the use of EM when it is accompanied by top down, federal control (Shindler and Neburka, 1997). The best example here is the Clinton administration's Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan, a massive e!ort to apply EM to 70 million acres covering parts of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Wyoming, and California. Public resistance, especially from local level o$cials and private property owners, was widespread enough to convince Congress, at the behest of US Representatives George Nethercutt (R-WA) and Doc Hastings (R-WA), to cut all funding for the e!ort in October 1998. What all this suggests is the technocracy}democracy quandary may not be as zero-sum as originally assumed. It may be possible to construct institutions that mesh technocratic expertise with citizen-based, local folk knowledge in such a way that both sides of the dilemma come closer to being satis"ed. With grass-roots ecosystem management, science (EM) and democracy (citizen participation) are each treated as essential to good policy decisions. Science is used to develop deeper understandings of complex problems, to develop a better picture of the connectedness among various elements of the ecosystem, and to inform policy choices (alternatives). Democracy is served through broad participation in policy decisions and increased implementation e$cacy as citizens come to `owna outcomes and therefore willingly assist implementation (Harter, 1982; Susskind and Cruickshank, 1987). In short, democracy is enhanced rather than eroded, science is given a privileged position rather than ignored, citizens learn to trust both science and government more, and, ideally at least, more of the complex, technical policy problems concerning the proper use of dwindling natural resources and environmental degradation are solved. Put di!erently, if EM is to succeed, it will be important to actively include citizens and stakeholders in the decision process, where the consequences of choices, along with the attendant scienti"c uncertainty, are out on the table for all to see. Politicians, especially at the federal level, must be willing to not only give up power, but to devolve authority to

B.S. Steel, E. Weber / Global Environmental Change 11 (2001) 119 }131

129

Table 6 Distributional Characteristics Variable name Sociodemographic indicators: Age Gender

Education

Urban

Interest indicators: Resource

Green

Recreate

Value indicators: Ideology

NEP

Variable description

Mean

(S.D.)

N

Respondent age in years Dummy variable for gender 1"Female 0"Male Level of formal eduction 1"Some grade school to 8"An advanced degree Respondent residence 1"Rural area to 7"City of 250,001 plus

52.3 0.51

15.20 *

691 691

5.27

1.21

691

4.24

0.97

691

Economic livelihood dependent on resource extraction/agriculture 1"Dependent 0"Else Member of environmentalist organization 1"Member 0"Else Frequency of participation in public lands recreation. 1"Never to 5"Very frequently

0.20

*

690

0.11

*

687

3.01

0.95

689

Subjective political orientation 1"Very liberal to 5"Very conservative New Environmental Paradigm 6"lowest level of support 30"highest level of support

3.24

0.97

681

23.26

5.10

685

Only respondents who answered they were `somewhata to `very informeda with ecosystem management (Table 1) are included in this table.

scienti"cally informed, deliberative democratic forums which, by de"nition, o!er little certainty about "nal policy choices. Conventional wisdom suggests that unless politicians are convinced that the uncertainty can be managed in such a way that it bene"ts their primary constituents and assists their e!orts to maintain themselves in o$ce, they encounter little incentive to endorse such arrangements (Moe, 1989; Scholz, 1991). Yet the actions of Governor Locke (WA), Governor Kitzhaber (OR), and President Clinton, as anecdotal as it is, de"es such logic and suggests that at least some elected o$cials are ready for such a role change. In any case, while broadening the circle of those responsible for EM planning and implementation will not be easy, the long-term outcomes are likely to be more durable because of their social acceptability.

Appendix A The distributional characteristics for hypothesized determinants of ecosystem management support are shown in Table 6.

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