- Email: [email protected]
Sustaining co-operation for coastal sustainability
Journal of Environmental Management (1998) 52, 379–387 Article No. ev980186
Sustaining co-operation for coastal sustainability C. A. Davos Coastal-zone sustainability policies are socially constructed. It follows that their effective implementation depends on the sustainable voluntary co-operation of stakeholders with competing interests and priorities. No form of integrated coastal-zone management can nurture such co-operation as long as the objective is to determine ‘best’ policies, derived by expert-based rational analysis, instead of seeking to identify ‘correct’ policies, ones that can draw the maximum possible stakeholder support. The latter task requires a co-operative coastal-zone management that incorporates the relevant public discourse into the policy formation process in a direct, proactive and conflict minimizing manner. Towards this end, four major challenges are examined for maximizing the stakeholders’ motivation for voluntary co-operation: (1) optimism about the level of optimism; (2) agenda setting; (3) value discourse; and (4) information and empowerment. 1998 Academic Press Limited
Keywords: conflict management, co-operation, co-operative coastal-zone management, integrated coastal-zone management, sustainability, value discourse.
Introduction The sustainability of coastal zones is a growing concern worldwide. Calls abound for actions including: the definition of policy objectives which are specific to coasts and their resources; the integration and harmonization of sectoral policies; the collection of relevant information and development of coastal environmental indices; public education and participation in decision making at an early stage of policy formation; and the indentification and testing of the relative effectiveness of different policy instruments and institutional arrangements [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1993]. These calls find their summary expression in the proposition by the World Coast Conference (1993) of integrated coastal-zone management (CZM), which is defined as a continuous and evolutionary process for achieving sustainable development, involving ‘the comprehensive assessment, setting of objectives, planning and management of coastal systems and resources, taking into account traditional, cultural and historical perspectives and conflicting interests and uses’. 0301–4797/98/040379+09 $25.00/0
Undoubtedly, such calls point to necessary functions of CZM. Their effectiveness is undermined, however, by their insistence on reiterating ‘ends’ while failing to suggest ‘means’ and argue the underlying principles for choosing them. The following questions regarding the above prescriptions of integrated coastal-zone management illuminate their weaknesses: who is supposed to define the specific objectives for the coasts and their resources? how is the integration and harmonization of sectoral policies to be achieved and by whom? whose capacity to access, assimilate and evaluate information will dictate the design and availability of the collected information and coastal environmental indices? will the objective of public education and citizen participation go beyond that of ‘assessing the political feasibility of certain alternatives’, and educating the ‘uninformed’ public about why the experts’ decision or proposed action is the best one? and finally, who will decide which policy instrument and institutional regimes will be tested for their effectiveness, how will this be done and by whom? Any answers to these questions are bound to generate such conflicts that, unless they can be managed with the direct involvement of the stake-
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, 10833 le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90024-1774, USA Received 4 November 1997; accepted 9 March 1998
1998 Academic Press Limited
380
holders, will seriously undermine the latter’s willingness to co-operate and, thus, the effectiveness of CZM decisions. What is even more perilous for the effectiveness of coastal management than the failure to address the unavoidable conflicts associated with the above questions, however, is that this failure has a rational basis. More often than not, it reflects subscription to the positivist principle that expert-based rational analysis (often utilizing theoretical constructs of reality and normative criteria for determining ‘ideal’ states of the world) suffices to determine the ‘best’ policy and management decisions, and whoever disagrees with them should be viewed as ‘irrational’ (Portney, 1991). Hence, from this point of view the above questions need not be raised at all. Worldwide experience establishes, however, that the advantages of adopting CZM solutions considered as ‘best’ because they are recommended by expert-based analysis can be dissipated during an arduous implementation process, marred by rancor and litigation (as partially evidenced by the emergence of environmental disputes as a whole new field of inquiry) (Harter, 1982; Bingham, 1986; Crowfoot and Wondolleck, 1990). More to the point, the fact that the aforementioned calls for integrated CZM continue to be made and that the concern over the sustainability of coastal zones is escalating, despite a prolonged effort to comply with positivist prescriptions, emphasizes that such prescriptions are less than effective. Two key-factors contribute to the failure of decisions derived from expert-based rational analysis to achieve their promised goals. First, as Lindblom (1980) pointed out, analytical policy making is inevitably limited because, for any given problem, all analysts should be expected to reach the same conclusion—which they cannot, unless they can manage to completely avoid any mistake of either fact or logic. The inevitable contradictions in the experts’ recommendations undermine their effectiveness as arbiters of conflicts among stakeholders who themselves have differing interpretations of what a CZM problem may entail and what may be the most appropriate solution. They fuel, instead of resolving, such conflicts and thus
C. A. Davos
undermine stakeholder willingness to cooperate rather than engendering it. Secondly, paternalistic expert decisions ignore the conflicts associated with the above posed questions (regardless of how they are answered in practice and even with politics intervening to resolve conflicts among the experts) because, as was previously implied, they are foreign to the fundamental logic of these decisions. Hence, their capacity to engender voluntary co-operation in their implementation and thus assure the achievement of their goals is further compromised. With these two key-factors in mind, the following argument merits support. No process of CZM can produce legitimate answers to the previously posed questions with regards to integrated CZM and, thus, effective solutions, unless it incorporates the public will in a proactive, participatory and conflict minimizing manner. (Where the characterization ‘effective solutions’ applies to those capable of achieving anticipated outcomes within anticipated time horizons.) Stated differently, acceptance of the premise that CZM solutions depend on the voluntary co-operation of stakeholders for their effective implementation, raises doubts about the value of positivistic or normative prescriptions of integrated CZM. The lack of answers to questions regarding either their implementation or the resolution of the conflicts they may generate undermines such co-operation. The alternative is to pursue a new approach that of co-operative CZM. Its defining property must be its reliance on the social discourse and on a framework for guiding this discourse through the integration of diverse and conflicting individual interests into ‘co-operative’ collective decisions—ones that can: (1) draw maximum support; and (2) enhance the stakeholders’ willingness to voluntarily co-operate in their implementation by inviting respect for the whole process of their selection and implementation. [For a discussion of certain fundamental principles for developing such a framework, methodologies and application see Davos (1986, 1987) and Davos et al., (1993)]. It is true that the pragmatists among those subscribing to the positivist approach do not ignore entirely the value of public input (after all it is now required by most environmental laws in the USA and called for
381
Coastal-zone sustainability
by both the above cited OECD and World Coast Conference reports). However, as Portney (1991) remarks, more often than not, by seeking public participation these pragmatist positivists attempt either to ‘manage’ public involvement, assess the ‘political feasibility’ of specific alternatives or limit and control public participation in order to minimize its effect on the decision under consideration. Alternatively, they engage in symbolic exercises, channelled towards deflating rather than incorporating public views into the decision process or towards educating the uninformed public why the expert’s decision or proposed decision is the best one. One should recognize of course that such behaviour might be dictated by the institutional constaints that statutory bodies with the power to carry out CZM have to satisfy. Nonetheless, the argument that sustainable voluntary co-operation might be the better long-term strategy, even for the institutional interests of these bodies, since it promises a more secure progression towards coastal-zone sustainability, merits support. In this paper, four challenges have been discussed that co-operative CZM faces as a process for the maximization and sustainability of stakeholder willingness to cooperate. An on-going research project is currently testing the validity of some of the hypotheses underlying this discussion (as acknowledged at the end of the paper). Firstly, a formal statement of the fundamental challange faced by a co-operative CZM process if it is going to achieve sustainable stakeholder co-operation is outlined. This challenge is referred as one of maintaining a high level of ‘optimism about the level of optimism’ after Seabright (1993). Then three additional challenges are examined relating to: (1) the process of agenda setting; (2) the value discourse; and (3) the challenges of information and empowerment. First however, it is important to emphasize that the focus of this discussion is on the process of managing a wide range of coastal-zone resources with an interplay between decisionmaking agencies and a large number of stakeholders, rather than as in ‘local commons’ where: (1) the number of stakeholders is small enough so that their knowledge of each other and the potential of observing each other’s actions can serve as an incentive to behave in
certain co-operative ways; and (2) their participatory management can be performed, at least theoretically, without the intervention by a state that is more powerful than any of the stakeholders (Seabright, 1993). Certain inshore fisheries, which can differ from opensea fishery because they are not often as broadly open to access by outsiders, is a typical example of such ‘local commons’ resources. The participatory management of other environmental resources can also be addressed along the lines of this paper.
The challenge of creating optimism about the level of optimism It is reasonable to postulate that a determinant of stakeholder willingness to cooperate is the expected level of co-operativeness of all other stakeholders. For when the stakeholders are optimistic that the others will co-operate, they will be more willing to co-operate themselves. This expectation depends on an historical evaluation of the capacity of CZM process to inspire such optimism. Thus, the first challenge of co-operative CZM is for it to be carried out in such a way as to maximize over time the stakeholders’ optimism about the general level of optimism regarding cooperation. By involving all the stakeholders and integrating their input, co-operative CZM lays the foundation for stakeholders to build a habit of co-operation, a reputation of conforming with collective agreements, a trust that others will co-operate and an appreciation of the greater promise of co-operation over defection (pursuit of self interest) for coastal-zone sustainability. However, the transition from principle to practice is not automatic, even for co-operative CZM. The literature gives three reasons why this might be so: (1) the threat of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968); (2) the paradox of the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ (Dawes, 1973); and (3) the logic of collective action (Olson, 1965). However, an expanding literature also indicates that ‘free riding’ is not always the choice of stakeholders when managing commons (see Crance and Draper, 1996; Ostrom,
382
1996). Ways for inducing co-operative behaviour in the management of common resources such as coastal resources have also been suggested. They are normative in nature and, thus, conflict inviting but they lay the foundations for addressing the growing recognition of co-operation as a condition for effective CZM. For example, Seabright (1993) proposes such formal mechanisms as privatization of property rights, decentralization of incentives within common ownership and control and delegation of management responsibility to an agent so that participants are limited to a monitoring role. Seabright also suggests such informal mechanisms as making the future matter, by threatening, for example, the violators of present co-operative agreements with exclusion from the commons resource, instituting credible retaliatory strategies and making co-operation history dependent by establishing memory preserving mechanisms (Seabright, 1993). Finally, Crance and Draper (1996) suggest such strategies for inducing co-operation as: scope-reduction (i.e. focusing on a distinct part of a larger problem); phased segmentation strategy (i.e. emphasizing that each individual’s behaviour will determine whether or not the management goal is reached); and education on social values and responsibility in order to enhance the value that an individual places on collective welfare above selfinterest.
The challenge of agenda setting Another challenge of sustaining the stakeholder’s willingness to co-operate relates to the process by which their CZM concerns and conflicts gain prominence and exposure and thus become legitimate concerns meriting the attention of the entire polity, i.e. it relates to the agenda setting process as defined by Cobb and Elder (1983). Equally significant is the challenge of managing the competition for policy response among issues and their proponents (agenda control), imposed by the reality that for any given Governmental structure, the number of legitimate issues exceeds the capabilities of
C. A. Davos
decision-making institutions to address them all. In light of the discussion in the introduction of the shortcomings of positivism, a ‘pluralistic’ agenda setting process that provides all the stakeholders with an equal opportunity to develop the agenda of coastalzone sustainability should be expected to be more conducive to co-operation than an ‘elitist’ process that only allows for major initiatives to come from such power centers as Government officials and policy-expert communities (for more on these two types of processes, see Studler and Layton-Henry, 1990). Moreover, a ‘systematic’ or ‘public’ agenda for action that includes the full range of sustainability issues salient to the entire community of a coastal zone should be expected to nurture a broader co-operation than a ‘formal’ or ‘institutional’ agenda consisting of issues that concern explicitly authoritative decision makers (for more on the distinction between these two types of agenda controls see Cobb and Elder, 1983). To highlight the implications of agenda setting, consider for example the multifarious effects of urbanization and tourism development, the pollution from aquaculture development, the pollution of estuarine and coastal waters from other sources and the irreversible loss of natural areas. All coastal countries face these issues and the generic stakeholder interests are the same, e.g. those of decision-making agencies, scientists, economic interest groups, special interest groups and the media. Yet according to the OECD report (1993), the coastal-zone sustainability priorities and actions differ among countries because of their different agenda setting and control processes. In addition to directly influencing the stakeholders’ willingness to co-operate, the process of agenda setting and control is bound to also affect their optimism about the level of optimism. Consider the current situation in the USA where a continuous public concern over environmental protection (public agenda) clashes with calls for repealing all major environmental legislation emanating from changes in party power in the Congress and the accompanied changes in views regarding the Government’s role (institutional agenda). The consequence is a return to contentious rhetoric and a harshening of negotiation
Coastal-zone sustainability
positions that threatens whatever progress has been achieved towards co-operation among all stakeholders including environmental-protection agencies. In summary, a major challenge to maximizing stakeholder co-operation as a foundation of effective CZM is to establish ‘windows of opportunity’ where policy, politics and participants can operate together to develop the coastal-zone sustainability agenda and act upon it with maximum cooperation (for more on the concept of ‘windows of opportunity’ see Kingdom, 1995).
The challenge of value discourse The public debate of coastal-zone sustainability policies focuses primarily on their impacts without paying proper attention to the underlying issues of: (1) what should be considered a positive and a negative impact (benefit and cost) and who should make this determination (the origin and meaning of values); and (2) how the benefits and costs of alternative decision options should be evaluated and integrated within the framework of a rule for making the final choice (the application of values for selecting among alternative policy options, instruments of implementation, etc.). Both of these issues are critical for the sustainability of stakeholder co-operation, however. As shown below, they generate significant conflicts that can undermine the effectiveness of any decision if they are not managed in advance of deciding.
On the origin of values The current public-value discourse has elevated anthropocentricity as the absolute foundation of affording all things meaning and value. Regardless of whether the ‘process of exchange’ (the Classical paradigm) or ‘labour and its productive organization’ (the Ricardo-Marx pradigm) is relied upon, humans are expected to be the ones who decide what must be valued and what its value means and must be. However, the
383
environmental debate has led to the reexamination of this anthropocentric thesis by forcing the question of what must be valued (e.g. whether the interest of inaminate nature and future generations have value) and how its value must be determined (Tribe et al., 1976; Elliot and Gare, 1983; Scherer and Attig, 1983; Bedau 1991). The logical next step is to question whether humans must and can continue to act as the sole arbiters of value. Notice that what is actually challenged is not the unavoidable role of humans, as the only value holders and decision makers, but their value foundations. It is this challenge that presents the highest risks for sustaining co-operation in the implementation of coastal-zone sustainability policies. This assertion may appear unjustified to those who cannot see how anthropocentricity can be divorced from the traditional collective value calculus, including those who subscribe to the aforementioned calls for integrated CZM. However, the same is not true for those concerned with sustainability and those who cannot see how the conventional value discourse can be continued in light of a technological progress that destroys the Galbraithian ‘system’ that engineers, plans, steers and administers human lives by: (1) making it possible and profitable to promote ‘difference’ rather than ‘sameness’; (2) transforming the human identity problem, from that of lack of options, to that of too many options; (3) facilitating multicultural congregation and exchange; (4) confusing human ideas and ideologies; and (5) multiplying human environmental concerns. Indeed the environmental discourse can no longer avoid the dilemma of how can a long-term co-operation in the implementation of coastal-zone sustainability policies be induced when individual interests are becoming volatile and ephemeral; when the culture promotes speed and heterogeneity, when ‘everything goes’. How can the collective will for coastal-zone sustainability to determine when society becomes a vast argumentative texture through which individuals construct their own independent reality (to paraphase Laclau, 1988). It is indeed consistent with the orderly world of positivists to keep developing such value typologies as ‘utilitarian’ (production/ commercial/market values), ‘user’ (based on
384
in situ uses) and ‘intrinsic’ (existence, option, bequest values) but very difficult to relate them to the every-day value praxis that defies positivism [Tunstall and Coker (1992) offer a good review of value typologies]. It is also logical, according to conventional discourse, to demand the definition of new objectives, the development of new policy instruments and the creation of new institutions for integrated CZM, but arduous to actually achieve these ends with broad agreement and co-operation within a multicultural, relativistic, postmodern society. Hence, it merits support to argue that only a proactive, well informed, constructive public discourse could highlight all value differences and invite respect for their conflicting ramifications as regards coastal-zone sustainability. Only through such discourse may the self interest be guided and reconciled with its collective counterpart and diversity channelled towards enriching instead of confusing the coastal-zone sustainability management process. Cooperative CZM with its emphasis on negotiation, compromise and conflict management can provide a promising framework for such a public discourse to be a valuable precursor to coastal-zone sustainability by maximizing the stakeholders’ willingness to co-operate.
Application of values The value discourse also becomes a source of conflict when stakeholder concerns (values) are translated into criteria for evaluating the comparative advantage of alternative policy choices. The current practice favours the application of a narrowly defined benefit-cost criterion (sanctified in the USA by law) that excludes from consideration whatever impacts of policy choices cannot be quantified in monetary terms. The anthropocentric, utilitarian foundation of this criterion relates directly to the previously discussed issues of the origin and meaning of values. It is true that more often than not, benefit-cost analyses qualify their results by acknowledging all pertinent, but not quantifiable in monetary terms, impacts. However as Socolow (1976) so elquently points out, such qualifications rarely enter the debate while
C. A. Davos
the quantifiable monetary results become ‘golden numbers’. Another source of value conflicts is the choice of instruments for policy implementation, e.g. command-and-control, economic instruments such as charges, taxes, eligibility fees or emission credits and allocation of property rights. The current debate on these instruments, too, follows the conventional practice of comparing the monetary cost of their application to their anticipated policy enforcement effectiveness. Limited attention is paid to the fact that these insutruments promote different valuesystems and thus debating them strictly on quantitative monetary cost-effectivenesss terms obfuscates significant value conflicts. Consider, for example, the choice between market-based instruments and the alternative of command-and-control. The foundation of the former on neoclassical economic theory promotes self interest as the dominant motivational force for inducing acceptable behaviour on the part of resource users and as the best arbiter of their competing interests. On the other hand, the command-and-control alternative subscribes to the principle that normative criteria can be applied to the determination of standards with which resource users must conform. Therefore, even the choice of policy instruments generates important value related issues such as whether self interest should be trusted to guide the collective will or whether normative constraints to individual behaviour should be relied upon. In broader terms, the issue is whether in formulating coastal-zone sustainability policies a disjunctive or a conjunctive relationshp should be accepted between freedom and obligation, i.e. freedom vs. obligation or freedom from within obligation. In summary, sustaining stakeholder cooperation in the implementation of coastalzone sustainability policies requires more than reliance on the proactive incorporation of the related public discourse into the policy formation process. It also depends on how comprehensively this discourse will cover all value-related issues, such as those associated with the origin and meaning of values as well as with the application of values for making such seemingly operational decisions as those for the appropriate evaluation approach and policy instrument.
385
Coastal-zone sustainability
The challenge of information and empowerment Finally, another significant challenge to the maximization and sustainability of stakeholder co-operation is that of information and empowerment, i.e. whether knowledge neutralizes all exercises of power or whether the many forms of power pervade, invade, traverse and ultimately constitute knowledge itself [as Amariglio (1988) poses when discussing Foucault’s Discipline and Punish]. More specifically, the proactive inclusion of stakeholders in the decisionmaking process necessitates a debate on the modalities of the relationship between power and knowledge and the management of the conflicts they generate. For example, there must be a debate on the constraints imposed by modern economics on what can be said regarding coastal-zone sustainability values and policies, being the foundation of the positivist approach to CZM. Similarly, it must be debated whether true and false discourse (what is said and what could or should be said) can and must be distinguished, as well as whether the stakeholders can and must be empowered to face power—which according to Said (1983), in order to work it ‘must be able to manage, control and even create detail: the more detail, the more real power, management breeding manageable units, which in turn breed a more detailed, a more finely controlling knowledge’. Interwoven with the conflicts created by the relationship between knowledge and power are those associated with information generation, control and dissemination. Currently there is a proliferation of environmental databases but they are designed to be accessed and understood only by small groups of highly specialized experts in accordance with the pervasive positivist attitude. They fail to consider the perceptions, concerns and capacity to access and assimilate information of diverse groups of online searchers for information, thus failing to inspire trust in their capacity to assist the management of conflicts among stakeholders and enhance the stakeholders’ motivation to co-operate. (For more on the subject see Ercegovac, 1993.) In light of this trend, current calls for more environmental indices
and the collection of more ‘facts’ and ‘hard’ data (themselves manifestations of the positivist approach) can only increase this marginalization of information as a potent means of forging a broader support for final CZM decisions.
Epilogue If research efforts must be expanded in order to provide increased knowledge of coastal systems and the requirements of their sustainability, should not research also be carried out into ways of formulating and implementing related policies more effectively and in a sustainable fashion guaranteed only by the sustainable co-operation among stakeholders? An affirmative response raises challenges to the current coastal-management praxis reflected in the calls for integrating the management methods mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The preferred alternative should be co-operative coastal-management. What has been presented in this paper is a synthesis of thoughts advanced by different disciplines with a focus on human behaviour as opposed to that of nature. Stated differently, the interdisciplinary nature of coastal-zone sustainability has been highlighted from the point of view of social sciences, not as is customary from that of natural sciences. The purpose was not, however, only to fill a perceived gap in the development of an interdisciplinary perspective on coastal-zone sustainability. The intent was also to address the critical need of moving on from the obsolete instrumentalist epistemology of conventional environmental economics, management and engineering. As argued here, efforts should be redirected towards a critical exploration of the ways in which coastal-zone sustainability policies: (1) are socially constructed (to partially borrow from Redclift, 1993); and (2) can be implemented with the sustainable co-operation of stakeholders with conflicting preferences and priorities. Unless this is a success, sustainability policies can sustain the illusory power of rational analyses as the sole infallible arbiter of what is the ‘best’ future of coastal zones.
386
It is submitted that this is a valid assertion regardless of regional scale and Governmental level (local, regional, national, and international) or culture of public policy formation (centralized, participatory). Publicpolicy decisions, such as those for coastal management, are negotiated, not made. Decision-making authorities negotiate among themselves because of their fragmented responsibilities or the diversity of their constituencies’ interests as well as with power centres because of their dependence on them for their effectiveness. Scientists negotiate among themselves as well as with decision makers because the limitations of their theoretical models of reality restrict them to indeterminate conclusions and advice. Power elites negotiate constantly their conflicting interests. All these negotiations can be contentious or co-operative. Only co-operative decisions have the inherent power to lead to sustainable outcomes, however. How such co-operative coastal-management decisions can be engendered was the main focus of this paper.
Acknowledgements This paper is part of a project entitled ‘The role of value conflict assessment techniques in the formulation of implementable and effective coastal zone management policies’ which is funded by the EC R&D Programme in the Field of the Environment (Second Phase) of the European Commission, Contract No. EV5V-CT940392. The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments of anonymous referees. The expressed views are solely those of the author, however.
References Amariglio, J. L. (1988). The body, economic discourse, and power: an economist’s introduction to Foucault. History of Political Economy 20, 583–613. Bedau, H. A. (1991). Ethical aspects of environmental decision making. In Environmental Decision Making: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (R. A. Chechile and S. Carlisle, eds), pp. 176–194. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
C. A. Davos Bingham, G. (1986). Resolving Environmental Disputes: A Decade of Experience. Washington, D.C.: The Conservation Foundation. Cobb, R. G. and Elder, C. D. (1983). Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of AgendaBuilding. 2nd Edition. Baltimore: John Hopkins. Crance, C. and Draper, D. (1996). Socially cooperative choices: an approach to achieving resource sustainability in the coastal zone. Environmental Management 20, 175–184. Crowfoot, J. E. and Wondolleck, J. M. (1990). Environmental Disputes. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Davos, C. A. (1986). Group environmental preference aggregation: the principle of environmental justice. Journal of Environmental Management 22, 55–65. Davos, C. A. (1987). Group environmental valuation: suitability of single interest approaches. Journal of Environmental Management 25, 97– 111. Davos, C. A. Thistlewaite, W. and Paik, E. (1993). Air quality management: participatory ranking of control measures and conflict analysis. Journal of Environmental Management 37, 301–311. Dawes, R. M. (1973). The commons dilemma game: an N-person mixed-motive game with a dominating strategy for defection. ORI Research Bulletin 13, 1–12. Elliot, R. and Gare, A. (1983). Environmental Philosophy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Ercegovac, Z. (1993). Principle of cultural diversity in the design of ‘right-to-know’ databases. Proceedings of the 14th National Online Meeting, New York, May 4–6, (M. E. Williams ed.), pp. 119–128. Medford, NJ: Learned Information. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162(3859), 1243–1248. Harter, P. J. (1982). Negotiating regulations: a cure for the malaise. Georgetown Law Journal, 71, 1–118. Kingdon, J. W. (1995). Agenda, Alternatives, and Public Policies. 2nd Edition. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers. Laclau, E. (1988). Politics and the limits of modernity. In Universal Abandon (A. Ross ed.), pp. 63–82. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lindblom, C. E. (1980). The Policy Making Process (2nd edn.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1993). Coastal Zone Management: Integrated Policies. Paris: OECD. Ostrom, E. (1996). Governing the Commons: the Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Portney, K. E. (1991). Public environmental policy decision making: citizen roles. In Environmental Decision Making: A Multidisciplinary
Coastal-zone sustainability Perspective (R. A. Chechile and S. Carlisle, eds), pp. 195–216. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Redclift, M. (1993). Environmental economics, policy consensus, and political empowerment. In Sustainable Environmental Economics and Management (R. K. Turner ed.), pp. 106–119. London and Florida: Belhaven. Said, E. (1983). The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, MA. Seabright, P. (1993). Managing local commons: theoretical issues in incentive design. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, 113–134. Scherer, D. and Attig, T. (1983). Ethics and the Environment. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Socolow, R. H. (1976). Failures of discourse. In When Values Conflict. (L. H. Tribe et al., eds), Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Studler, D. T. and Layton-Henry, Z. (1990). Non-
387 white minority access to the political agenda in Britain. Policy Studies Review 9, 273–292. Tribe, L. H., Schelling, C. S. and Voss, J. (eds) (1976). When Values Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Tunstall, S. M. and Coker, A. (1992). Surveybased valuation methods. In Valuing the Environment: Economic Approaches to Environmental Evaluation (A. Coker and C. Richards, eds), pp. 104–126. London and Florida: Belhaven. World Coast Conference (1993). Preparing to Meet the Coastal Challenges of the 21 stakeholder Century (Conference Report). Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management/RIKZ, Coastal Zone Management Centre, The Netherlands.
Sustaining co-operation for coastal sustainability C. A. Davos Coastal-zone sustainability policies are socially constructed. It follows that their effective implementation depends on the sustainable voluntary co-operation of stakeholders with competing interests and priorities. No form of integrated coastal-zone management can nurture such co-operation as long as the objective is to determine ‘best’ policies, derived by expert-based rational analysis, instead of seeking to identify ‘correct’ policies, ones that can draw the maximum possible stakeholder support. The latter task requires a co-operative coastal-zone management that incorporates the relevant public discourse into the policy formation process in a direct, proactive and conflict minimizing manner. Towards this end, four major challenges are examined for maximizing the stakeholders’ motivation for voluntary co-operation: (1) optimism about the level of optimism; (2) agenda setting; (3) value discourse; and (4) information and empowerment. 1998 Academic Press Limited
Keywords: conflict management, co-operation, co-operative coastal-zone management, integrated coastal-zone management, sustainability, value discourse.
Introduction The sustainability of coastal zones is a growing concern worldwide. Calls abound for actions including: the definition of policy objectives which are specific to coasts and their resources; the integration and harmonization of sectoral policies; the collection of relevant information and development of coastal environmental indices; public education and participation in decision making at an early stage of policy formation; and the indentification and testing of the relative effectiveness of different policy instruments and institutional arrangements [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1993]. These calls find their summary expression in the proposition by the World Coast Conference (1993) of integrated coastal-zone management (CZM), which is defined as a continuous and evolutionary process for achieving sustainable development, involving ‘the comprehensive assessment, setting of objectives, planning and management of coastal systems and resources, taking into account traditional, cultural and historical perspectives and conflicting interests and uses’. 0301–4797/98/040379+09 $25.00/0
Undoubtedly, such calls point to necessary functions of CZM. Their effectiveness is undermined, however, by their insistence on reiterating ‘ends’ while failing to suggest ‘means’ and argue the underlying principles for choosing them. The following questions regarding the above prescriptions of integrated coastal-zone management illuminate their weaknesses: who is supposed to define the specific objectives for the coasts and their resources? how is the integration and harmonization of sectoral policies to be achieved and by whom? whose capacity to access, assimilate and evaluate information will dictate the design and availability of the collected information and coastal environmental indices? will the objective of public education and citizen participation go beyond that of ‘assessing the political feasibility of certain alternatives’, and educating the ‘uninformed’ public about why the experts’ decision or proposed action is the best one? and finally, who will decide which policy instrument and institutional regimes will be tested for their effectiveness, how will this be done and by whom? Any answers to these questions are bound to generate such conflicts that, unless they can be managed with the direct involvement of the stake-
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, 10833 le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90024-1774, USA Received 4 November 1997; accepted 9 March 1998
1998 Academic Press Limited
380
holders, will seriously undermine the latter’s willingness to co-operate and, thus, the effectiveness of CZM decisions. What is even more perilous for the effectiveness of coastal management than the failure to address the unavoidable conflicts associated with the above questions, however, is that this failure has a rational basis. More often than not, it reflects subscription to the positivist principle that expert-based rational analysis (often utilizing theoretical constructs of reality and normative criteria for determining ‘ideal’ states of the world) suffices to determine the ‘best’ policy and management decisions, and whoever disagrees with them should be viewed as ‘irrational’ (Portney, 1991). Hence, from this point of view the above questions need not be raised at all. Worldwide experience establishes, however, that the advantages of adopting CZM solutions considered as ‘best’ because they are recommended by expert-based analysis can be dissipated during an arduous implementation process, marred by rancor and litigation (as partially evidenced by the emergence of environmental disputes as a whole new field of inquiry) (Harter, 1982; Bingham, 1986; Crowfoot and Wondolleck, 1990). More to the point, the fact that the aforementioned calls for integrated CZM continue to be made and that the concern over the sustainability of coastal zones is escalating, despite a prolonged effort to comply with positivist prescriptions, emphasizes that such prescriptions are less than effective. Two key-factors contribute to the failure of decisions derived from expert-based rational analysis to achieve their promised goals. First, as Lindblom (1980) pointed out, analytical policy making is inevitably limited because, for any given problem, all analysts should be expected to reach the same conclusion—which they cannot, unless they can manage to completely avoid any mistake of either fact or logic. The inevitable contradictions in the experts’ recommendations undermine their effectiveness as arbiters of conflicts among stakeholders who themselves have differing interpretations of what a CZM problem may entail and what may be the most appropriate solution. They fuel, instead of resolving, such conflicts and thus
C. A. Davos
undermine stakeholder willingness to cooperate rather than engendering it. Secondly, paternalistic expert decisions ignore the conflicts associated with the above posed questions (regardless of how they are answered in practice and even with politics intervening to resolve conflicts among the experts) because, as was previously implied, they are foreign to the fundamental logic of these decisions. Hence, their capacity to engender voluntary co-operation in their implementation and thus assure the achievement of their goals is further compromised. With these two key-factors in mind, the following argument merits support. No process of CZM can produce legitimate answers to the previously posed questions with regards to integrated CZM and, thus, effective solutions, unless it incorporates the public will in a proactive, participatory and conflict minimizing manner. (Where the characterization ‘effective solutions’ applies to those capable of achieving anticipated outcomes within anticipated time horizons.) Stated differently, acceptance of the premise that CZM solutions depend on the voluntary co-operation of stakeholders for their effective implementation, raises doubts about the value of positivistic or normative prescriptions of integrated CZM. The lack of answers to questions regarding either their implementation or the resolution of the conflicts they may generate undermines such co-operation. The alternative is to pursue a new approach that of co-operative CZM. Its defining property must be its reliance on the social discourse and on a framework for guiding this discourse through the integration of diverse and conflicting individual interests into ‘co-operative’ collective decisions—ones that can: (1) draw maximum support; and (2) enhance the stakeholders’ willingness to voluntarily co-operate in their implementation by inviting respect for the whole process of their selection and implementation. [For a discussion of certain fundamental principles for developing such a framework, methodologies and application see Davos (1986, 1987) and Davos et al., (1993)]. It is true that the pragmatists among those subscribing to the positivist approach do not ignore entirely the value of public input (after all it is now required by most environmental laws in the USA and called for
381
Coastal-zone sustainability
by both the above cited OECD and World Coast Conference reports). However, as Portney (1991) remarks, more often than not, by seeking public participation these pragmatist positivists attempt either to ‘manage’ public involvement, assess the ‘political feasibility’ of specific alternatives or limit and control public participation in order to minimize its effect on the decision under consideration. Alternatively, they engage in symbolic exercises, channelled towards deflating rather than incorporating public views into the decision process or towards educating the uninformed public why the expert’s decision or proposed decision is the best one. One should recognize of course that such behaviour might be dictated by the institutional constaints that statutory bodies with the power to carry out CZM have to satisfy. Nonetheless, the argument that sustainable voluntary co-operation might be the better long-term strategy, even for the institutional interests of these bodies, since it promises a more secure progression towards coastal-zone sustainability, merits support. In this paper, four challenges have been discussed that co-operative CZM faces as a process for the maximization and sustainability of stakeholder willingness to cooperate. An on-going research project is currently testing the validity of some of the hypotheses underlying this discussion (as acknowledged at the end of the paper). Firstly, a formal statement of the fundamental challange faced by a co-operative CZM process if it is going to achieve sustainable stakeholder co-operation is outlined. This challenge is referred as one of maintaining a high level of ‘optimism about the level of optimism’ after Seabright (1993). Then three additional challenges are examined relating to: (1) the process of agenda setting; (2) the value discourse; and (3) the challenges of information and empowerment. First however, it is important to emphasize that the focus of this discussion is on the process of managing a wide range of coastal-zone resources with an interplay between decisionmaking agencies and a large number of stakeholders, rather than as in ‘local commons’ where: (1) the number of stakeholders is small enough so that their knowledge of each other and the potential of observing each other’s actions can serve as an incentive to behave in
certain co-operative ways; and (2) their participatory management can be performed, at least theoretically, without the intervention by a state that is more powerful than any of the stakeholders (Seabright, 1993). Certain inshore fisheries, which can differ from opensea fishery because they are not often as broadly open to access by outsiders, is a typical example of such ‘local commons’ resources. The participatory management of other environmental resources can also be addressed along the lines of this paper.
The challenge of creating optimism about the level of optimism It is reasonable to postulate that a determinant of stakeholder willingness to cooperate is the expected level of co-operativeness of all other stakeholders. For when the stakeholders are optimistic that the others will co-operate, they will be more willing to co-operate themselves. This expectation depends on an historical evaluation of the capacity of CZM process to inspire such optimism. Thus, the first challenge of co-operative CZM is for it to be carried out in such a way as to maximize over time the stakeholders’ optimism about the general level of optimism regarding cooperation. By involving all the stakeholders and integrating their input, co-operative CZM lays the foundation for stakeholders to build a habit of co-operation, a reputation of conforming with collective agreements, a trust that others will co-operate and an appreciation of the greater promise of co-operation over defection (pursuit of self interest) for coastal-zone sustainability. However, the transition from principle to practice is not automatic, even for co-operative CZM. The literature gives three reasons why this might be so: (1) the threat of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968); (2) the paradox of the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ (Dawes, 1973); and (3) the logic of collective action (Olson, 1965). However, an expanding literature also indicates that ‘free riding’ is not always the choice of stakeholders when managing commons (see Crance and Draper, 1996; Ostrom,
382
1996). Ways for inducing co-operative behaviour in the management of common resources such as coastal resources have also been suggested. They are normative in nature and, thus, conflict inviting but they lay the foundations for addressing the growing recognition of co-operation as a condition for effective CZM. For example, Seabright (1993) proposes such formal mechanisms as privatization of property rights, decentralization of incentives within common ownership and control and delegation of management responsibility to an agent so that participants are limited to a monitoring role. Seabright also suggests such informal mechanisms as making the future matter, by threatening, for example, the violators of present co-operative agreements with exclusion from the commons resource, instituting credible retaliatory strategies and making co-operation history dependent by establishing memory preserving mechanisms (Seabright, 1993). Finally, Crance and Draper (1996) suggest such strategies for inducing co-operation as: scope-reduction (i.e. focusing on a distinct part of a larger problem); phased segmentation strategy (i.e. emphasizing that each individual’s behaviour will determine whether or not the management goal is reached); and education on social values and responsibility in order to enhance the value that an individual places on collective welfare above selfinterest.
The challenge of agenda setting Another challenge of sustaining the stakeholder’s willingness to co-operate relates to the process by which their CZM concerns and conflicts gain prominence and exposure and thus become legitimate concerns meriting the attention of the entire polity, i.e. it relates to the agenda setting process as defined by Cobb and Elder (1983). Equally significant is the challenge of managing the competition for policy response among issues and their proponents (agenda control), imposed by the reality that for any given Governmental structure, the number of legitimate issues exceeds the capabilities of
C. A. Davos
decision-making institutions to address them all. In light of the discussion in the introduction of the shortcomings of positivism, a ‘pluralistic’ agenda setting process that provides all the stakeholders with an equal opportunity to develop the agenda of coastalzone sustainability should be expected to be more conducive to co-operation than an ‘elitist’ process that only allows for major initiatives to come from such power centers as Government officials and policy-expert communities (for more on these two types of processes, see Studler and Layton-Henry, 1990). Moreover, a ‘systematic’ or ‘public’ agenda for action that includes the full range of sustainability issues salient to the entire community of a coastal zone should be expected to nurture a broader co-operation than a ‘formal’ or ‘institutional’ agenda consisting of issues that concern explicitly authoritative decision makers (for more on the distinction between these two types of agenda controls see Cobb and Elder, 1983). To highlight the implications of agenda setting, consider for example the multifarious effects of urbanization and tourism development, the pollution from aquaculture development, the pollution of estuarine and coastal waters from other sources and the irreversible loss of natural areas. All coastal countries face these issues and the generic stakeholder interests are the same, e.g. those of decision-making agencies, scientists, economic interest groups, special interest groups and the media. Yet according to the OECD report (1993), the coastal-zone sustainability priorities and actions differ among countries because of their different agenda setting and control processes. In addition to directly influencing the stakeholders’ willingness to co-operate, the process of agenda setting and control is bound to also affect their optimism about the level of optimism. Consider the current situation in the USA where a continuous public concern over environmental protection (public agenda) clashes with calls for repealing all major environmental legislation emanating from changes in party power in the Congress and the accompanied changes in views regarding the Government’s role (institutional agenda). The consequence is a return to contentious rhetoric and a harshening of negotiation
Coastal-zone sustainability
positions that threatens whatever progress has been achieved towards co-operation among all stakeholders including environmental-protection agencies. In summary, a major challenge to maximizing stakeholder co-operation as a foundation of effective CZM is to establish ‘windows of opportunity’ where policy, politics and participants can operate together to develop the coastal-zone sustainability agenda and act upon it with maximum cooperation (for more on the concept of ‘windows of opportunity’ see Kingdom, 1995).
The challenge of value discourse The public debate of coastal-zone sustainability policies focuses primarily on their impacts without paying proper attention to the underlying issues of: (1) what should be considered a positive and a negative impact (benefit and cost) and who should make this determination (the origin and meaning of values); and (2) how the benefits and costs of alternative decision options should be evaluated and integrated within the framework of a rule for making the final choice (the application of values for selecting among alternative policy options, instruments of implementation, etc.). Both of these issues are critical for the sustainability of stakeholder co-operation, however. As shown below, they generate significant conflicts that can undermine the effectiveness of any decision if they are not managed in advance of deciding.
On the origin of values The current public-value discourse has elevated anthropocentricity as the absolute foundation of affording all things meaning and value. Regardless of whether the ‘process of exchange’ (the Classical paradigm) or ‘labour and its productive organization’ (the Ricardo-Marx pradigm) is relied upon, humans are expected to be the ones who decide what must be valued and what its value means and must be. However, the
383
environmental debate has led to the reexamination of this anthropocentric thesis by forcing the question of what must be valued (e.g. whether the interest of inaminate nature and future generations have value) and how its value must be determined (Tribe et al., 1976; Elliot and Gare, 1983; Scherer and Attig, 1983; Bedau 1991). The logical next step is to question whether humans must and can continue to act as the sole arbiters of value. Notice that what is actually challenged is not the unavoidable role of humans, as the only value holders and decision makers, but their value foundations. It is this challenge that presents the highest risks for sustaining co-operation in the implementation of coastal-zone sustainability policies. This assertion may appear unjustified to those who cannot see how anthropocentricity can be divorced from the traditional collective value calculus, including those who subscribe to the aforementioned calls for integrated CZM. However, the same is not true for those concerned with sustainability and those who cannot see how the conventional value discourse can be continued in light of a technological progress that destroys the Galbraithian ‘system’ that engineers, plans, steers and administers human lives by: (1) making it possible and profitable to promote ‘difference’ rather than ‘sameness’; (2) transforming the human identity problem, from that of lack of options, to that of too many options; (3) facilitating multicultural congregation and exchange; (4) confusing human ideas and ideologies; and (5) multiplying human environmental concerns. Indeed the environmental discourse can no longer avoid the dilemma of how can a long-term co-operation in the implementation of coastal-zone sustainability policies be induced when individual interests are becoming volatile and ephemeral; when the culture promotes speed and heterogeneity, when ‘everything goes’. How can the collective will for coastal-zone sustainability to determine when society becomes a vast argumentative texture through which individuals construct their own independent reality (to paraphase Laclau, 1988). It is indeed consistent with the orderly world of positivists to keep developing such value typologies as ‘utilitarian’ (production/ commercial/market values), ‘user’ (based on
384
in situ uses) and ‘intrinsic’ (existence, option, bequest values) but very difficult to relate them to the every-day value praxis that defies positivism [Tunstall and Coker (1992) offer a good review of value typologies]. It is also logical, according to conventional discourse, to demand the definition of new objectives, the development of new policy instruments and the creation of new institutions for integrated CZM, but arduous to actually achieve these ends with broad agreement and co-operation within a multicultural, relativistic, postmodern society. Hence, it merits support to argue that only a proactive, well informed, constructive public discourse could highlight all value differences and invite respect for their conflicting ramifications as regards coastal-zone sustainability. Only through such discourse may the self interest be guided and reconciled with its collective counterpart and diversity channelled towards enriching instead of confusing the coastal-zone sustainability management process. Cooperative CZM with its emphasis on negotiation, compromise and conflict management can provide a promising framework for such a public discourse to be a valuable precursor to coastal-zone sustainability by maximizing the stakeholders’ willingness to co-operate.
Application of values The value discourse also becomes a source of conflict when stakeholder concerns (values) are translated into criteria for evaluating the comparative advantage of alternative policy choices. The current practice favours the application of a narrowly defined benefit-cost criterion (sanctified in the USA by law) that excludes from consideration whatever impacts of policy choices cannot be quantified in monetary terms. The anthropocentric, utilitarian foundation of this criterion relates directly to the previously discussed issues of the origin and meaning of values. It is true that more often than not, benefit-cost analyses qualify their results by acknowledging all pertinent, but not quantifiable in monetary terms, impacts. However as Socolow (1976) so elquently points out, such qualifications rarely enter the debate while
C. A. Davos
the quantifiable monetary results become ‘golden numbers’. Another source of value conflicts is the choice of instruments for policy implementation, e.g. command-and-control, economic instruments such as charges, taxes, eligibility fees or emission credits and allocation of property rights. The current debate on these instruments, too, follows the conventional practice of comparing the monetary cost of their application to their anticipated policy enforcement effectiveness. Limited attention is paid to the fact that these insutruments promote different valuesystems and thus debating them strictly on quantitative monetary cost-effectivenesss terms obfuscates significant value conflicts. Consider, for example, the choice between market-based instruments and the alternative of command-and-control. The foundation of the former on neoclassical economic theory promotes self interest as the dominant motivational force for inducing acceptable behaviour on the part of resource users and as the best arbiter of their competing interests. On the other hand, the command-and-control alternative subscribes to the principle that normative criteria can be applied to the determination of standards with which resource users must conform. Therefore, even the choice of policy instruments generates important value related issues such as whether self interest should be trusted to guide the collective will or whether normative constraints to individual behaviour should be relied upon. In broader terms, the issue is whether in formulating coastal-zone sustainability policies a disjunctive or a conjunctive relationshp should be accepted between freedom and obligation, i.e. freedom vs. obligation or freedom from within obligation. In summary, sustaining stakeholder cooperation in the implementation of coastalzone sustainability policies requires more than reliance on the proactive incorporation of the related public discourse into the policy formation process. It also depends on how comprehensively this discourse will cover all value-related issues, such as those associated with the origin and meaning of values as well as with the application of values for making such seemingly operational decisions as those for the appropriate evaluation approach and policy instrument.
385
Coastal-zone sustainability
The challenge of information and empowerment Finally, another significant challenge to the maximization and sustainability of stakeholder co-operation is that of information and empowerment, i.e. whether knowledge neutralizes all exercises of power or whether the many forms of power pervade, invade, traverse and ultimately constitute knowledge itself [as Amariglio (1988) poses when discussing Foucault’s Discipline and Punish]. More specifically, the proactive inclusion of stakeholders in the decisionmaking process necessitates a debate on the modalities of the relationship between power and knowledge and the management of the conflicts they generate. For example, there must be a debate on the constraints imposed by modern economics on what can be said regarding coastal-zone sustainability values and policies, being the foundation of the positivist approach to CZM. Similarly, it must be debated whether true and false discourse (what is said and what could or should be said) can and must be distinguished, as well as whether the stakeholders can and must be empowered to face power—which according to Said (1983), in order to work it ‘must be able to manage, control and even create detail: the more detail, the more real power, management breeding manageable units, which in turn breed a more detailed, a more finely controlling knowledge’. Interwoven with the conflicts created by the relationship between knowledge and power are those associated with information generation, control and dissemination. Currently there is a proliferation of environmental databases but they are designed to be accessed and understood only by small groups of highly specialized experts in accordance with the pervasive positivist attitude. They fail to consider the perceptions, concerns and capacity to access and assimilate information of diverse groups of online searchers for information, thus failing to inspire trust in their capacity to assist the management of conflicts among stakeholders and enhance the stakeholders’ motivation to co-operate. (For more on the subject see Ercegovac, 1993.) In light of this trend, current calls for more environmental indices
and the collection of more ‘facts’ and ‘hard’ data (themselves manifestations of the positivist approach) can only increase this marginalization of information as a potent means of forging a broader support for final CZM decisions.
Epilogue If research efforts must be expanded in order to provide increased knowledge of coastal systems and the requirements of their sustainability, should not research also be carried out into ways of formulating and implementing related policies more effectively and in a sustainable fashion guaranteed only by the sustainable co-operation among stakeholders? An affirmative response raises challenges to the current coastal-management praxis reflected in the calls for integrating the management methods mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The preferred alternative should be co-operative coastal-management. What has been presented in this paper is a synthesis of thoughts advanced by different disciplines with a focus on human behaviour as opposed to that of nature. Stated differently, the interdisciplinary nature of coastal-zone sustainability has been highlighted from the point of view of social sciences, not as is customary from that of natural sciences. The purpose was not, however, only to fill a perceived gap in the development of an interdisciplinary perspective on coastal-zone sustainability. The intent was also to address the critical need of moving on from the obsolete instrumentalist epistemology of conventional environmental economics, management and engineering. As argued here, efforts should be redirected towards a critical exploration of the ways in which coastal-zone sustainability policies: (1) are socially constructed (to partially borrow from Redclift, 1993); and (2) can be implemented with the sustainable co-operation of stakeholders with conflicting preferences and priorities. Unless this is a success, sustainability policies can sustain the illusory power of rational analyses as the sole infallible arbiter of what is the ‘best’ future of coastal zones.
386
It is submitted that this is a valid assertion regardless of regional scale and Governmental level (local, regional, national, and international) or culture of public policy formation (centralized, participatory). Publicpolicy decisions, such as those for coastal management, are negotiated, not made. Decision-making authorities negotiate among themselves because of their fragmented responsibilities or the diversity of their constituencies’ interests as well as with power centres because of their dependence on them for their effectiveness. Scientists negotiate among themselves as well as with decision makers because the limitations of their theoretical models of reality restrict them to indeterminate conclusions and advice. Power elites negotiate constantly their conflicting interests. All these negotiations can be contentious or co-operative. Only co-operative decisions have the inherent power to lead to sustainable outcomes, however. How such co-operative coastal-management decisions can be engendered was the main focus of this paper.
Acknowledgements This paper is part of a project entitled ‘The role of value conflict assessment techniques in the formulation of implementable and effective coastal zone management policies’ which is funded by the EC R&D Programme in the Field of the Environment (Second Phase) of the European Commission, Contract No. EV5V-CT940392. The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments of anonymous referees. The expressed views are solely those of the author, however.
References Amariglio, J. L. (1988). The body, economic discourse, and power: an economist’s introduction to Foucault. History of Political Economy 20, 583–613. Bedau, H. A. (1991). Ethical aspects of environmental decision making. In Environmental Decision Making: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (R. A. Chechile and S. Carlisle, eds), pp. 176–194. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
C. A. Davos Bingham, G. (1986). Resolving Environmental Disputes: A Decade of Experience. Washington, D.C.: The Conservation Foundation. Cobb, R. G. and Elder, C. D. (1983). Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of AgendaBuilding. 2nd Edition. Baltimore: John Hopkins. Crance, C. and Draper, D. (1996). Socially cooperative choices: an approach to achieving resource sustainability in the coastal zone. Environmental Management 20, 175–184. Crowfoot, J. E. and Wondolleck, J. M. (1990). Environmental Disputes. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Davos, C. A. (1986). Group environmental preference aggregation: the principle of environmental justice. Journal of Environmental Management 22, 55–65. Davos, C. A. (1987). Group environmental valuation: suitability of single interest approaches. Journal of Environmental Management 25, 97– 111. Davos, C. A. Thistlewaite, W. and Paik, E. (1993). Air quality management: participatory ranking of control measures and conflict analysis. Journal of Environmental Management 37, 301–311. Dawes, R. M. (1973). The commons dilemma game: an N-person mixed-motive game with a dominating strategy for defection. ORI Research Bulletin 13, 1–12. Elliot, R. and Gare, A. (1983). Environmental Philosophy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Ercegovac, Z. (1993). Principle of cultural diversity in the design of ‘right-to-know’ databases. Proceedings of the 14th National Online Meeting, New York, May 4–6, (M. E. Williams ed.), pp. 119–128. Medford, NJ: Learned Information. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162(3859), 1243–1248. Harter, P. J. (1982). Negotiating regulations: a cure for the malaise. Georgetown Law Journal, 71, 1–118. Kingdon, J. W. (1995). Agenda, Alternatives, and Public Policies. 2nd Edition. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers. Laclau, E. (1988). Politics and the limits of modernity. In Universal Abandon (A. Ross ed.), pp. 63–82. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lindblom, C. E. (1980). The Policy Making Process (2nd edn.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1993). Coastal Zone Management: Integrated Policies. Paris: OECD. Ostrom, E. (1996). Governing the Commons: the Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Portney, K. E. (1991). Public environmental policy decision making: citizen roles. In Environmental Decision Making: A Multidisciplinary
Coastal-zone sustainability Perspective (R. A. Chechile and S. Carlisle, eds), pp. 195–216. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Redclift, M. (1993). Environmental economics, policy consensus, and political empowerment. In Sustainable Environmental Economics and Management (R. K. Turner ed.), pp. 106–119. London and Florida: Belhaven. Said, E. (1983). The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, MA. Seabright, P. (1993). Managing local commons: theoretical issues in incentive design. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, 113–134. Scherer, D. and Attig, T. (1983). Ethics and the Environment. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Socolow, R. H. (1976). Failures of discourse. In When Values Conflict. (L. H. Tribe et al., eds), Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Studler, D. T. and Layton-Henry, Z. (1990). Non-
387 white minority access to the political agenda in Britain. Policy Studies Review 9, 273–292. Tribe, L. H., Schelling, C. S. and Voss, J. (eds) (1976). When Values Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Tunstall, S. M. and Coker, A. (1992). Surveybased valuation methods. In Valuing the Environment: Economic Approaches to Environmental Evaluation (A. Coker and C. Richards, eds), pp. 104–126. London and Florida: Belhaven. World Coast Conference (1993). Preparing to Meet the Coastal Challenges of the 21 stakeholder Century (Conference Report). Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management/RIKZ, Coastal Zone Management Centre, The Netherlands.