Using Stakeholder Processes in
Environmental DecisionmakingAn Evaluation of Lessons Learned, Key Issues, and Future Challenges
III. Lessons from the Past
Five observations emerged from the research and analysis of data obtained from the literature review, case studies and interviews. While not conclusions, per se, these "lessons from the past" established a platform for addressing how previous experiences have shaped the present day management and future challenges to stakeholder processes. These lessons, also presented in Figure 3, include:
Figure 3: Lessons from the Past - Environmental stakeholder processes are not new
- Stakeholder processes are often poorly managed
- Difference between success and failure is unclear
- "Social peer review" and "scientific peer review"
operate on differing tracks
- Expectations are often unrealistic
1. Environmental stakeholder processes are not new, but they represent an evolution from previous methods of soliciting public input. Stakeholder processes have various origins, emerging from several distinct practice areas.
These include:
- The concept of "maximum feasible participation" that was embedded in the 1960’s anti-poverty programs. The objective of this effort was to enhance the participation of lower income groups in the War on Poverty through neighborhood and community-based organizing. Federal funding was provided through community boards to organize campaigns and improve education, housing, and welfare.6
- The evolution of the shareholder concept in the private sector. A shareholder is an individual or organization that holds a financial interest in a company and that periodically can vote on issues that management presents or that can be submitted to a vote through a resolution process. During the early 1970’s, companies such as Cummins Engine used the term stakeholder to communicate that they recognized a responsibility to others beyond their direct shareholders. Initially, key stakeholders included customers, creditors, and the community. Over time, the concept has broadened to include employees, governmental agencies, environmental groups, the media, and others.7
- The growth of environmental dispute resolution in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This form of stakeholder participation itself derived from such practices as settling lawsuits through negotiation rather than by trial, resolving labor-management disputes and community conflicts through mediation, and using public involvement in city planning. Such practices were eventually adapted to a series of environmentally related topics, including land use; natural resources management; the use of public lands, water resources, and energy; air quality; and toxins. While frequently ad hoc in application, environmental dispute resolution became officially recognized in various statutes for managing hazardous waste siting and coastal zone management disputes.8
- Expanded requirements for public participation in governmental decisionmaking processes. Originating from the Federalist period of American history, public participation grew through the extension of the right to vote to non-property holders, women, and minorities. More recently, it has been associated with "good government" reforms as enacted in such statutes as the Administrative Procedures Act (which required notice and comment opportunities for proposed rulemakings) and the Federal Advisory Committee Act (mandating balanced and diverse points of view on committees advising federal agencies). Public participation was further extended through the addition of citizen suit provisions to environmental legislation such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act in the 1970’s and has continued to expand more recently through the right-to-know movement and voluntary actions taken by government and industry to solicit public input.9
2. Stakeholder processes are frequently managed in an ad hoc manner, thus failing to capture historical insights and transfer best practices. The splintered origins of stakeholder processes have created cross-disciplinary and cross-problem obstacles that inhibit the use of acquired knowledge. Because stakeholder processes are so problem- or location-specific, they often are conducted in an ad hoc manner. In addition, as government and industry convenors have expanded the demand for stakeholder input, a growing number of people with responsibility for overseeing or facilitating such processes have insufficient professional training or knowledge of the evolution of the field or of the substantive issues under discussion.
Several consequences result from these developments, including:
- Stakeholder processes are often poorly managed. While this development can be partially attributed to the difficulties inherent in resolving certain environmental problems, it is also associated with the lack of understanding of what type of process design achieves best results for certain types of problems.
- Some mistakes and inefficiencies persist until people discover the existence of analogous situations they can learn from. In addition, stakeholder management techniques that had been discarded in previous decades as ineffective continue to resurface.
- Many facilitators and participants in stakeholder processes continue to confuse whether they are a means to decisionmaking or an end. This lack of clarity contributes to the prolonged nature of some processes as well as confusion over the key elements of a problem that can be solved through a stakeholder process.
Some professional facilitators and convening organizations have initiated efforts to summarize a variety of lessons learned and best practices from stakeholder processes, such as alternative dispute resolution, comparative risk assessment and public participation. These represent a useful addition to the literature and address an important need to transfer practitioner experiences and methods.10
3. The difference between success and failure in a stakeholder process is often unclear. Members of the National Commission on Superfund achieved agreement on a broad number of issues which they hoped would provide input and momentum to legislative changes to the statute. However, the changes resulting from the election of a more conservative 104th Congress removed the political support from many of their recommendations. In the current Congressional session, some Republican moderates considering legislative changes to Superfund are re-examining previous Commission proposals. Was the National Commission on Superfund a success or a failure? What is success or failure in a stakeholder process?11
In 1991, representatives of the petroleum industry, federal and state regulatory agencies, environmental groups, auto manufacturers, and producers of oxygenated fuel components (e.g., ethanol, methanol) achieved a written agreement on the requirements for reformulated gasoline as required by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Shortly thereafter, ethanol producers successfully lobbied the Congress to modify the regulatory negotiation agreement to obtain terms more favorable to their specific product. In view of this Congressional action, did the results obtained from the stakeholder process represent a success or a failure?12
In 1992, a thirty-five-member regulatory negotiation committee, consisting of representatives from the paint and coating industry, the EPA, end users, environmental organizations, labor, state agencies, and a facilitation contractor retained by the EPA, began negotiations to develop uniform national guidelines to control volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from architectural and industrial maintenance (AIM) paints and coatings. After two years of negotiations the committee failed to reach a consensus, and negotiations were terminated. The perceived inequities of a strict uniform VOC standard, questions of performance standards, and scientific uncertainty prevented a consensus agreement. The EPA, in the absence of an agreement but armed with two years of knowledge as a result of the negotiations, is currently developing VOC restrictions that incorporate many of the options discussed during the negotiations. Even though the formal stakeholder process did not succeed, it yielded useful information to support subsequent EPA decisionmaking.13
These and other examples illustrate a central difficulty in managing contemporary stakeholder processes—the need for a more predictable and tangible definition of their outcomes. This need will become increasingly important in the future as convenors and stakeholders seek to achieve their objectives and balance their resources and other constraints against alternative processes. In addition, as stakeholders gain increased information and experience in working with each other—through direct, face-to-face interactions between companies and environmental groups, for example—they too, are seeking more direct and concrete results from their discussions.
4. Stakeholders provide a "social peer review" function similar to "scientific peer review," but these represent different types of processes. In environmental policymaking scientific peer review is designed to assess the quality and relevance of technical information to assist policymakers’ choices among an array of options. Peer review is the responsibility of qualified scientists whose
professional standards are applied in judging the suitability of the information under review. The use of peer reviewed science adds to the credibility of the information being applied in policymaking and contributes to the legitimacy of the overall decision process.
Stakeholder processes represent a parallel form of social peer review that enables interested parties to contribute information and review policy options under development to address an identified environmental concern. By employing a stakeholder process, the convenor hopes to obtain societal acceptance and legitimacy for the decisions rendered. However, unlike scientific peer review, the management of many stakeholder processes does not currently adhere to a set of recognized professional standards, and the process of engaging stakeholders is subject to considerable variability across issues.
The differences in the management of these two types of peer review have led to missed opportunities or conflicts in applying scientific information in stakeholder processes, or to unrealistic expectations about how the two processes relate to each other. An example of the former resulted from the unclear scientific guidance provided to EPA’s Administrator by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee in its review of the scientific basis of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for Particulate Matter in 1996. The Committee report failed to differentiate between its scientific and policy judgments. In addition, there was an absence of a well developed and transparent scientific rationale for the advice provided on the policy options reviewed. Both factors contributed to the confusion and controversy surrounding the revision of the health-based standards.14
The CASAC example illustrates the difficulties that many scientists encounter when communicating their more specialized methods and knowledge to policymakers and stakeholders. It also helps define the challenge before the scientific community in contributing information to stakeholder processes.
5. Expectations for what stakeholder processes can achieve need to be more specifically defined. Over the past fifteen years, expectations about the utility of risk-based decisionmaking have grown. During this time, great advances have occurred in applying risk assessment to a large number of environmental problems. In addition, risk assessment techniques became utilized by all levels of government and industry.
Over time, however, as the complexity of environmental decisionmaking increased and as the demands of non-scientist stakeholders to influence policymaking became more prominent, conflicts between risk-based and other models of policymaking have emerged. This has stimulated a very useful debate over the uses and limitations of risk assessment and its integration with stakeholder processes.15
A similar assessment is needed to better define the appropriate role and expectations for stakeholder-based decisionmaking. This is necessary because the continuing growth of such processes is frequently accompanied by a failure to develop specific goals and realistic process milestones and outcomes. In addition, the intensity of stakeholder processes (including commitments of time, energy, and money) and their often uncertain results has led to a "burnout" phenomenon among many participants.
6Peter Marris and Martin Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1973).
7
Interview with Charles W. Powers, November 24, 1997.8
Gail Bingham, Resolving Environmental Disputes: A Decade of Experience (Washington: The Conservation Foundation, 1986), pp. xvii-xix, 13.9
National Research Council, Understanding Risk, p. 23, Appendix B: Common Approaches to Deliberation and Public Participation.10
Bingham, pp. 94-120; James L. Creighton, "Trends in the Field of Public Participation in the United States," Interact (Fall 1995), pp. 9-10; Joanne Dea and Sue Thomas, Building a Foundation for Change: Opportunities and Challenges in State Comparative Risk Projects (Green Mountain Institute for Environmental Democracy: April 1997); and Western Center for Environmental Decision-Making, Public Involvement in Comparative Risk Projects: Principles and Best Practices (January 1997).11
Final Consensus Report of the National Commission on Superfund (The Keystone Center and The Environmental Law Center of Vermont Law School, March 1994).12
"Agreement Reached on Clean Vehicles Fuels" (EPA Press Release, August 16, 1991); Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Fuels Advisory Committee Outline of Supplemental Proposed Rules and Guidance for Reformulated Gasoline, Antidumping and Oxygenated Gasoline (August 16, 1991); and Ellen Siegler, "Regulatory Negotiations and Other Rulemaking Processes: Strengths and Weaknesses from an Industry Viewpoint." Duke Law Journal. Vol. 46 (1997), pp. 1429-43.13
Timothy Herbst, "The Paint Industry and a National VOC Standard: When Agreement is Not Profitable," Corporate Environmental Strategy (Spring 1995), p. 45; interview with Robert Nelson, National Paint and Coating Association, November 1997.14
Letter from Dr. George T. Wolff to Carol M. Browner, "Closure by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee on the Staff Paper for Particulate Matter," June 13, 1986.15
The Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management, Framework for Environmental Health Risk Management; National Research Council, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process (Washington, National Academy Press, 1983); and Ibid., Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment, 1994.
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