Discussion Summary: July 16, 2001

Dialogue Day 6 Agenda: Collaborative Processes

Dialogue moderator Bob Carlitz and host and panelist Deborah Dalton, from EPA's Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center introduced today's topic: Collaborative Processes:

• Collaborative processes: how they work and what works
• Decisions suited to collaborative efforts
• Collaborative processes at the national, regional, and local levels
• Collaboration and small businesses or small communities.

Note: Postings appearing by 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time appear in today's summary.

Collaborative Processes: How They Work and What Works

• By giving all stakeholders a place at the table, collaboration provides incentives for reaching lasting agreements. The collaborative process requires advance planning, management support, funding for a facilitator and other expenses, and time enough to reach useful results.

• It is crucial to maintain a balance of power among the participants in a collaboration. The labor-management model, being adversarial, works poorly for environmental protection. Instead, collaborations should recognize all parties at the table as near-equals.

• One participant reported a good experience of working as an internal facilitator at her state agency, but most participants stressed the need for neutral, third-party facilitators, who should be brought in at the beginning of the process to avoid private negotiations. Facilitators need to have subject-matter expertise.

• One participant worried that as facilitation techniques become more popular, the process will become corrupted, with facilitators in the pay of their clients (an analogy was made to pollsters).

Decisions Suited To Collaborative Efforts

• Not all projects fit into the collaborative model. When the individuals who will benefit from the project outcomes are the same as the individuals responsible for taking action, collaborations stand a high chance of success. Where no benefits are gained by those who carry out the project, collaborations probably should not be attempted.

• Agency participants in collaborations must wear three hats, balancing the roles of leader, partner, and stakeholder (because the agency wins too when the consensus process works).

Collaborative Processes at the National, Regional, and Local Levels

• While EPA reviews state permitting processes, states themselves have the final say on most permits. EPA has the authority to address hazardous substance releases on its own, but prefers to work with other agencies to negotiate an acceptable cleanup.

• Several postings addressed the relationship between EPA and various Tribes. One posting noted that Tribes should be dealt with on a government-to government basis. Another posting pointed out that since the Tribes are sovereign nations, EPA can enter into collaborations with members of the Tribes, but not with the Tribes per se. One panelist noted that it is misleading to speak of Tribes as a unit, since different Tribes have different decision-making cultures, requiring differently structured collaborations

• Agency panelists described how Federal Advisory Committees work, and directed participants to relevant websites. One participant was dismayed to find that there has been a decrease in funding for FAC's, and in the total number of individuals involved.

• EPA Title V air pollution workshops provide a good example of capacity-building collaborative projects. Community activists thirst for this kind of avenue to knowledge that will make them more effective, and tell them how the regulations affect their local areas.

• Participants were advised to watch out for well-meaning regulations that can actually hamper collaboration and consensus. An example from Carson National Forest showed that regulations could be revised so as to bring about a change from an adversarial to a collaborative process. Staff training and awareness raising were required.

• A number of postings called for public participation at the point when a permit application is complete, rather than when the draft permit is ready÷by that time, the agency and the permittee tend to think that negotiations are over.

• One posting described a case in which the late entry of EPA upset the agreements that were being reached by the state environmental agency. Ultimately, this message sees the problem not with EPA, but as a general problem of late entrants into the process.

• A number of postings described cases in which EPA and other agencies had withheld information or been otherwise unresponsive to citizen concerns. Members of citizens' groups from Florida, Missouri, Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma and New York complained that EPA was essentially collaborating with polluters, by denying them timely access to information or ignoring their testimony.

• Two panelists responded that it would be na•ve to think that politics could be removed from environmental protection, and said that the solution is not to demonize polluters, but to work on better collaborative models and inclusive processes.

• Two panelists strongly objected to the projected demise of the EMPACT program, since in their view it has been a model capacity-builder. Through the Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking (EMPACT) program, EPA has been providing environmental data directly to community groups.

Collaboration And Small Businesses Or Small Communities

• One posting from Texas described a successful collaborative process of regionalizing stakeholder groups in small business advisory committees.

• One panelist described an environmental collaboration initiative in the print and graphics area that effectively levels the playing field between regulatory agencies and small businesses.

Each day's summary is intended to capture the essence of the conversation. While this summary contains the highlights of participants' contributions relating to today's topics, more comprehensive information may be found in the individual postings.

Katherine Carlitz, Reporter