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Report for the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution

Face-to-Face and Internet Collaboration for the Giant Sequoia

National MonumentCarie Fox, Fox Mediation

with Philip Murphy, InfoHarvest

1

Map of the Monument. It proved surprisingly difficult to find a good map for collaboration purposes—detailed enough, but not too detailed, helping people connect with salient features (giant sequoia groves, inholders) and context (relevant features of the Tule River Indian Reservation or the adjacent National Park). Note, for instance, how hard it is to grasp the geographic context because the two maps are separate. This is a good metaphor for the challenge of presenting salient information at the right scale in public participation.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................1THE AUDIENCE FOR THIS REPORT..........................................................................................................................2ENHANCED PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLANNING..........................................2STAKEHOLDER DYNAMICS AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION RATHER THAN MEDIATION..................................3TOO MANY PILOTS.....................................................................................................................................................4

WHAT WE DID..................................................................................................5PLANNING AND OUTREACH PLATFORM.................................................................................................................5PRE-SCOPING & CAPACITY BUILDING....................................................................................................................8

The Inholders and Recreationists..............................................................8Capacity Within the Forest Service.........................................................12Science and Collaboration Assessment...................................................13General Scoping......................................................................................13

THE DEIS COMPANION SITE, ORIGINAL DESIGN..............................................................................................17The DEIS Redesign..................................................................................19

GOOGLE ADS.............................................................................................................................................................23

LESSONS LEARNED........................................................................................24WEB DESIGN............................................................................................................................................................24FACE-TO-FACE FACILITATION...............................................................................................................................25ROBUST PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IS RISKY, ESPECIALLY WITHOUT MEDIATION.........................................25ROLE OF ROSTER MEMBERS..................................................................................................................................25SCIENCE..................................................................................................................................................................... 26PLANNING PARADIGMS...........................................................................................................................................26

ENDNOTES.....................................................................................................28

FiguresFigure 1. Useful LinksFigure 2. Key RecommendationsFigure 3. List of AbbreviationsFigure 4. List of PilotsFigure 5. Links for Multi-criteria Decision SupportFigure 6. Typical Association Newsletter FormatFigure 7(a-c). Online Single Text ScreenshotsFigure 8. “Weighing In” ScreenshotFigure 9. General Scoping Website TrafficFigure 10. Nuanced Public PerspectivesFigure 11. Weights for the General Scoping CriteriaFigure 12. DEIS Criteria.Figure 13. The Paths People Created on the DEIS WebsiteFigure 14. Visual Comparisons and HyperlinkingFigure 15. Head-to-Head ComparisonsFigure 16. Google Ad “Explorers”

Giant Sequoia National Monument Report for the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution 2

Fig. 1 Key Insights

‣ Robust public participation cannot be an add-on to conventional NEPA analysis; both efficiency and genuine public-agency dialog require that outreach and analysis be built on a common (and relatively stable) platform. It follows then that:

‣ The DEIS is not just a NEPA document, it is also an outreach document. Sometimes there are things NEPA does not require but outreach does. Too often these are described as ‘prohibited’ by NEPA.

‣ Robust public participation requires that all the NEPA issues important to the decision be made explicit.

• Include substantive, procedural, and relationship issues.

• Frame the issues constructively and consistently as interests rather than positions.

‣ To engage the public, alternatives must take realistic constraints into account.

‣ Transparency requires more than sharing disparate facts; it requires the agency to explain how it put those facts together to make a decision.

‣ Using collaboratively developed frameworks--a bottom-up table of contents--makes for ‘findable’ information and is a very promising approach to genuine transparency.

‣ In robust public participation, the agency has to think through its communication strategies much more thoroughly than it might in an ongoing mediation.



Fig. 2. Useful Links to the various websites and reports

1. Prescoping 1. Main GUI http://gsnm.ecr.gov/2. Main Reports http://gsnmreports.ecr.gov/comments2008/

2. Scoping VIBE1. Main GUI http://gsnmvibe.ecr.gov/hike/ 2. Main Reports http://gsnmvibe.ecr.gov/reports/

3. DEIS Companion1. GUI http://gsnm.ecr.gov/ 2. Reports http://gsnm.ecr.gov/dhroot/dhowners/gsnm/vReports/ 3. Pages Accessed

http://gsnm.ecr.gov/dhroot/DHOwners/GSNM/vReports/GSNMDEIS_UsagePages.asp?QSMID=323

http://gsnm.ecr.gov/Default_08042010.htm

IntroductionIn 2007 the U.S. Forest Service requested the assistance of the U.S. Institute for

Environmental Conflict Resolution (the Institute) to support collaboration on the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The focal point was the development of a Forest Service programmatic plan for the Monument. This report documents what we did and whether and how it made a difference, as well as what we learned about enhanced public participation.i In working on this project, we discovered a great deal about how different planning paradigms can impact collaboration. We raise some questions about the Forest Service’s planning choices in the context of public participation. In particular, we argue that planning documents need to meet public participation goals as well as legal requirements; they need to reflect real constraints and they need to tell a coherent story rather than merely reporting disparate facts.

Our work was innovative in several ways. First, we did not have a formal mediation structure.ii We ventured into a hybrid of mediation, outreach, and organizational development. Second, we used a variety of technical innovations to “scale up” mediation-like concepts to larger numbers of people. In combination, these led to surprising insights about collaboration in land management decisions, the Forest Service’s application of the planning rule, and the role of facilitators and mediators. Overall, we explored options for going beyond National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) minimum requirements, not just in terms of more meetings or more websites, but also in the choice of panning paradigms. We found that scaling up made for qualitative differences in collaborative design.

The recent history of the Monument is conflicted. In the last thirty-five years there have been two major lawsuits and numerous minor ones, a mediated settlement agreement,iii two Presidential Proclamations,iv a number of legislative attempts to move the Monument to the National Park Service, and a 2005 Forest Service planning effort the court invalidated because it was “distinctly incomprehensible” and thus violated the disclosure requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.v (For background and a snapshot of how the Institute viewed the Monument world in 2007, see Appendix 1; for a map, see the title page. Readers unfamiliar with the NEPA steps would benefit from section 5 of the Council on Environmental Quality’s Collaboration in NEPA Handbook.vi) Conflict about this “rich and varied landscape”vii is inevitable, even desirable, given the Monument’s importance, the complexity and uncertainty about its management and the high stakes concerning fire management. Unfortunately, the interactions were stale and bitter by 2007, and in various ways became a story of disengagement rather than of constructive disagreement.


Fig. 3 List of Abbreviations

Association—The Giant Sequoia National Monument AssociationDEIS—Draft Environmental Impact StatementEMDS- Ecosystem Management Decision SupportFACA—Federal Advisory Committee ActMCDS- Multi-Criteria Decision SupportMSA- 1970 Sequoia National Forest Mediated Settlement Agreement NEPA—National Environmental Policy Act

The Institute came in early in the tenure of the Sequoia Forest Supervisor, Tina Terrell, who had a deep commitment to outreach. The Institute contracted with me, Carie Fox of Fox Mediation, after a selection process involving the Forest Service. I brought in Dr. Philip Murphy, a decision scientist and web designer. This report reflects our experience and observations while working for the Institute to increase collaboration in Monument planning.

With the exception of web design, we finished the collaboration work in June 2009. The last web work was completed in January 2011, at the end of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) comment period.

The Audience for this ReportThe audience for this report is varied, and each might respond in different ways. The primary audience is an agency manager who might be interested in heightened collaboration: be cautious because it may require a greater commitment than you imagine. It is intended for community leaders and citizens who want more and better communication from the federal government: help us think clearly about what you want, how to achieve it, and how to measure success or failure. Public participation is not what we imagine it to be, but what you desire it to be. It is intended to raise key strategic questions for the Institute in a constructive way. And finally, it presents some practical considerations for facilitators and mediators interested in enhanced outreach.

Enhanced Public Participation and Resource Management PlanningIn this report we compare mediation (which we originally expected to do) and public participation (which we did do). Compared to public participation, mediation is relatively well understood. Its goals are defined, ethics grounded, and leverage points articulated. In mediation, there is a tension and balance of power. This supports communications based on reciprocal need, challenge of assumptions and the clout to say “I don’t get it, and we aren’t moving forward until I do get it.” A mediation group can push back against administrative or political interference and can protect its members from their own organization. These mechanisms are not as strong in public participation.

By contrast, theories of public participation are not well-developed.viii What goals there are tend to be articulated through an agency lens. We know of only one piece of research to explore what the public wants from outreach, in a DEIS, on a federal website or in a commenting process.ix Without articulating goals, practitioners are incapable of even considering measures of success.x We do not understand public participation as a system well enough and have few tools for identifying leverage points.xi This gap is important in the preparation of a ‘lessons learned’ report because without a framework, lessons learned are just isolated data points. They do little to push public participation forward.

This report goes a small way towards addressing the gap. We fortuitously designed a process that revealed several key issues about natural resource planning and enhanced public participation. Some of these insights arise from our successes,


some from our failures, and some from the redesigns made in the press of real-time crises.

Stakeholder Dynamics and Public Participation Rather Than MediationBy 2007 the Monument conversation had devolved to two groups, the activist environmental community and the Forest Service. People across these groups shared a bone-deep sense of fatigue. I perceived both groups as internally complex and imperfectly cohesive. The complexity and internal stresses take a toll on individuals who want to participate, not usually because of active squelching by their organizations, but because managing internal discussion and resources becomes an overwhelming task.

The sense of fatigue and dissonance was exacerbated by the 1970 Sequoia National Forest Mediated Settlement Agreement. The agreement was a classic (and very labor-intensive) mediation resulting in a two-inch thick agreement with three basic elements: interim measures, an agreement to perform a collaborative grove inventory and a detailed agreement to update the Forest Plan by 1975. The agreement was good on its face but schismogenicxii in practice.

Nearly everyone concurs that the Forest Service abided by the interim agreements. The problem? The Forest Service never amended the Plan. Thus, in another sense it had shirked its commitment. Both sides felt cheated: the Forest Service because it did not feel recognized for its good faith implementation of the interim agreement, the environmental activists because they did not have an enforceable plan. When the environmental activists pursued the creation of the Monument under the Antiquities Act, the Forest Service’s side of the schismogenesis was “how could they reach for more when we have already given them so much under the mediated settlement agreement?” while the environmental activists’ view was “Monument designation is a necessary step since we still have no plan.”

The people who were not party to the agreement were also cheated, as the agreement’s interim provisions became an unrecorded template for Forest Service operations. I believe this contributed to the general sense of powerlessness and disenfranchisement among inholdersxiii and recreationists. The Institute provided an important benefit by identifying this schismogenesis, tracing it to its root cause, and pushing for resolution. In 2008 the Forest Service did laboriously comb through the mediated settlement agreement’s many planning provisions and attempt to address them in the current DEIS. As a result, as well as making their plan more robust legally, the Forest Service took a vital step in creating a foundation for positive dialog in the future.

I initially missed the significance of the Mediated Settlement Agreement. This was partly because the Forest Staff were so completely genuine in their sense of virtue about having implemented it, or rather having implemented the interim provisions. But the most important weakness was my lack of a neutral “Board of Directors,” a mediation group invested in making sure I knew what neutrality was. I met only once with the combined environmental representatives, and at the end of the meeting I finally understood the problems with the mediated settlement agreement. I pulled out the tome and read it and re-read it, and was stunned.


Neutrality is not just a matter of good intentions. It is an emergent property of conflicting perspectives. Imparting those perspectives to a would-be neutral requires significant investment on the part of a great many people. The members of the activist environmental community are busy. I cannot count on them to educate me when the process is not one they have chosen to be involved in.

The Mediated Settlement Agreement of 1970 was a sufficient reason for the environmental activist community to balk at the idea of mediating again in 2007. But there were other reasons: they were stretched to the limit. The Sequoia Forest’s emphasis on logging in their 2005 planning attempt did not inspire trust. For some in the environmental community, having authority for the Monument moved from the Forest Service to the National Park Service was the best outcome anyway—so why invest in another mediation to help the Forest Service?

There is a larger question—to what extent is mediation in the interest of the environmental community? There are at least three issues here: the cost of participating, the tendency for the agency to be the convener and the associated problems with neutrality, and the fact that the environmental advocates have built up a great deal of influence over time. Why should they share it with the general public? Environmental groups have staff, infrastructure and experience as well as command of science and law in comparison to the general public. They have an enviable litigation record and access to decision-makers. What is the incentive to slog through a mediation that potentially dilutes their power?

Three other important groups had lower incentives to participate intensively on the Monument. With the exception of the National Park Service, sister agencies wanted to be involved after the DEIS and in the normal channels—such as Endangered Species Act consultations. Removal of commercial timber is circumscribed on the Monument, limiting the timber industry’s investment. The Tule River Tribe had chosen to invest primarily in a plan specific to its boundaries. At the same time, mediation would have required a large travel investment for many of the key stakeholders.

Yet many recreationists, representatives of gateway communities and inholders wanted the dialog. It was palpable. It was equally clear their capacity had been weakened by their time in the sidelines. They wanted more.

Both the Forest Supervisor and the Institute teamxiv had biases in favor of enfranchising greater numbers and types of people. It was probably inevitable that we would decide to go ahead with a forum for those who did want to participate.

When we did this, we chose to operate outside of a formal mediation structure. The balance of the lessons learned address what we experienced from the differences. I will discuss how accountability, timing, preparedness, and use of science are affected and the types of questions and design principles they raise. The most valuable insight is the increased importance of “collaboratable” planning paradigms. If enhanced collaboration is to work, the Forest Service Manager must use—must be allowed to use—NEPA and their planning rule as the floor, not the ceiling.xv Mediation has the power to fix things that fall short of collaboration needs, but in a looser structure parties are much more dependent on the agency to prepare collaboratable materials.


Too Many PilotsA last piece of context before describing the things we actually did, how well they worked, and what they taught us: there were too many pilots on this project. (See Figure 4 for a list of the pilots.) We were forced into poor design choices because of incompatibilities with other pilots. The ability to evaluate the pilots was compromised. The staff was overextended. The Forest Supervisor could neither maintain the focus for so many innovations, nor keep the Regional Office up to date. Most important, this created too many simultaneous learning curves for the public! Every new gizmo requires an investment. Cumulatively, it was too many investments. As well, there ought to be a possibility the investments are for the long term, and some of the pilots did not even survive the project.

What we Did Pre-scoping, I interviewed numerous stakeholders on behalf of the Institute, analyzed the Mediated Settlement Agreement and other documents, and convened a meeting of key stakeholders to explore traditional stakeholder mediation. Understanding that we needed a looser structure, I worked closely with the Forest Service and the Institute to design an approach allowing all interested parties more robust access to the planning process without violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Using face-to-face meetings and the internet, we developed collaborative capacity through shared learning and improved communication. We developed a commenting website to analyze the Presidential Proclamation that created the Monument. In General Scoping, we developed a collaborative multi-criteria decision support (MCDS) framework, gathered people’s values based on that framework, and continued with the community capacity development. Between General Scoping and the publication of the DEIS, we worked with the public on the framing of the alternatives and the rationale for rating those alternatives based on the issues, the Proclamation and the desired conditions. At the same time we worked with the Forest Service to develop metrics. Finally, in late 2010, in concert with publication of the DEIS, we posted an interactive website.

The use of MCDS and the way it illuminated collaborative needs is a theme traced chronologically throughout this report.

Planning and Outreach PlatformAt an early brainstorming meeting held at the Redlands Institute, participantsxvi

agreed the objective for our involvement should be to increase diversity, accessibility and public power. Our core design principle was to have a common platform for planning and public dialog. The common platform, Boykin Witherspoonxvii persuasively argued, connects the Forest Service analysis, the


Fig. 4 List of Pilots- Single text process and design of commenting website- Economic community

analysis using - social network

analysis- Headwaters

- MCDS- EMDS- Alternative Commenting website (Limehouse)

public’s ability to make insightful comments, and the likelihood such comments would be used by the Forest Service to improve its plan.

We assumed that what many people want in public participation is, first, to know how a decision might affect them personally and, secondly, to understand why the agency chose the alternative it did. Unfortunately, a programmatic plan does not lend itself to identifying specific impacts. Thus we wanted to focus on the second topic, the why of a decision, so that a person could look at our common-platform materials and say “I agree / don’t agree but I see how they got there. Now I know exactly what to put into a comment letter.” To make this work, the DEIS would have to do more than outline the “Environmental Impacts.” It would have to explain the decision.

Sifting through the possibilities, we chose, as noted above. multi-criteria decision support (MCDS--For more detail about MCDS, please follow the links in Figure 7.). This decision was partly driven by my familiarity with and enthusiasm for this technique. It works well in face-to-face meetings and can also be powerful online. We saw then—and see now—that it is compatible with NEPA.xviii But it certainly was not compatible with some Forest Service planning customs, as we will describe below. This clash of paradigms was actually very useful in understanding key collaboration/planning pitfalls, regardless of whether one uses MCDS or some other tool.

MCDS enables participants to assess how well an alternative meets a particular vision of what a good plan for the Monument would be. What is interesting about the tool is that it forces clarity about all the elements of a decision—the criteria, the alternatives, the rationale for rating how well the alternatives meet each criterion, the actual ratings of the alternatives, and the weights—how much each criterion matters as compared to the others (see text box below). This common-sense approach disambiguates the agency decision, and this in turn surfaced serious problems with the “collaboratability” of the Forest Service’s planning rule or its


These peach-colored text boxes track the MCDS issues using purchasing a car as an example. The narrative is purposely cast in a cartoonish manner.

Criteria—maximize fuel efficiency, stylishness of the car, safety and so forth.Alternatives—VW van, Ford pick-up truck, Ferrari and Cadillac sedan.Ratings—Many ratings are easy to find for cars—mpg, for instance, is a well-understood means of measuring and rating fuel efficiency.Rationale—Not all ratings are obvious—to rate the ability to be recycled, analysts may need to develop a articulate their assumptions identify units of measurement, and explain how they made or estimated those measures.Weights—In some car-buying decisions, safety might be pre-eminent; in others, cost. Different decision contexts could drive different choices even though the alternatives and ratings remain the same. Weights correspond to policy. No decision is transparent unless the weights are made explicit.

Figure 5. Links for MCDS

BEST: A short video in which chickens choose a way to cross the road.

For planers: An explanation of MCDS in collaborative planning:

The background section in the DEIS provides information about MCDS in the context of the Monument.

application. Our focus in this report is to outline the commitment required if one wishes to collaborate robustly outside of a mediation context. MCDS brilliantly limned the extent of this challenge, a challenge that any robust public participation would involve.

MCDS’s disambiguation revealed patterns of risk avoidance. In planning, ambiguity, delay and obfuscation are tools for postponing risk. Risk can take the form of litigation, internal dissent, or public outcry. It is not necessarily true that agencies deliberately obfuscate. Rather, systems pressures reward risk-avoidance patterns over a long period of time. By examining our experiences, we can describe the specific patterns posing a problem for collaboration.

This is described in detail in the section on the DEIS website. Early on, however, we surfaced the issue of “issues.” It was startling how much miscommunication, frustration, and suspicion this created. NEPA and the Council on Environmental Quality guidance provide little clarity on how to define the “issues” to be addressed in alternatives analysis and selection; even the Forest Service’s planning rule is vague on this topic.xix Both NEPA and the Forest Service rules give the agency latitude to structure issues, but the Forest Service staff was very keen on “issues in controversy.” We thought the advice was a floor (‘at least include issues in controversy’); the staff felt this was a ceiling (‘only include issues in controversy and leave out relevant issues if they are uncontroversial.’) Because of these conversations, we have several recommendations for agencies attempting enhanced outreach:

1. Include the issues that matter to the decision, not just “issues in controversy.” In this way, the DEIS can tell a complete story.

2. Frame the issues constructively, as interests rather than positions.xx

3. Consistently define issues as the characteristics of the outcome--interests--rather than as the means of accomplishing them--the positions. One ‘issue’ in the DEIS, “Methods for Sequoia Regeneration,” has to do with the tools to be used; these relate to the how and they invite positions “use the saw!” or “use fire!” By contrast another ‘issue,’ “Recreation and Public Use,” focused on the characteristic-- balancing public use and ecosystem protection. If the basic framing of the issues is a hodgepodge of means and ends, the ensuing discussion is much harder to follow. It would be desirable, we believe, to consistently frame issues as interests, the


Everyone agrees that good mileage is important in buying a car, so it is not an “issue in controversy.” But it is important to the decision! If you want to involve people in a car-buying decision, then tell the whole story, not just the parts people quarrel about.

In choosing a car, proposed issues could be beauty (an interest), is-it-a-hybrid (a positional framing about the proper answer), and cost-effectiveness (another interest). But it would be more consistent to use beauty, fuel efficiency and cost-effectiveness as issues, then make at

characteristics one wishes to achieve. The means for accomplishing the objectives would go in the alternatives.

It is difficult to understand why the Forest Service invested in a collaborative, disambiguated MCDS decision framework while simultaneously developing a separate list of issues running the gamut from interests to tools. MCDS was not solely the Forest Service’s investment—the public invested time and trust as well. It appears the Forest Service had ambitious participation goals but did not understand that to achieve them would require adjusting its planning paradigm and approach to NEPA documentation--i.e, by including relevant issues not in controversy and by framing issues consistently in terms of interests. At the same time, what we thought of as incremental change within NEPA and the Forest Service Planning Rule clearly felt radical to some in the Forest Service. We underestimated. As a result, our “common platform” became two barely conjoined approaches.

Enhanced public participation is expensive. Voluntarily addressing non-controversial, yet relevant issues within NEPA is more work. But it would surely be less expensive--and more effective-- to enhance NEPA than to make a whole separate analysis for the sake of public outreach. Worse, once a separate analysis is constructed, the connection between outreach activities and genuine involvement becomes tenuous. Both the staff and the public become involved in what could be seen as ‘make work’ projects. That these projects carried as much benefit as they did is a testament to all involved, but it is not clear why such extra stress was necessary. All collaboration tools and activities should be part of a coherent planning process advancing integrated substantive, relationship and procedural goals.

In mediation, the parties provide a countervailing pressure to the agency reflex towards risk avoidance and familiar templates. Members of a well-knit mediation also protect the process and the people important to it.xxi For an agency to disambiguate planning without the backing of a powerful “hard structure” group is a big undertaking.xxii

Pre-Scoping & Capacity Building Fostering collaborative capacity naturally focused three communities: inholders, local communities, and many recreationists; the generally more sophisticated participants focusing on science and ecosystem management; and the Forest Service itself. To foster collaborative capacity, we used face-to-face meetings and interactive websites. The recreation-focused meetings occurred every six weeks on average. There were six science-focused meetings. About a third of the people attended both types of meetings. The indicators of increased capacity were the creation of the now-chartered Giant Sequoia Management Association;xxiii increased understanding and acceptance of the meaning of the Proclamation; greater diversity and relevance in the alternatives chosen for study; increased connection across affinity groups; increased understanding of science, geography, and complexity on the Monument and greater civility.


The Inholders and RecreationistsThe recreation-focused meetings eventually evolved into an independent non-profit, the Giant Sequoia National Monument Association, which is active today. The Association is an objective indicator of increased capacity brought about by the Institute’s involvement. Mellower and more effective discourse, greater understanding of the Monument, and creation of connections were the deeper benefits. Regular, facilitated meetings occurred over two years, culminating in the voting in of the Board of the Association. But it is important to remember that the original goal was not to create an association—I believe that would have failed. The goal was to meet and learn and let the parties shape what would suit them. It was the participants in the discussion who created the Association.xxiv

The first recreation-focused meeting was as tense as any I have ever facilitated. Over the first year of meetings initial distrust and anger were replaced by camaraderie and a sense of ease. The improvements in collaborative capacity related to several elements. The most important was the mere fact of meeting in a safe context, followed by the chance to talk over a coffee or beer in the hotel bar, and to do this regularly. Supervisor Terrell’s obvious commitment to the group was important, as was the attendance in early meetings by her counterpart at the National Park Service. Keeping the commitment consistent without being insistent on a quick benefit was essential.

The meetings were open.xxv People who volunteered to represent a group sat in the fishbowl; others, around the perimeter. Participants did develop a charter, which was aspirational rather than binding; the representatives signed it. Laborious and occasionally tedious as charters are, it was important to the soft structure of the process.

There were engagingly written notes in a newsletter format for each meeting, and regular evaluations. In each meeting, there was some time devoted exclusively to the representatives in the fishbowl and at least one “exercise with a purpose” involving everyone equally and requiring people to move and mingle. The meetings lasted two and a half hours, with a generous break—arguably the most important part. Each meeting had one core shared learning experience and one key collaboration skillxxvi (the latter either presented or snuck into an exercise, or both). The shared learning addressed geography, recreation, fire, social connections, grant searches and, our most notable value-added, an understanding of the Proclamation. In addition, the meetings were designed to build on one another to create a sense of momentum. We had regular speakers so that the meetings became a combination book club, social gathering, presentation, workshop and collaboration--with good coffee.

The representation requirement for people in the fishbowl exerted a surprisingly successful pressure, while complying with the spirit and the letter of


Fig. 6. Typical Association Newsletter Format

the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The key advantage of this soft structure approach was the creation of a sense of reciprocity, of shared responsibility normally lacking in public meetings, and from this came empowerment and the eventual impetus to create the Association. Having a loose definition worked, I suggest, because it was unenforceable. I expected the community to honor the intent and to use common sense. As a result, instead of policing good behavior I was


Fig. 7a: The visitor reads the text and clicks on any hyperlinked phrase. These graphics are done by Thom Cheney in the Forest Service palette.

If they were to have any power in this plan and beyond, and if they were to have constructive disagreements, participants needed to understand the Proclamation that created the Monument. There were plenty of strongly held opinions, but few people seemed to have actually read this odd document--part poetry, part legal strictures. The most electrifying of the meetings required participants to identify all the plausible interpretations of their chunk of the document. The two very challenging rules were that they had to include interpretations they did not agree with (a marvelous exercise in collaborative capacity in and of itself!) and they had to ground interpretations in the text. Examples of text and interpretation are presented in Figure 7, above.

One of the tools for gathering information from these meetings and feeding it into the planning process was multicriteria decision support. The recreation section of the DEIS does reflect these conversations very resonantly.

Earlier I described the meetings as a mix between a book club and an ongoing workshop. Another way to think about them is as an important game whose objective is adult learning and empowerment. In a game, people do not actually want to ‘have fun’ all the time. They want the exquisite balance between success and struggle, and they are willing to engage in—eager for—a significant proportion of struggle.xxvii They also want to see progress and the opportunity to move up from level to level.xxviii The evening we elucidated the Proclamation involved a lot of


Fig. 7b, continued from the previous page: Once he clicks on a phrase, the visitor has a choice.....

Fig. 7c: If he chose the neutral summary, here is what he sees. (After he reads it he can comment.)

struggle intellectually, emotionally, and procedurally. The participants were forgiving of this difficult task because they could see the payoff. They probably suspected the next meeting would lean more towards fun. (It did.) They trusted me and they knew I trusted them.

This is an interesting design between a hard structure such as mediation and a nebulous event such as a single public meeting. A public meeting is nebulous because there are few collaboratively developed mores and there is little sense of momentum. These meetings, without using exclusion as a form of definition—as mediation does—managed to create significant accountability and reciprocity. In a controversial planning process it might make sense to build public meetings as a continuum with self-organizing energy of its own rather than as episodic meetings totally owned by the agency.

I took the information from the Proclamation exercise and from interviews and circulated a draft articulating every interpretation of every line of the Proclamation, a classic single text.xxix We then designed an interactive website asking people to comment with respect to the actual document. (In game design, this would be like requiring a person to earn a certain level before she can proceed.)

This was an investment in technology, an investment in complex discussions with the Forest Service’s IT people, and an investment on the part of the public. Asking people to learn a new approach—even motivating them to create a bookmark—is not trivial.

Based on the comments, I revised the single text, noting that the thinking had become crisper and clearer. Finally, the Forest Supervisor published a document articulating which of these interpretations the Forest Supervisor would be used in developing the Plan.xxx It was a great deal of work, but at the end of it people were no longer talking at cross-purposes. We had a foundation for the ensuing dialog. As is often the case in single text processes, a great deal of the controversy simply fell away. It is a good means of working through denial, anger and grief, and approaching the process repeatedly and in different formats was very helpful. This was a good example of synergy between face-to-face meetings, paper documents, and the web. As a result, the collaboration proceeded with a refined range of interpretations for the Proclamation and a greater degree of respect for differing opinions.

After this pre-scoping website and before General Scoping, another pilot was added. It was a system to publish documents with comment-gathering capabilities. This was regrettable from our perspective. It meant people had yet another website to log into and familiarize themselves with. Because the new website was not capable of transmitting people’s identities (or a surrogate thereof), it reduced our ability to test hypotheses about the work we were doing. We could not trace the link between our work and comments made on the other website, we could not track whether a session was a new person or a returning one, and we couldn’t identify anything about the visitor—even knowing the zip code of the person visiting our website would have been an extraordinary benefit.


Capacity Within the Forest ServiceAs a roster member to the Institute, I was also contracted to increase capacity of all sorts within the Forest Service. Capacity increases during collaboration. It must. But it increases because the process drives it, because what the participants want to accomplish together creates stress until and unless they acquire the necessary skill. If the facilitator can nurse that skill along, as I did with the meetings described above, well and good—and neutral. But the minute the facilitator takes on the independent role as coach, trying to achieve extrinsic capacity goals rather than ones arising intrinsically from the collaboration, she is not a neutral. She has an agenda. As one staff person put it “when you were working more like an organizational development trainer, sometimes you did not come off as a neutral and that was confusing.” This is ironic because the first principle of organizational development is to be clear about roles.

At the same time, the context for capacity building at the Forest was not constructive. The Regional Office was not on board with some of the Forest Supervisor’s methods. This became more complicated when our champion within the Forest Service retired, and still more complicated when the Regional Office determined it, rather than Supervisor Terrell, had decision authority for Monument planning. The staff was caught in the middle, which is not conducive to skill development. At the same time, the Forest Supervisor’s attention was unpredictable in timing and nature, creating an unsafe place for the staff to take risks. Of course, exercising a new skill is a risk. Chronic overwork and the excess of pilots only further depressed the appetite for trying new things. The staff pulled off miracles, but collaboration should not require miracles. It needs to be pragmatic to be sustainable.

Science and Collaboration AssessmentThe science used in the project was not well suited to collaboration. A stellar group of people within the California Forest Service, showing an impressive level of initiative, insight, and teamwork, had developed a system of models. These had not been designed with collaboration in mind and functioned as quintessential black boxes. Worse, from my point of view, they had stunning displays. Compelling displays one cannot get underneath are hard on collaboration. The team was generous in answering questions—we had a full day with them and any stakeholders who wished to participate, but tellingly the two people who were able to take advantage of this opportunity were former Forest Service employees. It was a good day, and I think it will bring benefits to the Forest Service-Environmental activist dialog across California, but it did not help much for the Monument, where the goal was to bring in a greater number of people.

Here again the structural differences between public participation and mediation are important. Assessing the ‘collaboratability’ of science is not a typical part of a mediation assessment. These things will be shaken out: shared learning increases everyone’s capacity to track the relevant science, and power gives the parties a chance to say “we will not move forward until we understand.” But in the more amorphous world of public participation, it behooves us to examine the


‘collaboratability’ of the available science early and to adjust our expectations accordingly.xxxi

General ScopingDuring General Scoping we used face-to-face meetings to check that the criteria in the MCDS framework resonated with the public. Online, we asked for validation of the criteria and had people enter their weights. (See Figure 8, or go to the splash page and then click to weigh in.) We also gave a preview of the DEIS website on the premise that fair processes give people time to anticipate and prepare for novel approaches (go to the splash page and then click on the test drive.). 374 people visited the website and 81 entered their weights. The results and report can be found at http://gsnmvibe.ecr.gov/reports/; highlights appear in Figure 10.


Figure 8. “Weighing in” on the Website using MCDS.

Our most important finding was that people are more nuanced in their opinions than they are often portrayed. Someone who is adamant about recreation still cares about restoring natural fire; an advocate for natural fire is also concerned about safety and air quality, as illustrated in Figure 10. We saw that the criteria were resonant and received good suggestions on how to improve them. For instance, one attendee at a public meeting pointed out in the collaborative process, water quality had been left out. We were also impressed that people weighed procedural and relationship criteria as much as they did substantive issues. (In Figure 11, procedural and relationship criteria appear in the bottom box.)


Figure 10. Nuanced Interests in Website Results. The blue line shows the distribution for the 81 people who input their weights. The purple line shows the weights for people who indicated a strong interest in including mechanical approaches to managing the Monument. The green line represents the people who wanted to use fire. The two groups, often characterized in simplistic (opposing) terms, actually have a great deal in common. This radar graph suggests the socioeconomic issues merit further discussion. (For comparison, see this endnote for the graph one would expect if people were as monomaniacal as they are sometimes described.xxxii

Values Scale:

Top Level Objectives:

All that matters

Really matters

One thing that matters

Does not much matter

Could hardly care less

Is a sideboard

Protect individual objects 6 21 41 9 3 1Protect ecosystems 8 41 25 5 1 1Manage processes 4 27 34 12 3 1Increase enjoyment of the monument 7 40 25 6 2 1Foster socio-economics 3 18 36 15 8 1Reduce cost of development and implementation

5 19 36 16 3 2

Create compelling plan 3 28 37 7 5 1


Figure 11. Weights by Criteria

In the parallel face-to face meetings we found that MCDS worked well to pry people loose from their positions. To a mediator, MCDS is a more sophisticated map of our familiar language of positions (which foster head-butting when addressed too early) and interests (which are the foundation of collaborative discourse).xxxiii The map gives each their place; visually it leads people to shift from “don’t use the saw” to “restoring natural fire is a priority.” The latter leads to a rich discussion—what is natural fire, why does it matter so much and then how to implement a fire policy and what to do in the instances when natural fire is not practicable. Talking about interests (criteria) does not just unpack the substantive issue; it also unpacks procedural issues (air quality permitting) and relationship criteria (I do not trust you with a saw).

During this time, we had strong hint that the ideal of a ‘common platform’ was in trouble. We had imagined the Desired Conditions would be organized along the lines of the publicly developed criteria, but they were not.xxxiv Eventually some text boxes were patched in to create a connection of sorts. We sought reassurance that, in fact, planning and outreach would have a common platform—would come together in the DEIS. However, I failed to understand—still do not completely understand –the barriers, nor did I properly interpret the reassurances that things would come together on the next round. MCDS was something much more than an afterthought, but neither was it ever completely integrated.

We promoted a complimentary approach to the Forest Service’s system of models and to MCDS, Ecosystem Management Decision Support.xxxv This approach has promise for collaborative science, but I realized I was guilty of encouraging the “too many pilots” syndrome and recommended we let it drop.

After general scoping, the agencies typically disappear for long periods of time, developing alternatives and performing their analyses. For this plan, the Forest Service made a significant commitment to the public and conducted – “veg management” meetings, which I designed and facilitated. The Association meetings likewise continued. The veg management meetings were intended for people who were most interested in ecosystem issues and wanted more intensive discussion than the Association meetings would provide. For the science meetings we also used MCDS as a unifying tool; it supported constructive discussion—in fact this informal group tore apart and reconstructed the decision framework, engendering excellent discussion and a markedly improved product.

This same loose concatenation of people participated in a meeting to discuss the Forest Service’s preliminary alternatives, greatly strengthening them. Though the discussion about the alternatives was excellent, the ensuing one about the rationale for comparing the alternatives was among the most vibrant I have ever seen. We focused the discussion by asking participants what they would use to measure the differences that really matter to them. The group interested in restoring natural fire regimes met in the Supervisor’s Office and included the Supervisor, environmental representatives, the Supervisor’s Fire Manager, the tribal representative, and members of the timber industry. They became so engrossed in the exchange of ideas and the revelation of assumptions they seemed to forget what


side they were on, forget history and animus, and let go of the idea any of them knew the answer. It was an exciting time.

The next day I dove up into the Sierra Nevada to witness the voting in of the Association’s first Board of Directors. My role as a facilitator was at an end. Only the DEIS website was left.

The DEIS Companion Site, Original Design

Our original web design for the DEIS was mooted as the alternatives were refined over time. Nevertheless, at the request of the Forest Service we posted the original design, because it still had educational and follow-through value. The premise of the first design was to involve the web visitor in the complexity of the Forest Supervisor’s decision. In earlier discussions, I addressed the imperfect connection between the decision framework and the Forest Service’s issues. This problem was exacerbated when, between the vibrant discussion the stakeholders had in June of 2009 and the publication of the DEIS, the decision lost its

complexity: the alternatives scored very similarly for each criterion and one alternative was rated highest for every criterion and for nearly every sub-criterion. For our design to work, the alternatives would have to have displayed strengths and weaknesses. This section describes the problem in greater detail, a problem that is relevant to collaboration generally. (Because the premise of the original design was so challenged, we were also driven to create a different web experience. The premise for the second design was to make the DEIS information as accessible as possible; in the next section I will describe what we learned from its success.)

There are three things people agree about: the Monument is precious; it is at risk, and its communities of interest and of place are deeply divided about its management. How could the decision not be complex? If it is not presented in its complexity, what sort of enhanced outreach is possible or merited? We hoped to use MCDS to disambiguate a complex decision, but the complexity of the decision fell away for a variety of reasons. Instead we used MCDS to identify the ways the Forest Service’s planning paradigms could (but in this case did not entirely) work in favor of genuine collaboration:

Remember the DEIS is not just a NEPA document, it is an outreach document. For mundane outreach, hewing to the minimum required by NEPA makes sense. If an agency claims to be engaging in enhanced outreach, then the DEIS has to help citizen understand and engage with the decision. Writing the document in a slightly different style or designing meetings more creatively is not enough. The design of the analysis must be made with outreach in mind.


If you ask your neighbor to invest a great deal of time in helping you make a car purchasing decision, but it turns out one car rates better for each of your criteria, she is going to wonder why her advice is

Make all the issues that matter to the decision explicit, especially if people value them differently. Only then can a community voice, hear, respect and perhaps resolve genuine differences. For the Monument DEIS, “flexibility” was such an important issue that it caused one alternative to be rated highest for every criterion. (Or rather, for every criterion the Forest Service rated, but I will get to that later.) Yet “flexibility” was not called out as a separate criterion, but rather tucked into numerous substantive arguments. If someone wanted an answer to the question “why did the Forest Service rate Alternative F so well?” she would have to dig a long time to find the crux of the matter: F had fewer diameter limits than its closest cousin, Alternative B.

The more people’s values differ about an issue—and there is a great deal of disagreement about “flexibility”—the more important it is to call it out.

Include substantive, procedural, and relationship issues. Nothing in NEPA limits analysis to substantive issues. Yet agencies are much more likely to identify substantive issues such as “protect ecosystems” than they are to include relationship issues such as

“trust” or procedural ones such as “flexibility.” The problem is that decisions sometimes hinge on procedure or relationship. If it matters to the decision, it needs to be on the table.

In this DEIS, flexibility mattered a great deal but it was not called out as such. The criterion “implementability” also had a troubled history. It meant “but can you actually get this alternative done on the ground?” and it became a hodgepodge of community support, realistic constraints, and other factors. The Forest Service allowed its inclusion because it manifestly did matter to stakeholders, but they declined to rate it. (i.e., they were not willing to articulate whether they thought one alternative was more implementable than another.) This was another blow to our original web design, but more important, it suborned the public participation goals.xxxvi If feasibility is the elephant, name it. (See the way we patched this; we asked people to rate feasibility for themselves.)


Car choice is not just about scientific criteria such as fuel efficiency and cost, it is also about ease of getting a loan and relationship with others—maybe having a vehicle your cousin can (or cannot) use for

Your alternatives—cars—are quite different but then you take the cheap-but-ugly one and give it an expensive paint job, and you take the expensive-but-pretty one and postulate you can get an extra bonus. Now both cars rate the same for cost and stylishness. As a result, the distinctions among the alternatives are lost--and unrealistically so.

Based on your rationale you rate one car as prettier because it is made locally; cheaper because it is made locally and cleaner because it is made locally—then call out “made locally” as one of the criteria!

Alternatives must reflect the allocation of limited resources by taking realistic constraints into account. The Forest Service’s Planning Rule says that realistic constraints are to be addressed in the Record of Decision. (It is silent about whether they may not be considered before.) The Forest Service did an admirable job of designing a broad range of distinctive alternatives. Including the public in the design of the alternatives made them even better. But then the Forest Service took good features from one alternative and added it to

the others. Based on past allocation of resources, the Forest Service might be fortunate to accomplish a portion of the core features in each alternative as originally written. If the agency does not take realistic constraints into consideration, the public is asked to opine on unrealistic alternatives which manage, with the addition of numerous features, to rate as well as all the others. This approach denies the public the opportunity to struggle with real

tradeoffs. For enhanced public participation, relevance, resonance and authenticity require the plan to address realistic constraints. If we cannot model the real struggle regarding the Monument, we cannot engage people in the crux of the decision.xxxvii

Transparency requires more than sharing disparate facts; it requires the agency to explain how it put those facts together to make a decision. Alternative F rates consistently better, yet the Forest Service named Alternative B as the preferred. The dissonance creates a marvelous opportunity for engagement. “We used this system, and realized we were missing an important criterion.” Or “the ratings don’t feel right, and this is the reason why” or “it turned out “implementability” really did matter. (See for yourself by going through the “Be the Boss” section and playing with different weights and ratings for “implementability.”) The Forest Service has a chance to resolve the dissonance in the Final EIS, but did not take advantage of the opportunity at the time they were eliciting comments from the public. They did not explain how they thought about the alternatives.

When we talked about MCDS with the Forest Service and the public we said we wanted to include all the criteria that would “keep Tina [the Forest Supervisor] up at night” in considering a decision. Yet over time the analysis leached out the difficult issues. In a complex, controversial decision where the agency chooses to do enhanced outreach, highlighting the leveraging issues, including relevant procedural


Now you want to explain to your cousin why you chose the convertible. He doesn’t just want a bunch of statistics about the car; he wants to know how you made sense of those statistics.

You ask your neighbor for help in a detailed discussion about various alternatives, but do not mention you cannot actually afford any of those alternatives. She

and relationship issues, and acknowledging realistic constraints would make for a more authentic conversation. Most important, the public deserves a chance to understand the way the agency took disparate information and made sense of it.

The DEIS RedesignIn the short term, once we realized the alternatives had been improved to the

point they were hard to distinguish, that one of the alternatives nevertheless scored consistently better and that the tension had been taken out of the decision, we had to provide a different focal point for the website, and fast. We could not involve people in tradeoffs but we could make the logic of the DEIS as transparent as possible, using the layout the public had contributed in the process up to that date.

The problem with transparency is that providing a great deal of information is only useful to very sophisticated people with a great deal of time. To achieve a more practical version of transparency, Dr. Murphy and I hypothesized, people need to be able to find the information they want to the depth they desire, quickly.xxxviii We used the collaborative-developed decision framework to do that.

One approach to web design is top-down: the agency determines a logical structure in the expectation that the visitor will use it to find what she wishes. This layout is inherited from paper documents, which drives a two-dimensional approach: from table of contents heading to text, but rarely from text to text. If all the reader is interested in is ferrets, then she must hope to find the ferret sections clearly outlined in the various parts of the table of contents and hope also that overarching issues affecting ferrets are flagged for her. If not, she has to plough through the whole document in its linear form.

With hyperlinking, it is possible to take her from ferret section to ferret section, but more importantly to take her from a context for ferrets, to ferrets specifically, to detail about ferret habitat or ferret artifacts, as her interests dictate. Using this three-dimensional approach, information is something she selects, thus meeting one of the key criteria for adult learning.xxxix (If you compare the General Scoping website to the DEIS website, you can see how Dr. Murphy and I have internalized the principle of self-selection—General Scoping gives the visitor a choice of two paths, but once he is on a path, there is no meandering allowed. “Find It” in the second website invites people to pop around wherever they wish.)

In a bottom-up web design, the idea is to let people “berry pick,” watch the trails that form as they browse for the information they want, and design accordingly.xl In the DEIS timeframe, we cannot do this, but what we were able to do is to use the decision framework as the “bottom up” design. The decision framework was developed over a long period of time with the public, in interviews, public meetings, and online, with many iterations and with complete fidelity on the part of the Supervisor. Thus we hoped it would create paths visitors actually wanted (Figure 14). We succeeded.



Figure 14b: Traffic on the DEIS website.The tracking diagram provides a visual record of which pages seen by Explorers (visitors whose unique sessions touched at least 3 individual pages). Pages:The vertical blue rectangles represent pages on our website. The height of the blue bar indicates how many of the 224 sessions touched that particular page. The height of the red rectangle indicates how many sessions terminated on this page. Sessions: Each session is assigned a unique color. The figure shows that session moving from page to page through our website. The color ramp on the left of the page strats with the earliest sessions on August 11 2010 and ends at the bottom with the last sessions on December 3, 2010. Transitions between pages Lines that touch the right hand border of a page indicate that the visitor left that page and moved to the page at the other end of that line. Lines that touch the left hand edge of a page indicate that the visitor arrived at this page having left the page at the other end of the line. Circular lines that emerge from the right of a page, circle above it and reenter it on the left indicate that the visitor clicked on a link on the page that brought them to a different part of that same page.

The other important potential in web design and transparency is the ability to juxtapose key information. It is important to emphasize: even paper provides good opportunity for such display of information:xli But the most rudimentary web approaches allow for much more than paper can provide. We offered numerous graphical comparisons of the alternatives, each massively hyperlinked so that people could dig deeper as they chose (Figure 15). We also provided head-to-head comparisons (Figure 16 ). If the comparisons piqued curiosity, hyperlinks would invite the visitor to hop to explanatory text about the alternatives, the ratings of the alternatives, or the rationale for the ratings.

Figure 15. Graphical Comparisons (note there are 42 hyperlinks in the table alone--note also how consistently well Alternative F does).


Figure 16. Head-to-Head Comparisons using Forest Service ratings and visitor’s weights.

Unfortunately, because of the mismatch among websites, we were unable to track the relationship between comments on the Forest Service commenting site and activity on our site. Fortunately, Dr. Murphy did a tremendous job of tracking and organizing the usage.xlii (Click here for detailed reports.). We were well pleased with the results. Three quarters of the people who came to our site from other DEIS websites actually explored; but the most telling summary is Figure 14, which takes the “explorers” (people who came to the site and visited at least 3 pages) and shows how they moved around our site. If our design succeeded, there would be a great deal of movement from the ‘Find It’ page to the various explanatory pages—and indeed there was. They seemed to have found intuitive paths to get to the information they found relevant.

Redesigning the site was a stretch, but it forced us into a world of web design and “findability” we are very excited about. A three-dimensional, bottom-up table of contents is a promising tool for public participation.

Google AdsOne of the original goals for our work was to bring in a more diverse group of people. To do so it is important to reach out to people beyond the mailing list or the usual forums. As well, to get people to a website, it is important to use a web medium. Our experience with Google ads was positive: they are easy to use and track, very focused, and significantly increased the number of visits, as illustrated in Table 1. Google Ads not only brought us quick visits but the much-cherished “explorers” who really dug into the site, as shown in Figure 17. For beginner google advertisers spending less than $2,000, we were gratifyingly successful at engaging a broader group; people who presumably would not have connected about the DEIS otherwise. That 20% of the people who visited our site from Google ads were interested enough to explore three or more pages speaks well of our fundamental design.

Referral how someone got

to our site

All Sessions

Explora-tions visitor explores at

least 3 pages

Explorer / Session

Ratio

From FS Website

189 140 74%

From commenting website

76 57 75%

From Google Ads

420 74 20%


Referral how someone got

to our site

All Sessions

Explora-tions visitor explores at

least 3 pages

Explorer / Session

Ratio

All Sessions 685 271 40%

Lessons LearnedIn the opening to the section on what we did, I wrote that the goal of the project was to increase the involved public’s diversity, accessibility and power. Our means of accomplishing these goals was to build a common platform for outreach and planning. We did a patchy job on the common platform. In retrospect, though, a patchy job is an accomplishment. But it is also a disappointing offering to the public: three websites, two barely congruent approaches, and a pelter of pilots structured in such a way that we could not properly measure our outcomes, at least in terms of comments.

And yet the “accomplishment” rings true. The Google ad statistics suggest we brought new people into the dialog, with a gratifying number of them engaged in what we offered. The statistics on explorations by people who were already part of the extended Monument community—people who came over from other websites—strongly suggests that we offered them access in a different and useful way.

Did we increase anyone’s power? We cannot be sure of empowerment through the web because the design of the multiple sites made it impossible to trace activity from our website to comments made on another, nor do we know how the Forest Service will treat the comments. In terms of empowerment through face-to-face work, we do know that where there had been a disparate group of people who had felt left out there is now a formal Association. We know that the entire DEIS analysis of recreation was structured around the public’s input as they worked with MCDS. And we know there were many occasions of genuine dialog, including greater understanding of the Forest Service’s system of models.

Perhaps the most valuable benefit from this project is our appreciation for the significant opportunity in what NEPA allows for enhanced outreach. We believe that a robust public participation would include all the issues that matter to the decision—including relationship and procedural issues-- acknowledge realistic constraints when structuring and analyzing alternatives, and it would share not just facts but also the meaning made from those facts. We believe that people want to understand and be involved in a decision. If this is true, then we know the DEIS needs to explain how the Forest Service arrived at the Preferred Alternative. Whether or not explanation of the Forest Service’s sense-making is required by NEPA, it is required for robust public involvement.

In addition to these overarching lessons, we have several specific insights about collaboration based on our experience with this project:


Web DesignAn Institute website should be governed by Institute interpretations of federal internet requirements; this is important for neutrality and consistency.xliii

Combining a face-to-face single text process with an online version was practical and effective. There is a good synergy between MCDS face-to-face and online. We would have preferred to have ONE website; one focused, consistent, streamlined website.Using information from workshops and public meetings to create a bottom-up web design is neutral and effective; MCDS particularly lends itself to this.To achieve transparency online requires a very intentional design strategy that has to vary with the planning paradigm of the agency.This project emphasized the importance of outreach tools, including websites, as long-term investments. It is not just a monetary or staff investment, but a matter of public attention.

Face-to-Face FacilitationTo develop collaborative capacity, the fishbowl design in which representatives (loosely defined) accepted responsibility for their affinity group was highly effective. This FACA-compliant ‘soft design’ combined inclusivity and flexibility with consistency and community-driven accountability.

Robust Public Participation is Risky, Especially without MediationRobust collaboration without mediation is risky for the convener. In the absence of the “hard structure’ of mediation several matters become harder: there is no relatively contained forum for shaking problems out; there is no group of powerful and dedicated people to provide support when the going gets rough, and because public participation is not an agreement-seeking process, its goals are more confusing and subject to drift. Outside of mediation, collaboration also presents some risks for the facilitator. Neutrality is harder to determine without the ongoing training offered by a broad spectrum of highly involved stakeholders. xliv

The solution, though, is not to abandon robust public participation. We need to identify how the system is altered when we scale up and move from hard to soft structures—this requires acknowledging there is a difference! We need to acknowledge how little we understand about what would make robust public participation work. And that, we believe, would lead us to develop a new system, a learning set of approaches and public participation systems that are self-correcting, powerful, flexible and accessible.

Role of Roster MembersAs the Institute explores work outside classic mediation contexts, we hope it will simultaneously examine the ethical boundaries for roster members. Ethical dynamics do not translate directly from mediation to more amorphous collaboration or organizational development—they need to be rediscovered and


defined. Since the boundaries for public participation facilitators are more vague, clear ethical principles become all the more important. Neutrality is difficult to determine without dedicated stakeholder involvement. Neutrality is easily lost (or the appearance lost) if the neutral is also acting as an organizational developer. Finally, without the ongoing pressure/support of committed stakeholders, the facilitator’s power base is much diminished. This can impact neutrality and, with it, the sustainability of the facilitator’s role.

Science The old days when we thought there was one right scientific method are over. There are many legitimate scientific approaches with different advantages and disadvantages. The choice of scientific approaches becomes more critical in public participation because there are fewer opportunities for shared learning and the public has less leverage to say “stop, I do not understand yet” than does a party to a mediation. If the agency is interested in enhanced public participation, it must critically assess its available science and how it matches with the participation goals.

Planning Paradigms If science needs to match the collaboration goals, then so, too, does the planning paradigm. Before we ask the public to become excited about our hopes for participation, we need to take stock. Will the bare ingredients be forthcoming? Is the agency committed to explaining its thinking? Is it willing to think of the NEPA documents as communication tools?

Based on our work on the Monument, an assessment of planning for enhanced public participation would include these considerations:

Is the agency willing to make the pivotal issues explicit?Is the agency comfortable with including procedural and relationship issues--and rating them--if those issues are factors in the decision?Are the alternatives likely to be distinguishable, resonant, realistic—will they highlight the painful and difficult aspects of the decision instead of muting them? Do they reflect realistic constraints?Is the planning itself clear enough that an individual can easily trace the connection from data to analysis to specific conclusions to finally arrive at an understandable choice among alternatives?Does the planning language emphasize interests rather than positions?Is the agency willing to articulate its legal decision spacexlv early in the process?Is the agency willing to leave aside the writing templates for the NEPA documentation, so long as the new approach meets NEPA requirements and provides more useful material for enhanced outreach?Does the agency have the staff and other panning resources to follow through on its commitment?

I hypothesized that the tempo and power relationships in public participation make it very difficult to backfill missing elements. There is another gap leaving enhanced


public participation with less support than one would wish: the lack of empirical, public-centered research; the lack of theoretical frameworks and systems understanding and the paucity of analyses that go beneath the glossy surface. We have checklists galore and lofty, unmeasurable goals. But the middle ground of explaining how robust public participation might work is just not there.

We certainly believe our project has a nice gloss; many positives accrued from our work with the Forest Service and the other stakeholders. But we were interested to go below the surface and reach for deeper understanding. We thank the Forest Service and the Institute for that opportunity and hope this report has been of value.


Endnotes


i In this report, I have been somewhat careless about the terms “collaboration” and “public participation.” These terms are defined by Arnstein’s ladder (Arnstein, S. R. 1969. A ladder of citizen participation. J. Am. Inst. Planners 35:216± 224.), which was adopted and modified as the IAP2 spectrum (http://www.iap2.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=5) and appears frequently in the meditation literature. It is one of the best rubrics in the field, but it is too simple for large, complex cases. It is also fantastically agency-centric. We need a rubric that is not just about what the agency wants to offer but also reflects what the public wants to invest in. The rubric also needs to reflect what a collage Arnstein’s ladder is in complex cases, with different publics, different issues, different points in the NEPA process. Maybe we collaborate about ferrets with Jane when issues are being developed but only inform about air quality with Tom when alternatives are defined. ii The authors reference “mediation” because Carie Fox was hired through the U.S. Institute because of her mediation qualifications and her position on its roster of mediators, because mediation provides the most thorough (albeit inadequate) grounding for public participation, and because it provided a frame of reference not only for our design but for our ongoing discussions with the U.S. Institute.iii 1970 Sequoia National Forest Mediated Settlement Agreement.iv “Bush Proclamation” Giant Sequoia in National Forests 2002; “Clinton Proclamation” The Giant Sequoia National Monument Proclamation 7295 by President Bill Clinton on April 15, 2000. http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/gsnm/overview.html .v People of the State of California v. United States Forest Service, Memorandum and Order No. C 05-00898 CRB Filed 08/22/2006.vi http://ecr.gov/pdf/Collaboration_in_NEPA_Oct_2007.pdfvii The first paragraph of the Clinton Proclamation says:The rich and varied landscape of the Giant Sequoia National Monument holds a diverse array of scientific and historic resources. Magnificent groves of towering giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees, are interspersed within a great belt of coniferous forest, jeweled with mountain meadows. Bold granitic domes, spires, and plunging gorges texture the landscape. The area’s elevation climbs from about 2,500 to 9,700 feet over a distance of only a few miles, capturing an extraordinary number of habitats within a relatively small area. This spectrum of ecosystems is home to a diverse array of plants and animals, many of which are rare or endemic to the southern Sierra Nevada. The monument embraces limestone caverns and holds unique paleontological resources documenting tens of thousands of years of ecosystem change. The monument also has many archaeological sites recording Native American occupation and adaptations to this complex landscape, and historic remnants of early Euroamerican settlement as well as the commercial exploitation of the giant sequoias. The monument provides exemplary opportunities for biologists, geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and historians to study these objects.viii We lack theories of public participation Hiller, P. and Fox, C. 2011. Improving Public Participation in Federal Decision Making: A Foundation for Principled Tinkering. After several months of literature search by Dr. Hiller, we have a great list of practitioner-generated case studies, one article that asks for public perspectives on the desired characteristics of public participation, and a host of checklists. Let’s look at the most impressive of them--Dietz and Stern. One of the checklist items is to make sure the agency has a sufficient budget. Here are the problems with this:

a) Does this really tell any manager or facilitator anything they did not already know?b) So, if it is true, how the heck is one to do that? No real help bridging from the bromide to the

implementation.c) It is not true in practice. In every case I have seen or heard of people engage; they get hooked; they

find more money when they need it.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/gsnm/overview.html

d) Maybe we should never have enough budget so that the process has to prove its viability and compete with other budget items as things evolve.

e)Dietz, T., & Stern, P. C. (2008). Public participation in environmentalassessment and decision making. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.ix Tuler, S., & Webler, T. (1999). Voices from the Forest: What Participants Expect of a Public Participation Process. [Article]. Society & Natural Resources, 12(5), 437-453. doi: 10.1080/089419299279524. (“there is little consensus about the ‘‘good’’ principles to which a process should adhere” p.437)x It appears that authors examining public participation place high emphasison the role of the process and little - if any - emphasis on goals (see forexample Dietz & Stern, 2008; Tuler & Webler, 1999;Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of proceduraljustice. New York: Plenum Press; McCool, S. F., & Guthrie, K. (2001). Mapping the Dimensions of Successful Public Participation in Messy Natural Resources Management Situations. [Article]. Society & Natural Resources, 14(4), 309-323. doi:10.1080/08941920151080255.xi Fox, C. and Murphy, P. 2011. Tensions Between Public Participation and Mediation: What we Can Learn from Them. Fox, C. and Murphy, P. 2011 in Conflict Transformation: New Voices, New Directions, Hastings, T. ed.xii “Schismogenesis” describes a system in which the harder one tries, the worse the communication becomes. Deborah Tannen uses the example of an electric blanket built for two, but in which the controls have gotten switched. A is cold and turns up the heat, which makes B too hot. B ‘communicates’ by turning down the heat, which makes A hotter yet. She turns the heat down still further. In the case of the MSA, the harder the Forest Service worked on the interim provisions, the more the environmental community might have seen the long-term agreement slipping out of their grasp. And the less satisfied the environmental community was, the harder the agency worked on the interim provisions. Schismogenesis also relates to the problem of delayed feedback in systems theory and to learned helplessness in psychology.xiii ‘Inholders’ are private landowners surrounded by Monument land. There are approximately 24,000 acres of private land, or 7% of the Monument--but that does not include special use permittees. This is a challenge to returning natural fire to the area.xiv The Institute project manager Larry Fisher and his team, Carie Fox and Philip Murphy. In the rest of the document “we” refers to Philip Murphy and Carie Fox.xv Council on Environmental Quality 2007 Collaboration in NEPA. http://ecr.gov/pdf/Collaboration_in_NEPA_Oct_2007.pdfxvi Participants at this meeting included Jordan Henk, Director of the Redlands Institute, Boykin Witherspoon III, Director of the Center for Geographic Information Science Research, Cal Poly Pomona; Klaus Barber, Regional Analyst for USFS’s Region 5; Keith Reynolds, USFS’s Pacific Northwest Research Station; Larry Fisher, U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution; three staff members from the Sequoia Forest; the Sequoia Forest Supervisor, Tina Terrell; Philip Murphy and Carie Fox. Other stakeholders were invited but the geography and time were too much of a burden.xvii Boykin Witherspoon III, Director of the Center for Geographic Information Science Research, Cal Poly Pomona.xviii The conversations we had with the Forest Service about NEPA and what it allows or does not allow often took on a surprising moral rhetoric. As a culture, the Forest Service developed some concepts about NEPA and then imbued them with a separate force and reality; these

precepts were no longer things they had created themselves, but were reified. Thus we did not just hear that MCDS is incompatible with NEPA, we also heard that the things we were proposing were wrong.xix Forest Service Planning Rule, FSH 1909.15 National Environmental Policy Act Handbook Chapter 20- Environmental Impact Statements and Related Documents effective date 9/30/2010. The telling passage seems to be “Each environmental impact statement shall contain a summary which adequately and accurately summarizes the statement. The summary shall stress the major conclusions, areas of controversy (including issues raised by agencies and the public), and the issues to be resolved (including the choice among alternatives).” See also CEQ Regulations http://ceq.hss.doe.gov/nepa/regs/ceq/toc_ceq.htm.xx Interests and positions are a staple of conflict management and negotiation. Fisher, R. and Ury, W. 1981. Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. "Two men [are] quarrelling in a library. One wants the window open and the other wants it closed. …. Enter the librarian. She asks one why he wants the window open: 'To get some fresh air [his interest]'. She asks the other why he wants it closed: 'To avoid a draft' [his interest]. After thinking a moment, she opens wide a window in the next room, bringing in fresh air without a draft."xxi Emerson, K., Nabatchi, T. and Balogh, S. 2011. An integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. in press. xxii Sometimes the public at large can be very successful at influencing agencies, but we think they are much less likely to create constructive, timely pressures within the process. Tensions Between Public Participation and Mediation: What we Can Learn from Them. Fox, C. and Murphy, P. 2011 in Conflict Transformation: New Voices, New Directions, Hastings, T. ed.xxiii The Giant Sequoia National Monument Association’s original name was the Sequoia Monument Recreation Association.xxiv Irvin, R. A., & Stansbury, J. (2004). Citizen Participation in Decision Making: Is It Worth the Effort? Public Administration Review, 64(1), 55-65. In this project, academics and agency folk had an idea about what people ought to want, but seemed unable to design in response to the energy people had toward their idea. It was a top-down design. Moving from the original idea of the mediation to the soft-structure design for the Association was a bottom-up design.xxv The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires open meetings. There was some disagreement about how and whether FACA applied in the absence of a formal mediation agreement. Whatever the ‘right’ answer is, Forest Service concerns ran very high. xxvi One of the most important principles is the necessity of addressing procedural and relationship issues (such as timing and trust), not just substantive issues (such as fire resilience). Furlong, G. 2005. The Conflict Resolution Toolbox: Models and Maps for Analyzing, Diagnosing, and Resolving Conflict. Model # 2.xxvii In a game context, under some conditions people enjoy failure as much as success. Researchers hypothesize that failure is enjoyable if it is entertaining and if it reinforces a sense of agency, the inverse of passivity and learned helplessness. Ravaja, N. et al. 2005. The Psychophysiology of Video Gaming: Phasic Emotional Responses to Game Events. Digital Games Research Association. “putatively negative game events that involved active participation by the player elicited positive emotional responses…. However, passive reception of negative feedback elicited low-arousal negative affect.” p 12. There are some interesting questions about the transferability of this insight to public participation. For now, we can at least say that we may underestimate people’s willingness to engage in struggle—their enjoyment of struggle. At the same time, it suggests a design principle: if we want people to give up their leisure time to participate in public participation, we need to enhance people’s sense of agency. This is a subtly different notion than “empowerment.” See also McGonigal, Jane. 2011. REALITY IS BROKEN;

WHY GAMES MAKE US BETTER AND HOW THEY CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. The Penguin Press; New York pp. 64-76.xxviiiLeveling up means moving from 6x6 Sudoku to 9x9 Sudoku, puzzles with puppies and big pieces to an all-white puzzle with no edges, or moving from one level to another in a multiplayer game. Klabbers, J.H.G. 2009. The Magic Circle: Principles of Gaming & Simulation: Third and Revised Edition p. 92 (refers to the zone of proximal development). In Jane McGonigal’s website, gameful, one has to earn points to be allowed to blog. I never blog. But suddenly when I realized I had to earn the opportunity, I wanted to. I earned points by filling out my profile (another rarity) and thus started out my relationship with the website as a participant rather than a “lurker.” Rather than resenting this I felt pleasure. In public participation, we could easily recast web barriers as steps to a reward. We cannot use leveling principles to exclude, but we can think about meaningful challenge as part of the engagement and sense of agency.xxix Raiffa, H. (1982). The art and science of negotiation. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.xxx Unfortunately, this letter cannot be found on the Forest Service website.xxxi Aesop’s Fable: the stork is generous… except that the fox cannot eat out of the same container. In the same way, a large jug of good science is not necessarily something the public can take in. Provide a robust meal, but present it in a way that is appropriate for your guest.

Image from http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/vernonjones/26.htmxxxii Graph of hypothetical data from a hypothetical person primarily interested in protecting ecosystems.

http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Circle-Principles-Simulation-Revised/dp/9087900066/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301716888&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Circle-Principles-Simulation-Revised/dp/9087900066/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301716888&sr=8-1

xxxiii Fisher op cit.xxxiv Desired conditions and MCDS criteria should come together……xxxv Reynolds, K. EMDS 3.0: A model for Coping with Complexity in Environmental Assessment and Planning. Science in China: Series E Technological Sciences Vol. 49 Supp I 63-75.xxxvi I want to stress that planning decisions do not need to conform with web design! The problem is that the planning paradigm ought to stabilize at some point. Not just web design, but participation-beyond-the-minimum suffer when the agency is divided and inconsistent about its own goals.xxxvii In the classic story about the orange--the kids are quarreling over an orange, Mom cuts it in half, a zero sum solution. Neither is happy. It turns out one wanted to make juice and the other wanted to make marmalade with the rind--they could have increased satisfaction by giving the rind to one and the flesh to the other.xxxviii Furlong, G. 2005. The Conflict Resolution Toolbox: Models and Maps for Analyzing, Diagnosing, and Resolving Conflict. Model # 2.xxxix Falk, John H., and Lynn D. Dierking. 2002. Lessons Without Limit: How Free-Choice Learning Is Transforming Education. Altamira Press: Lanham, MD. ISBN 0-7591-0160-4.xl Morville, Peter. 2005. AMBIENT FINDABILITY pp. 58-63; O’Reilly. We highly recommend this book for people who want to design websites innovatively and collaboratively! It is also a good example of what we mean when we say public participation lacks ‘principles.’ Morville’s book is not a “how to” it is a “how to think about it.” See also The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface. Online Review 13(5): 407-424xli The DEIS includes Table 2: Comparison of Alternatives by Issues and Their Units of Measure and Table 3: Comparison of Alternatives by Environmental Effects on Resources but the information is too spread out. Juxtaposition falls apart. (Notice the resemblance to the separate maps of the two parts of the Monument on the title page.)xlii We did not track identities, just the flow of activity.xliii There are three reasons why the websites done through the U.S. Institute should be governed by their interpretation of federal IT rules.

1. A great deal of thought has gone into the separation between the convening agency and the U.S. Institute. It is important to neutrality. We roster members expect the U.S. Institute to ‘have our backs’ when it comes to such questions as tone, physical meeting spaces, who the stakeholders are. If there are good reasons for putting the choice of physical meeting space in the Institute’s baileywick, why is a virtual meeting space under the control of the convener? Neutrality can be compromised when the convener calls the shots.

2. Agencies—across agencies and even more frustratingly across regions—interpret the federal web requirements in a remarkably idiosyncratic way. The Institute should be investing in a growing and evolving approach to technology in conflict resolution. They need to hold a stable space for the web designer.

3. If the website is to be on the Institute’s server, it would make sense from an organizational perspective to have them in charge of interpreting applicable law.xliv To be accurate, when I make this claim I am talking about a style in which most of the conversations happen among all the parties, transparently. Shuttle diplomacy lacks the self-correcting aspect of neutrality monitored by all the parties.xlv A ‘decision space’ is bounded by laws, rules, and other constraints; it is the latitude within which a decision is permissible.