Collaborative Environmental Management: What Roles for Government?

• Position: Book Review

COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: WHAT ROLES FOR GOVERNMENT?

Tomas M. Koontz, Toddi A. Steelman, JoAnn Carmin, Katrina Smith Korfmacher, Cassandra Moseley, and Craig W. Thomas. 1616 P Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20036-1400: RFF Press, September 2004. (202) 328-5086. www.rffpress.org. ISBN 1-891853-82-1. 210 pp. $23.95 Paperback.

At the urging of citizens, nongovernmental organizations, and industry, government officials at all levels have experimented with collaboration--an approach that has become popular in environmental policy, planning, and management. Yet questions remain about whether the roles governments play in collaboration are constructive and support collaboration, or instead introduce barriers to collaboration.

This book analyzes a series of cases to understand how collaborative processes work and whether government can be an equal partner when government agencies often formally control decision making and are held accountable for the outcomes. Looking at examples of government leading, encouraging, or following in collaboration, the authors assess how governmental actors and institutions affected the ways issues were defined, the resources that were available for collaboration, and the organizational processes and structures that were established. Cases include collaborative efforts to manage watersheds, rivers, estuaries, farmland, endangered species habitats, and forests. The authors develop a new theoretical framework and demonstrate that government left a heavy...