Driving local governments to watershed governance.

• Author: Hirokawa, Keith H.

1. INTRODUCTION II. NATURAL CAPITAL IN WATERSHEDS AND THE RELEVANCE OF LOCAL VALUE III. LOCAL GOVERNMENT AS A PLACE FOR PRIORITIZATION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL WATERSHED GOVERNANCE IV. USING INFORMATION ON WATERSHED SERVICES AS THE DRIVER OF LOCAL WATERSHED GOVERNANCE A. Acquiring Information About Watershed Services and Needs B. Driving Public Awareness of Watershed Information C. Using Watershed Information 1. Familiar Ground: Land-Use Regulations 2. Modeling Utilities to Maximize Watershed Investments 3. Increasing Capacity Through Collaborative Governance V. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

   More than a century has passed since John Wesley Powell demanded a linkage between governanee and watersheds:

   I want to present to you what I believe to be ultimately the political system which you have got to adopt in this country, and which the United States will be compelled sooner or later ultimately to recognize. I think each drainage basin in the arid land must ultimately become the practical unit of organization, and it would be wise if you could immediately adopt a county system which would be convenient with drainage basins. (1) Although Powell would not have used terms like ecosystem processes or ecosystem services, his plea nonetheless is underlain by the notion that establishing watersheds as units of governance would thereby align the premises and consequences of land-use decision making and water resource management. In any event, Powell's request has gone largely unnoticed and unanswered. (2) More than a century of municipal growth since Powell's statement has focused on maximizing jurisdictional control within political--rather than natural--boundaries, while natural resource management and allocation have focused on identifying the usable resources that remain and how to exploit them. (3) Even the most recent sophisticated environmental laws undermine watershed health and function through regulatory fragmentation of watersheds. (4)

   More recently, two emerging developments have begun to converge and forge new connections that bring resource management closer to Powell's vision. First, the growth of ecosystem services research has reframed our understanding of how economic values accrue in natural resources. (5) At the intersection of economics and ecology, the study of ecosystem services supports the recognition and attribution of economic value to ecosystem processes that provide goods and services on which human life and the economy depend. The ecosystem services approach recognizes that "[h]uman society has never had a more pressing need to understand its dependence on nature" (6) and requires an accounting of ecosystem services with an eye on the value of maintaining the conditions under which ecosystems can continue to function. (7) An awareness of ecosystem service values can compel local governments to take ownership, both legally and conceptually, in the processes that support well-being in their communities.

   Second, many local governments have begun to participate quite intentionally in watershed management, albeit in some instances due to state or federal requirements. (8) Local attention to watersheds might also be attributable to the circumstance that, at this point, environmental regulations have "picked all the 'low hanging' fruit and must now deal with more difficult diffuse problems that are increasingly less amenable to national solutions." (9) Yet, for a variety of reasons, local governments identify with particular watersheds, particular watershed features, and particular watershed functions in ways that other entities lack either the incentive or institutional capacity to do. These developments are important for watershed protection: even leaving political boundaries intact, when local governments protect watershed functionality, they are acting to preserve natural capital, and natural capital is geographically situated in ways that defy the intractability of political boundaries.

   This Article addresses the importance of driving local governments to watershed planning and management by introducing the perspective of ecosystem and watershed services. (10) Part II of this Article identifies the valuable ecosystem services produced by healthy, well functioning watersheds, including provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services, thus identifying the objectives of watershed protection and investments. (11) Part III explores the nature of watershed planning in the context of existing sovereignty, regulatory, and property ownership schemes for the purpose of identifying the degree to which local governments should be held to account for watershed investments. This discussion explores the notion that local governments are so grounded relative to watersheds that the task of identifying and satisfying local needs and parochial perspectives--often thought to impede sound environmental planning--can be considered a primary positive driver toward developing a collaborative process. Part IV of this Article discusses the manner in which the ecosystem services perspective enables local governance of watershed functions in ways that are responsive to local needs and illustrates by example the stakes and drive that local governments put into the protection of local watershed capital.

2. NATURAL CAPITAL IN WATERSHEDS AND THE RELEVANCE OF LOCAL VALUE

   It is now well settled that functioning ecosystems provide services that have substantial health and economic benefits. (12) It is also well settled that we ,have largely squandered ecosystem services in the past through the consumption of ecosystem goods without regard for linkages between these goods and the ability of ecosystems to continue delivering goods and services. (13) As Janet Neuman notes, this approach was bound to cause trouble: "This short-sighted approach is akin to spending down the principal of an endowment instead of limiting spending to the interest income. Pretty soon, there is no more income, and the principal itself is gone." (14) This Part provides an examination of ecosystem services and the insights that an ecosystem services valuation has on local conditions and well-being and suggests that local capacity for watershed governance will be improved by linking ecosystem processes and the ecosystem benefits enjoyed by communities.

   The term "ecosystem services" has been defined as "measurable benefits that people receive from ecosystems. Ecosystems produce goods and services as a result of ecosystem process, function, and structure." (15) As noted by the National Research Council: "The value of capital is defined by flows of useful services. Defining ecosystems as natural capital that yields useful services is the first step toward quantifying the value of ecosystems." (16) Attentiveness to ecosystems reveals the importance of ecosystem services that are not otherwise recognized in the marketplace. (17) Exploring the functions and outcomes of ecosystem processes forces recognition of the manner in which ecosystem goods are produced, as well as vital processes that regulate water flow and climate, air quality, and biodiversity. (18)

   The importance of the ecosystem services approach is in the collaboration it requires between ecology and economics to perform functions that alone each would be unable to achieve. For instance, ecology identifies natural processes and functions (19) What ecology cannot do is explain how to value benefits flowing from ecosystem processes. As such, one of the distinguishing features of the ecosystem services approach is the notion of beneficiaries, a concept that begs both for an identification of actual beneficiaries and the development of some standard of measurement based on demand for services. (20) From this perspective we can more easily see that "[e]cosystems are assets, a form of wealth." (21)

   One of the most significant deliverables of the ecosystem services approach is its ability to better capture total economic value (TEV), a goal that has proven elusive in the formulation of environmental policy. Where previous attempts to value nature have generated contentious dialogue on preferences and priorities, (22) ecosystem services valuation enables a grounded accounting of the actual and inevitable costs of allowing landscape transformation from functioning ecosystems to impervious, artificial, and degraded places. (23) Not surprisingly, one of the more prevalent applications of ecosystem services to an understanding of TEV is an inventory of those services that have been lost. (24)

   Even in the context of valuing lost ecosystem services, it is important to note that the ecosystem services approach does not dictate policy choices; at most, an ecosystem services valuation allows decision makers to more fully appreciate the values of ecosystem functions and components. Accordingly, an ecosystem services valuation must be understood as a tool that facilitates informed choices. (25) An ecosystem services valuation may demonstrate that it is more costly to transform a natural landscape than preserve it; often, it will even prove more cost effective to restore ecosystems than to continue operating, maintaining, and replacing built infrastructure. For instance, the National Research Council has considered the value of hydropower production on the Missouri River and concluded that, from an ecosystem services perspective, ecosystem restoration on the Missouri "may be justifiable solely on the grounds that it represents an economic improvement on current mainstem dam operations." (26) Of course, in many of these cases, an ecosystem services value will suggest a difficult course that will, at least at some level, redistribute wealth and entitlements. (27)

   Watersheds are defined geographically to include "[t]he entire surface drainage area that contributes water to a lake or river." (28) Recently, the term has been understood in multiple perspectives, (29) largely to account for the notion...