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Natural ResourcesSelected Results through ConsensusSee below for short articles on selected projects from RESOLVE’s Natural Resources Practice.
Buyers Collaborate to Improve Market for Environmentally Preferable Paper
According to Metafore President and CEO David Ford, who recruited the environmental leadership companies to participate in the PWG, the idea of “leadership companies from many market sectors collaborating to achieve common social and environmental goals is as unique as the [EPAT] tool itself.” For companies as diverse as Bank of America, Cenveo, Hewlett-Packard Company, FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Services, McDonald's Corporation, Nike, Inc., Norm Thompson Outfitters, Staples, Inc., Starbucks Coffee Company, Time Inc. and Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., the PWG is an opportunity to bring their ideas and purchasing power together to influence the marketplace for EPP products. With the United States using 100 million tons of paper products a year, the potential influence is huge. RESOLVE mediator Paul De Morgan helped PWG participants come up with a common set of terms to use in achieving their shared goal. The PWG developed an EPP definition comprising several sets of inter-related desired outcomes, including efficient use and conservation of raw materials, minimization of waste, conservation of natural systems, clean production, community and human well-being, economic viability, and credible reporting and verification. The next step was to devise an assessment tool (the EPAT) that would allow companies to weight each desired outcome according to their own values and objectives. The EPAT grew out of the idea that consistent metrics would benefit all players, facilitating documentation by suppliers and comparison shopping by EPP buyers as well as the transparency of purchasing decisions for all concerned. Because the PWG includes corporate EPP purchasers only, Ford notes that “one challenge was to identify specific points of interaction where we could engage stakeholders across the supply chain – from the timber companies to the environmental NGOs – to help us think through the particular pieces of information that needed to be in the database.” The PWG created a number of opportunities (including web-based review of documents and face-to-face meetings) throughout development of the tool to obtain input. Ford and PWG participants hope that “improving communication across the whole supply chain will result in better decision-making.” For more information on the EPAT or the PWG, see www.metafore.org/pwg or contact project manager Tom Pollock at tpollock@metafore.org (503.224.2205). Contact: Paul De
Morgan Oil and Gas Industry Looks to Researchers, Regulators, and NGOs for Input into Development of Major Marine Research Program
“We all live in our own worlds these days,” says Bill Streever, Marine Mammal Issues Manager for BP. “None of us has the complete view that multiple stakeholders can bring to a planning process.” At the three-day Sound in the Marine Environment Workshop, oil and gas industry expertise was rounded out by the views of over 50 experts from national governments, academic and research institutions, and non-governmental organizations. “The workshop did two things for us,” says Streever. “One, it affirmed that the themes we thought were worth looking at were in fact important. Two, it added some key themes that we had missed – notably, the importance of looking at cumulative effects.” Participants also underscored the importance of gathering baseline and long-term information and of gathering data that can be applied to assessments of biological significance. Industry representatives (many of whom have been working on this issue for years) did not initially agree on the feasibility of getting non-industry stakeholders’ input. Experience with impartial convening and facilitation assistance on other issues helped convince them that it would be possible to get past the polarizing rhetoric that can sink a stakeholder input process. Streever applauds RESOLVE’s willingness to “check in” regularly with OGP representatives, to listen and to communicate with all participants. “The success of this workshop,” Streever says, “resulted in large part from RESOLVE’s efforts to make sure that people were comfortable with and well-informed about what was going to happen.” Contact: Gail
Bingham When Consensus is Not the Goal: Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Informs Implementation of Oregon Forest Management Plan
SFAC Chair Barrett Brown proposed the multi-stakeholder dialogue approach at a time when the Board of Forestry had asked SFAC for feedback on certain topics. Yet some SFAC members had begun to question the value of the SFAC's input. Brown hoped to “elevate the level of discourse,” to “capture and reflect [to BOF policy-makers] the conflict that can exist among radically diverse stakeholders in a positive, constructive way,” says Brown. ODF State Forests Program Director Lisa DeBruyckere says that “using multi stakeholder dialogue helped to create a higher level of expectation, that if you’re going to take a stance on an issue you have to be prepared to back up that position with information, to respond to other stakeholders’ questions.” Knowing that their dialogue would be well documented (by Rob Williams and Turner Odell of RESOLVE), SFAC members were able to articulate their positions using fact-based language, and to refrain from the kind of “polarizing rhetoric” that had come to characterize some of the Committee’s non-facilitated debates. DeBruyckere feels that the MSD approach resulted in “a richer discussion” – and a more useful report, in which the range of stakeholder positions was articulated briefly and concisely by topic. By all accounts, it appears that MSD will continue to be “one of many tools” that Oregon is using to engage stakeholders in meaningful discussion about how to achieve the goal of managing the state’s forests for the “greatest permanent economic, environmental, and social value.” Story Posted: January 2006 Oregon Wolf Advisory Committee (Oregon Fish & Wildlife Comm.)Coming Soon Contact: Paul De
Morgan |
An innovative web-based tool to help make environmentally
preferable paper products (EPP) more widely available and
affordable was unveiled this spring at the Forest Leadership
Forum in Portland, Oregon. Scheduled for general release this
fall, the Environmental Paper Assessment Tool (EPATSM) is the
result of an innovative collaborative known as the Paper Working
Group (PWG). The PWG was initiated in 2003 by Metafore, a
not-for-profit enterprise that works with some of the nation’s
leading purchasers of paper products to help them make
environmentally and socially responsible choices.
Increased attention to potential impacts to marine life from
sounds associated with offshore exploration and production
activities led the International Association of Oil and Gas
Producers (OGP) to fund the design of a joint industry-sponsored
research program to better understand the effects that seismic,
production, decommissioning and support operations may have.
Late last summer, the OGP planning group invited non-industry
experts to discuss research options and priorities, helping to
shape the agenda for what is likely to become a multi-million
dollar research program.
Reaching consensus is often the goal of a facilitated
discussion. But when Oregon State Forest Advisory Committee (SFAC)
members convened for a dialogue about the adaptive management
element of Oregon’s Forest Management Plan (FMP) last July,
consensus was not the goal. “Agreeing to disagree” was also the
precondition for SFAC’s September dialogue about how
aggressively the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) should
treat infestations of the Swiss Needle Cast disease. SFAC, a
volunteer advisory group with a diverse, often polarized
membership appointed to advise ODF on implementation of the
state’s FMP, engaged in a “multi-stakeholder dialogue”. While
there are many forms for these dialogues, SFAC used a United
Nations model designed not to bring parties to agreement but to
clarify various positions and perspectives on a controversial
issue, for the benefit of a decision-making body – in this case
the Oregon Board of Forestry (BOF).
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