The key insight is not to throw open the floodgates to undifferentiated public input, but to design group-based processes that enable online communities to collaborate on finding and vetting information for agencies.

In this meditation on social learning through participative monitoring and management, Howard Silverman offers some interesting examples of new trends in nature and resource conservation that draw on citizen participation.

Howard Silverman:

Collaboration in the Woods

“In recent years, some U.S. National Forests have opened to greater public participation in their restoration, monitoring, and other activities. In the Pacific Northwest, this engagement has helped to alleviate conflicts that linger from the large forest harvests and spotted owl litigation of the 1980s and 1990s. “You need to check your guns at the door,” is a recollection I’ve heard more than once when interviewing forest stewardship (as the practice is often called) participants.

Similar projects are examined in the Resilience Alliance-published paper, “Adaptive Management and Social Learning in Collaborative and Community-Based (Forest) Monitoring.” Through structured interviews, the authors seek evidence of social learning among participants in eighteen community-based forest management projects around the Western U.S. They define social learning as “an intentional process of collective self-reflection through interaction and dialog among diverse participants.” Their interviews find instances of reconnection to the landscape and of newfound trust among participants.”

Collaboration on the Oceans

“California is the first U.S. state to designate marine protected areas: areas (of the state’s coastal waters) where fishing and access are restricted. Ecotrust assists this process through the development of computer- and web-based tools to gather and compile catch and economic data from fishermen and other resource users. With these data, stakeholder groups can consider both economic and habitat information in their marine protected area proposals. The result has been that protected area designations meet the state’s habitat objectives while reducing social and economic impacts on port communities. Gathering local knowledge from fishermen builds collaboration and transparency into the process of protected area planning – a process that has also experienced its share of conflict. I’m not aware yet of any formal studies of the social dynamics of California’s marine area planning.”

In an important essay, A Complexity Strategy for Breaking the Logjam of Environment Reform’, Beth Noveck and David Johnson propose to extend this kind of participatory strategy:

“In this essay, we explore how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) might use technology to improve the agency’s level of scientific expertise and to obtain useful information sooner to inform EPA policymaking. By creating a self-reinforcing collaboration between government and networked publics, new web-based tools could help produce change within government and without — namely governmental decisions informed by better data obtained through citizen participation and civic action coordinated with governmental priorities. …

The key insight is not to throw open the floodgates to undifferentiated public input, but to design group-based processes that enable online communities to collaborate on finding and vetting information for agencies. …

Complex systems science teaches us that organisms (indeed, life itself) flourish(es) at a “sweet spot” between randomness and rigidity. That is to say, the complex flow of signals among autonomous agents becomes richer and more diverse when ambient conditions allow just enough flexibility to adapt to new challenges and just enough order to allow the persistence and replication necessary to enable evolution to operate.

For more complex social systems, this means that the primary goals of any governmental effort should be to (1) recognize whether relevant social subsystems have moved too far towards the random or rigid side of the continuum (as they do when we become constrained by outmoded environmental legislation and regulation) and (2) intervene to nudge these systems back towards the sweet spot in the middle, opening it up to new signals and interactions. …

Our strategies have to grow—have to evolve — through experiment and trial-and-error. We cannot be afraid, merely because we are in the traditional domain of law, to start small, see what works and try again. Inescapably, we are gardeners, not mechanics, and so we should think about our legal institutions as social organisms.”