I participated on a socioeconomic panel today at CNREP 2007:
Planning for Restoration and Sustainability - V
This session will be the culmination of a five-track series at CNREP 2007 that will focus on the current status and challenges of integrating the social sciences into coastal restoration and protection programs. This session will feature a panel discussion of the socioeconomic implications of coastal restoration at the ecosystem scale in Louisiana, with particular emphasis on the State Master Plan of the Coastal Protection Restoration Authority, the Coastal Impact Assistance Program Draft Plan, and the integration of these efforts with ongoing restoration programs (Sponsored by The Shaw Group).
Panelists
Dave Loomis, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Craig Landry, East Carolina University
Shirley Laska, University of New Orleans
John Whitehead, Appalachian State University
Richard Kazmierczak, LSU Center for Natural Resource Economics & Policy
Here are the questions that we were asked to address and my answers:
1) How do we define and quantify community/cultural sustainability?
Hmmm. The overriding issue of the conference is wetlands restoration. My experience with wetlands valuation is that those closest to wetlands have never gotten over the name change from "swamps" to "wetlands." Hence, those stakeholders in the local communities don't value these things. Wetland values accrue mostly to non-locals. The definition of community must be extended to include all those that value wetlands for whatever reason.
2) How can we quantify the effects of restoration and protection activities on communities, e.g. fisheries effects as opposed to effects on coastal habitats or habitat suitability ?
No one on the panel dared venture into specifics without the promise of a consulting fee.
3) How can these methods be applied rapidly to support planning activities, and built upon for final decisions on project design?
"These methods"? See question #5. My answer after a bit on #5: benefit transfer. I boasted that I could rank a large number of wetlands restoration projects in under a minute.
4 ) Social sciences are currently under-represented in our discussions of advancing "science and technology". (a) What critical advancements in analytical tools and methodologies are needed to support program implementation? (b) Are there any analytical innovations that can be made quickly (6-12 months) to support program prioritization and sequencing?
(a) we all agreed: nothing new is needed to enable social scientists to provide information that would help make these decisions. I wish I used this quote:
Without determination and a strong will, nothing can be achieved. Determination is one of the secrets of success. Those who work hard are crowned with success, others are like cats that wish to eat fish but dare not wet their feet.
(b) Benefit transfer
5 ) Integration of these two major water resources programs requires carefully balancing multiple, often competing, objectives. (a) What methods are most promising for integrating public and stakeholder values directly into Louisiana's restoration and protection decision making processes? (b) From what was presented in the talks and your experience, what is good about public and stakeholder interaction in coastal Louisiana and what could use improvement?
(a) Benefit cost analysis ... with benefits measured based on economic theory. In other words, benefits are equal to the net willingness and ability to pay and can be measured with property value studies, recreation studies, stated preference studies. I couldn't resist a cheap shot at ecological economists who develop environmental values ignoring substitutes and budget constraints ... all the while saying that efficiency analysis is one part of the decision making information.
Which all leads me to a softening of my position on ecological economic valuations. These things seem to get in right at least ordinally. That is, we ought to be able to rank the value of diverse natural environments and resources using these methods. Sometimes, the public gets things wrong due to imperfect information, etc. For example, a pretty wetland might provide fewer wetland functions than an ugly wetland but a stated preference survey might put the pretty wetland at the top of the list.
Ecologists who do valuation are able to get the ecology right so I'm adding them to my list of puzzle pieces. But please don't (a) compare these values to costs in a benefit cost analysis or (b) compare these values to world GDP or the NJ construction industry to attempt to show how important the environment is. This comparisons don't have much meaning.
(b) Shirley and Dave lamented the lack of social scientists drafted to help make policy decisions -- too many economists are in the room (the rest of the panel are economists). I agreed, stating the env-econ familiar theme that economists are good at efficiency analyses and shouldn't be troubled to worry about equity and/or distributional impacts (although we can do economic impact studies just fine). Bring in the anthropologists and sociologists, etc to identify when policies that move society toward greater economic efficiency generate gross inequities and we can try to avoid those policies.
Dang, I wish I had actually said all that.
