Getting to Outcomes
Jeffrey Sachs’ recent assessment of the systems overhaul needed for government to implement already agreed upon policies is spot on. Check it out at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-failing-of-us-government. Including such things as achieving water health + fish recovery under the Clean Water & Endangered Species Acts, the regulatory frameworks were built out by focusing on procedures rather than outcomes. While getting these procedures in place was key to slowing bad things from happening, these same pieces keep us from making good things happen at scale. For the first time, technology can stretch with across the fragmented system of multiple agencies that tries—largely with futility—to address an issue that cuts across them all. Water/aquatic habitat is a case in point: EPA, USDA, BLM, USFS, NOAA, USFWS, USACE, USBR, and their state corollaries all have an interest here, but despite best efforts, the issue is too vast, staff too small, and manual methods remaining in use cannot scale to the problem holistically. While coordination has made gains, it cannot keep pace.
We simply need systems that can bake in the required procedural criteria so we can focus on the outcomes: fixing the dead zone in the Gulf; recovering salmon in the Northwest; getting the Colorado to reach its mouth; or bringing the Chesapeake back within its limits. We can, but it looks very different than the way we’ve done things in the past (see StreamBank - How It Works). Because this administration uniquely understands technology, I am hopeful we can make the needed changes.
Waxman-Markey adaptation plans: pay attention
If we completely stopped the carbon economy tonight at midnight, we would still be a century away from the crescendo of climate disruption already set in motion. Smartly, the recently passed Waxman-Markey bill (American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) holds in it several provisions for adaptation planning and implementation to provide needed resilience to ecosystem function, but these will be predicated on state and federal coordination.
Here lies the potential for breakdown: states aren’t ready, and the feds can’t innovate. Together, these factors paint a bleak picture for what could be a great opportunity to make a difference as an applied matter.
Less than 20 states have even started to develop their climate adaptation gameplans, and few of those would be robust enough to meet the bar laid out in the bill. Data gaps, outmoded methods of management, and insufficient integration across agency silos at state and federal levels stand as barriers to action on the ground.
Girding up our freshwater ecosystems with the resilience they need to face the coming climate challenges will not happen through traditional methods of conservation. The vast, pre-existing federal-state funding cloud will likely swallow the implementation dollars without gaining much ground. The last 40 years stand as testament: despite billions of dollars spent on freshwater health and restoration annually, our nation’s water quality continues to decline. Our wild fish flicker at fractions of historic abundance. And we are running out of time.
The administration has the opportunity—indeed the imperative—to direct its agencies to focus on outcomes rather than procedures to protect, maintain, and restore ecosystem function. The Natural Resources Climate Change Adaptation Panel, led by the chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality and populated with natural resource agency heads, is charged with coordinating the plan at the federal level. Pay attention, because while the headlines will follow the cap and trade design, the first measure of success or failure happens here.
Bowling for Slocan
A tributary to the Columbia River in British Columbia, the Slocan River flows pure out of the Slocan Lake, a 30-mile long, 1,000 foot deep feature on the landscape, it is a high-gradient system that runs fast and produces noticeably “heavy water” in depths as shallow as 24 inches. Having spent a couple of long days floating and getting to know this basin, our small expedition of conservationists stopped for dinner at a place called the “Dam Inn”. A group of locals watched attentively a bowling documentary on how technique had changed over time. They evidently had no lanes around, and were shocked at the 10 pound heft of an average bowling ball and amazed that I held (and would readily give up) such secret knowledge. With an “aw shucks”, I explained that I had a bowling unit in junior high P.E. class.
Of course, this blog has nothing to do with bowling.
The point here is that we do not understand things that we do not engage directly. While this is true for any subject matter, in a digital age, where students are growing up with less connection to the natural world than ANY generation before them, perils mount. The demands we place on natural resources will continue to grow. The decisions of management will get harder, not easier. One of our jobs is to ensure that our students [read: future citizens] are engaged in their local environment and properly-tooled to consider and handle the issues of their time.
Today, by passing the “No Oregon Child Left Inside (NOCLI) Act”, on the House side, Oregon took a step toward environmental literacy. Tiered to federal legislation doing the same thing, it seeks to inject the context of local watersheds into state education goals, standards, and benchmarks. Cognizant of natural boundaries as well as political ones, only a society of water literate, engaged citizens understand the water content, costs, and values of the goods we create and consume—and act accordingly. Only such a group can ensure that local economies are sustained and sustainable. It’s a good day to be a kid.
White House report highlights climate change impacts on freshwater
This week, the administration released a report entitled, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” which outlines the value of “early, aggressive action” in the form of mitigation (limiting emissions that trap heat) and adaptation (measures to deal with harmful impacts). The report confirms what many of us already know – that the most marked effects of climate change will be seen in freshwater systems, so we ought to gird up resilience in those systems as fast as we can. We can’t really hug a glacier, but we CAN improve rivers.
Fact is, if we stopped the carbon economy today, we would still be 100+ years out from the crescendo effects of climate change on freshwater. And traditional conservation cannot correct our trajectories on any timeline for any dollar figure.
Let’s be honest: we have gained little to no ground on freshwater health since the mid 1980s. It isn’t a money problem—billions of dollars are spent annually in the U.S on this stuff. It isn’t a people problem—a cast of thousands are engaged in the work. It isn’t really a science problem—there are less than 20 ways to fix a stream. What we have is a systems problem. By virtue of a fragmented and process-heavy funding and permitting apparatus, we have effectively slow-tracked restoration efforts and time is running out. We need to move from process to performance to gain acceleration. This week’s report just amplifies the problem.
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We call Earth the “Blue Planet” for a reason: water covers most of it. But just 2.5% of all of that H20 is freshwater. Of all that freshwater, only 0.3% is surface freshwater (rivers, lakes and streams). The rest is frozen or underground. If the entire world’s water were in a gallon jug, only a tablespoon would be freshwater—and most of that tablespoon would be frozen.
All life on earth requires water for survival. And though our biosphere has never had more or less water than it does right now—the ultimate closed loop—humans have mismanaged our way into a looming freshwater crisis. Most aquatic health indicators continue to trend downward, with many accelerating.
The time has come to change the course of water, and this blog will help reframe, rethink, and retool how we relate to this most precious resource.
