Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water and People:
Workshops for Sustainability

by Don Nelson

Sponsored By:
Washington State University
Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources

March 31, 2001

Contact:
Donald D.Nelson, Ph.D.
509/335-2922 (o)
509/335-1082 (fax)
nelsond@wsu.edu

Project Associates

Bob Chadwick, Consensus Associates

Mike Lunn, Sustainable Solutions

Table of Contents

Project Summary

The Initial Workshop and Projected Future Activities and Impact

Anticipated Outcomes

Background and Project Justification

Associated Outcomes

Best Possible Outcomes for "Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water and People"

Overcoming the Barriers, Achieving the Best Possible Outcomes

Examples of Issues/Projects for Participants

Methods

Evaluation

Budget Summary

Qualifications of Principals

Project Summary

The Workshops for Sustainability are an integral part of the "Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water, and People" (FWP) effort. The purpose of FWP is to increase salmon runs to historical levels, to improve water quality and to provide a high quality of life, socially and economically, for the people in the region. This will be accomplished by building capacity in people and organizations that are working on issues related to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA) to enable them to more effectively achieve their desired outcomes through community-based collaborative decisions and non-regulatory actions. This project does not replace anything that anybody else is already doing. The intent is to make these existing efforts more effective in achieving the collaborative resolution of issues/conflicts.

Failure is unacceptable. Current practices are failing. We must find a new approach. This one works!

Having experienced a 30-year career of traditional federal decision making processes and billions of dollars used unsuccessfully in efforts to restore the fishery, it is clear we must build trusting relationships between stakeholders before we can build abiding solutions.

"You can't build enduring solutions without enduring, positive and trusting relationships. This process taught me how to help build such relationships in my region."

Patricia Tawney, Tribal Liasion
Bonneville Power Administration, Portland OR

The Initial Workshop and Projected Future Activities and Impact

The initial Workshop for Sustainability held in Vancouver, Washington on February 20-23, 2001, included 55 very diverse participants from a 5-state area--Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Nevada. Session #2 is scheduled for June 12-15 in The Dalles, Session #3 in the Tri-Cities area on October 3-5 and Session #4 in Lewiston in February 2002.

The Workshops for Sustainability/Consensus Institute series include two 3-day sessions and two 4-day sessions with practicums in-between plus a 1-day graduation session for a total of 15 -days over five sessions. Through the use of practicums, conflict resolution teams from each Workshop will work on resolving conflicts between sessions. All participants are required to participate in practicums following each workshop session. The conflicts will be real ones identified by the participants. Consensus practicums are planned events, or activities, that are designed to require the use of the beliefs, behaviors and capacity building skills learned during the Workshops on Sustainability. It is expected that the practicums will begin with simple activities and move toward the more complex as the workshop series progresses.

The learning modules covered in the Workshops for Sustainability/Consensus Institute sessions include: (1) process introduction, (2) managing change, (3) managing scarcity conflicts, (4) managing stereotypes, (5) managing diversity, (6) managing power, (7) managing relationships, (8) managing participatory democracy, (9) managing interviews, and (10) reaching consensus.

Other models, frameworks and processes will be provided as optional approaches to help communities develop and implement their strategies to achieve their shared vision. These would include traditional approaches, holistic decision-making, Covey leadership training, Enterprise Facilitation and The Natural Step program.

The outcome of this training will be to create a network of people who can effectively deal with complex natural resource and people issues that cross state lines and other political boundaries. Ecosystems do not respect these artificial and arbitrary political boundaries.

Through the multiplier effect of this "train-the-trainer" projects' approach, the potential number of people that the Workshops for Sustainability can impact is significant. Each session will host up to 60 participants in this Workshop series. Each participant will be responsible for four project-oriented practicums (i.e., one between each of the first four sessions) during the course of the Workshops. This results in 240 potential projects that can be worked on. If there are an average of 15 people in each of these 240 projects, this produces 3,600 people who are positively affected through their improved capacity to solve problems. The multiplier effect now takes place. If each one of these 3,600 people uses the consensus process on only one project with 10 people per project, that increases the number of people affected to 36,000. This multiplier effect has been well documented from the results of other Institutes conducted by Bob Chadwick over the past 13 years.

Session I of the Workshops for Sustainability--Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water and People--reinforced my strong belief that consensus building is the right tool, a very powerful tool, for the resolution of natural resource conflicts. The Consensus Associates approach to consensus building brings wisdom and simplicity to this process that is easy to learn and to teach to bring capacity building to the communities in conflict. With these skills communities can solve their own problems.

Tom Wawro, Bureau of Land Management, Portland OR

Anticipated Outcomes:

The anticipated outcomes of this total effort are to improve decision-making, communications, networking, coordination, collaboration, conflict resolution, and the effectiveness of resource allocation and to strengthen relationships and levels of trust among stakeholders. These approaches are the basis for a more participative form of democracy, rather than the traditional representative form. This will be accomplished through training in, and application of, consensus building, holistic decision-making plus other appropriate tools, processes and frameworks (e.g., Covey leadership principles, Enterprise Facilitation and The Natural Step).

Measurable results from this proposed project will be evidenced by an increase in collaborative efforts, improved relationships, communication and coordination and a decrease in the incidence of conflict and litigation. Graduates of the Workshops for Sustainability will function as consensus building/holistic decision-making teams that will work with the local constituencies to resolve conflicts, facilitate meetings and train others in the consensus building and holistic decision-making processes.

I have attended many different training sessions and other processes dealing with consensus and the salmon issue. This is the only training I have had which has given me the tools to bring groups to consensus. All other training only discusses the value of it. I have always felt that the consensus approach is the only way to save the Columbia ecosystem and the species that rely on it.

Brian E. Lipscomb, Manager, Fish Wildlife and Recreation Division, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Pablo MT

Background and Project Justification

Salmon restoration efforts in the Pacific Northwest have been going on for more than forty years and the situation has continued to deteriorate. More and more money is being spent annually, and we have fewer and fewer salmon. This has resulted in more salmon and other fish stocks being listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA.

Non-point sources of pollution are creating water pollution problems for all species, not just fish. The number of water bodies not meeting water quality standards under the CWA continues to increase. Water quantity issues also play an important role in water quality, habitat and quality of life.

These are very complex issues that involve many variables and diverse groups of people. There are no simple solutions. One fact is clear--more money and more science alone will not solve the problems. People have caused these problems and these problems are going to have to be solved by people working together. We have a tremendous amount of knowledge and technology available. However, no one has all the answers. The challenge is how do we get everybody to come to the table, share our collective wisdom, recognize what we don't know and make decisions that will produce sustainable results? Traditional approaches have not been successful in dealing with the complex issues involving complex, adaptive living systems. The Workshops for Sustainability provide a new approach to resolving these issues, and do so in a way that strengthens the human and social capital within our communities.

The Consensus Associates workshop provided me with new understanding to bring together my community in conflict about creating a future for fish, water and people. Indeed it is the only approach that will work to solve this problem.

Linda Gray, OSU Extension Service, Washington Co. OR

Associated Projects

During September and October 2000, the Washington State University (WSU) Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources (CSANR) convened three Pacific Northwest Regional Watershed Roundtable (PNW/RWR) meetings in Washington, Oregon and Idaho as part of the national Clean Water Action Plan. A total of 248 people attended these meetings. Thirteen RWR's were convened across the United States. Five hundred representatives from all 13 of the national RWR's are being invited to attend the National Watershed Forum in Crystal City, Virginia from June 27-July 1, 2001.

The PNW/RWR meetings produced substantive suggestions to promote watershed health and also demonstrated a consensus building strategy developed by the facilitator, Bob Chadwick of Consensus Associates. The following are some of the participant recommendations to the Regional Watershed Coordinating Team (targeted to Washington, Oregon and Idaho) that came out of the PNW/RWR meetings:

1. Work with the land-grant universities in the region to design and implement quality planning forums in each of the watersheds.
2. Work with the land-grant universities in the region to design and implement follow-up capacity building workshops.
3. Network with the participants to determine where they are in resolving their issues/conflicts.
4. Work with the land-grant universities in the region to provide consensus-training opportunities to federal/state/local agencies, Tribes and local citizen groups.

Follow-up activities to the PNW/RWR meetings have included:

1. Provided local facilitation support in response to watershed council requests made during the RWR meetings. A number of these requests remain unfulfilled because of a lack of funding to support facilitator travel.
2. Planned and implemented the Workshops for Sustainability series. This entails 15-days of consensus building/conflict resolution and other capacity building training over a 13-month period.

Best Possible Outcomes for "Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water, and People."

Participants in a Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water and People meeting in Spokane, Washington on May 24-25, 1999 identified the best possible outcomes for this effort as follows:

• Decisions are based on a shared vision of the future we want to create for our region. We determine the underlying causes of the problems we face and quit treating symptoms. This results in sustainable solutions that consider the short and long-term economic, ecological and social impacts.
• We adopt a decision-making process that is goal-driven, inclusive and collaborative. The resulting decisions ultimately produce clean water, restored salmon runs and an improved quality of life for the present and future generations of people living in the region.
• Trust and relationships are built among the people in the region that will serve as the foundation for the resolution of future issues and conflicts. There is a renewed respect for natural resources and each other. People celebrate the restoration of the salmon runs, clean and abundant water and healthy, prosperous communities.
• There is recognition and acceptance that each situation is different and that the desired outcomes can be achieved in various ways (i.e., one size does not fit all) that are consistent with the shared vision. Local, decentralized, grassroots involvement and commitment are necessary to achieve this outcome. We learn how to work collaboratively at all levels to achieve the desired outcomes (i.e., local, county, state, federal, public, private, etc.).
• People become aware of the impacts of their actions on natural resources and learn how to minimize or optimize these impacts. The actions taken are based on an understanding of what constitutes a healthy ecosystem (i.e., effective water cycle, mineral cycle, solar energy flow and community dynamics).
• Instead of thinking "either/or", we learn to think in terms of "and"--how can we do it all? We respect all life forms and learn to live in harmony with nature and each other. We create prosperous communities that provide a high quality of life where people care about each other.
• There is a renewed respect for Native American culture, traditions and sovereignty.
• Our efforts become a model that is replicated by other regions of the country and the world.

My job for the next four years entails bringing local, state and federal governments together with local residents (a group of approx. 45) to develop a sustainable long-range watershed plan. Many feel it's an impossible task. However, now after attending and learning the practical uses of the consensus process, I am really excited that we will be successful AND develop the plan under/by consensus.

Linda Kiefer, Watershed Coordinator, Stevens Co. Conservation District, Colville WA

Barriers to Achieving the Best Possible Outcomes

It is our belief that the weak link in achieving the desired outcomes is related to how people work together, their underlying beliefs and how they make decisions. Most people prefer to avoid conflict, but if confronted, especially if it threatens their survival, they will fight for one-dimensional solutions, exclusive of others' views or needs. This leads to confrontational battles that are often solved poorly by third parties, the courts or the legislatures. Most people do not have the skills, or the inclination to do anything else. People cannot do what they do not know how to do.

Overcoming the Barriers, Achieving the Best Possible Outcomes

It is our belief that building capacity in people, using a decision-making process that is goal-driven, inclusive and collaborative will result in decisions that produce clean water, restored salmon runs and an improved quality of life for the present and future generations of people living in the region. Trust and relationships will be built among the people in the region that will serve as the foundation for the resolution of future issues and conflicts.

Examples of Issues/Projects for Participants

The following are examples of the kinds of issues/projects that participants identified during the meeting in Spokane on May 24-25, 1999: (1) Allocation of Yakima River water. (2) Public use and road closures to limit sedimentation of streams. (3) Methow Valley Watershed Planning--water allocations, in-stream flows, irrigation ditch management, etc. (4) Little Deschutes Regional problem-solving process. (5) Making extended product responsibility real in the Northwest. (6) Confront conflict between federal agencies and Tribes. (7) Establish riparian buffer guidelines to protect and restore habitat. (8) Deal with sediment and erosion control in construction. (9) Jeopardy opinion on removal of 75 year-old Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River. (10) Impact on grazing issues in forestland, public and private lands as it related to the Endangered Species Act. (11) Conflict between Nez Perce Tribe and the North Idaho Alliance over a challenge to tribal sovereignty and government on the reservation. (12) Misuse of consensus process in certain watershed councils. (13) Lack of comprehensive vision or goals for county departments by Stevens County government. (14) Conflict over grazing management and impact on natural resources. (15) Pulling together Tri-County (i.e., King, Pierce and Snohomish counties) collaborative effort to negotiate common actions with state/federal agencies. (16) Conflicts over Yakima watershed planning process. (17) Conflicts over wellhead protection program. (18) Conflicts over irrigation water allocation to maintain in-stream flows for fish. (19) Conflicts over noxious weed control. (20) Conflict over growth and development policy for Thurston County. (21) Training on riparian zone assessment and restoration to address "guruism." (22) Conflicts over dairy manure regulations and inspections. (23) Conflicts over groundwater quality and pesticides and the link to cancer in children.

Methods:

Methods focus on transformational change and capacity building in the areas of consensus building, conflict resolution, decision-making process, leadership development, economic development and implementing the principles of sustainability. Recognizing that each situation is unique; approaches will be customized accordingly. One of the basic premises in the design of this project is that learning takes place most effectively by applying principles and processes while working with real conflicts and issues.

Evaluation:

The purpose of the proposed evaluation is twofold. First, is a formative purpose to offer monitoring data to the project leaders about the project's progress toward achieving its goal. Second, is a summative purpose for project leaders and funders to identify "What worked?" and explain "Why?"

An important feature of this evaluation design is to enable participants to monitor their individual and collective progress toward the goal of the project, particularly since the project emphasizes personal capacity building for collaboration. This participatory approach to evaluation will yield high quality data and offer participants another laboratory to practice holistic decision-making, specifically its plan-monitor-control-replan feedback loop. Partial quantitative monitoring results from the first module of Workshops for Sustainability are shown below, excerpted from the draft report by Jim Long:

During the course of the participatory workshop, Mike Lunn asked members to align themselves physically along a 14-point continuum in response to three questions. Point number 1 represented not at all confident; 10 was confident in confronting conflict; 14 was confident also in helping others learn to confront conflict in their environments. Following is the mean value for each question.

Q1 At the end of the 15 day series of workshops, how do I want to feel about confronting unresolved conflict? Mean: 12 (n= 47)

Q2 Before this session, how did I feel about confronting unresolved conflict in my environment? Mean: 8.2 (n=47)

Q3 At the end of this first workshop, how do I feel about confronting unresolved conflict? Mean: 10.9 (n=40) (asked at close of workshop)

The group's mean confidence score increased from 8.2 to 10.9, a 2.7-point gain. The group indicated that it wants to gain further confidence, from 10.9 to at least 12.

Four important features of this assessment are: 1) the criterion upon which the questions were derived came from the group itself, the group's Best Possible Outcomes, i.e., to gain confidence in confronting unresolved conflict in our own environments; 2) defining Best Possible Outcomes of the Institute was a distinct activity of the workshop; 3) the physical activity of placing oneself along a continuum represented an alternative to a paper-and-pencil rating as on a Likert scale; and 4) the public display of the group's distribution along the scale offered immediate feedback to the group and staff about the group's starting point, its aspiration and, by the end of the first workshop, the measurable progress toward a Best Possible Outcome that the group attributed to the workshop itself.

Jim Long, NUView Evaluation and Learning, draft results

Budget Summary

(For budget detail refer to Attachments # 1-9)

Qualifications of Principals

Donald D. Nelson, Ph.D., is nationally recognized for his capacity building efforts in the areas of decision-making, consensus building, leadership development, rural economic development, the implementation of the principles of sustainability, and livestock ranch management. He is a faculty member in the Department of Animal Sciences at Washington State University (WSU) where he holds the position of Extension Beef Specialist. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources where he is a member of the Center's Leadership Team. He serves as the WSU Coordinator for the Washington Integrated Resource Management/Strategic Ranch Management program. He holds certifications from the Allan Savory Center for Holistic Management, the Covey Leadership Center and the Sirolli Institute for Enterprise Facilitation.

Don has been the Project Director for two major grant-funded state/regional efforts, the Integrated Farming Systems/Holistic Management Project (1995-1999) and the Consensus Institute Project (1997-1999), for which he secured funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He is also providing the leadership in the development and implementation of the regional effort called Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water and People. His efforts continue to focus on building capacity and collaborative decision-making in an ever-expanding network of people and organizations that share the vision of creating a sustainable future in the Northwest.

Prior to coming to WSU, Don had 15 years of industry and administrative experience as general manager of livestock operations for a family corporation, an executive with two national commodity/trade associations, Associate Director of a professional ranch management program at a private university and CEO of a branded beef company.

Robert Chadwick of Consensus Associates (Terrebonne, OR) is internationally recognized for his special abilities to bring differing groups together to communicate and develop common solutions. He has pioneered the development of consensus building techniques that foster creative solutions to old conflicts.

With 30 years experience as a professional manager and organizational development consultant in a major Federal agency and 13 years as a private consultant, Bob has accumulated a comprehensive education and experience in managerial and conflict resolution strategies. He has a proven ability to help groups successfully in mission development, organizational change, team building, labor negotiations and conflict resolution.

Bob has worked throughout the United States and internationally on conflicts surrounding technology transfer, scarce resources allocation, education and rapid social and political change. He has facilitated consensus solutions in over 900 situations involving more than 40,000 people. A partial list of the entities he has worked with include the City of Bay City, MI; Rochester Minnesota Chamber of Commerce; Fort Collins Colorado Chamber of Commerce; Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (Nespelem, WA); General Motors (Saginaw, MI); Hewlett Packard (Fort Collins, CO); IBM (Rochester, MN); Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN); Rochester Minnesota City Council; Saginaw Valley State University (Saginaw, MI); US Forest Service (Colville, WA); Washington State University (Pullman, WA); Willamette Industries (Oregon) and Winona State University (Winona, MN).

He creates an environment in which the participants develop a belief that consensus is possible and they are willing to take the risk to make it happen. He has developed skills and techniques that are easily learned and are directly applicable to any management decision or conflict situation. These techniques are applied in a format in which the stakeholders learn how to seek consensus while negotiating and resolving their conflicts.

Mike Lunn of Sustainable Solutions, Prineville, Oregon, is highly experienced in a broad range of environmental issues, and in bringing people together to confront and resolve complex problems. He is associated with the National Riparian Service Team, an interagency team whose mission it is to restore riparian areas across all land ownerships in the United States. He works with that group as a consultant, helping them to bring the social and community aspects of restoration along with their outstanding technical approaches. He also has multiple trips to Mexico, working with communities and agencies to improve riparian areas and in other conservation work. Mike is listed with the Roster of Environmental Dispute Resolution and Consensus Building Professionals, which is sponsored by the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution.

Mike also has outstanding organizational and leadership credentials, having served 32 years in the Forest Service, 12 of which were as Forest Supervisor on the Tongass, Siskiyou and Rogue River National Forests. These experiences provided numerous opportunities to work with and help resolve major environmental issues on a broad front, and also enabled him to demonstrate excellence in management of organizations and people, and working with communities. His leadership and innovation in Labor – Management Relations was recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which awarded his Partnership Council the annual award for outstanding partnership work in USDA in 1997. His expertise in preparing plans and strategies for addressing complex environmental issues, ranging from watershed recovery, mining, fisheries enhancement, ski area development, planning at multiple scales and other activities has been widely recognized.

Testimonial/Scholarship Need Letter from Participant

Charly Boyd
Skamania County Planning Department
PO Box 790
Stevenson, WA 98648

March 20, 2001

Bob Chadwick
Consensus Associates
PO Box 235
Terrebonne, Oregon 97760

Dear Bob:

First, let me thank you for the great training on consensus building. I learned a lot of valuable techniques and philosophies that I have been trying to implement. Most things that I have tried have worked well so far. The learning manual is very helpful as well and is easy to read and understand. I am also very grateful to you for the scholarship that gave me the opportunity to attend the Vancouver workshop. I hope that I will be able to attend the remaining sessions on scholarship as well, since I feel they will be extremely useful to me.

I would like to apply the consensus approach, and have been trying to do so, in my job. I work for the Skamania County Planning Department in Stevenson, Washington and the largest part of my job is to facilitate and coordinate the local Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA) Planning Unit. This group is made up of 27 different local citizens, interest groups, and agency representatives who have a stake in the way water resources are managed and used in our WRIA, number 29. Our task is to develop a management plan, over a four year time period, that will address water quantity, quality, and fish habitat issues. The plan includes a detailed watershed assessment to determine the current status of our water resources, a plan for managing those resources now and in the future, and recommendations to local and state agencies for specific regulatory actions. The final plan will be given to the local legislative bodies to be adopted as regulations if they choose to do so.

Water and fish, as we saw in the Vancouver session, are topics that generate a lot of controversy and differing opinions on how to manage them. The group that I work with is very diverse and has been struggling with working as a cohesive group. Some members have tried everything to stop the planning from moving forward because they are afraid of being regulated out of business, some have refused to attend meetings regularly because they don't feel the group is willing to work together, and some come to meetings and either don't want to participate or don't feel comfortable doing so.

I became the facilitator/coordinator for this group only a few months ago and have had to try to wrestle with existing conflicts while trying to meet grant deadlines and other expectations. Since I have had no formal facilitation or consensus training I have been struggling to resolve conflicts among individuals and foster a consensus-friendly attitude among the group members.

The monthly planning unit meeting for February was only three days after the Consensus Associates first training session so I immediately tried to apply some of the things I learned. I set up the room with a circle of chairs instead of the U-shaped table design we had been previously using. It was amazing to see the exact reactions on the people's faces that we had discussed in the training. One woman walked in the door, took a look at the circle and walked out again. She came back after about 10 minutes and took a seat. Others looked skeptical at the design and one man stood outside the circle until he felt comfortable moving in. The first thing I did was explain that I had been to some training and that we would be trying out a few of the things I had learned. Then we moved on to a grounding. Everyone got a chance to speak uninterrupted and several people commented afterward on how good it felt to say what they wanted and be listened to, and on how interesting it was to hear everyone's point of view. Also, almost everyone expressed the need to manage our water resources in a better way. This was excellent because everyone felt that they all had something in common. At the next meeting we will be asking for everyone's Best and Worst Possible Outcomes of watershed planning and then we'll move on to identifying Beliefs and Behaviors and Strategies and Actions to achieve our goals.

I am excited to continue my training and learn more consensus building techniques to help the Planning Unit work together to develop a water resource management plan. Since the issues and conflicts will only get more intense as we deal with specific areas of water use such as irrigation and salmon habitat, facilitation training and consensus building techniques will be invaluable to me and the group in the future. Support from Consensus Associates will also prove helpful to me in the form of being available to answer specific questions and give advice on how to deal with certain situations. At this point I don't anticipate needing direct assistance facilitating the group but a person never knows what will happen.

Finally, I will not be able to continue attending the training sessions unless a scholarship is made available to me. My position at the county is funded in part by a Department of Ecology (DOE) grant that must also be used to pay for the expensive watershed assessment and other tasks. DOE has indicated that the bulk of the grant money should be spent on assessment work. The rest of my salary is paid for by the county which has limited funding resources since it is a small, rural county that has been heavily dependent on timber revenues to fund its activities. With the decreased federal and state timber sales and the formation of the National Scenic Area in the gorge, the county does not have the money to pay for expensive employee training, no matter how valuable it would be for job performance. Scholarship support for this program is vital to me, and to several others who I met at the first training session, in order for us to attend. The things that I have learned so far from the Consensus Associates training have helped me immensely. I feel that the rest of the sessions will be equally, if not more, valuable to me. I would encourage anyone with the financial means to support this training because it will not only benefit the people taking the training but those they work with as well. In my case it will benefit the local residents and visitors to our area directly by allowing them to develop and enjoy the benefits of a water resource management plan for their area.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, Bob, for offering this training, and to thank any potential financial sponsors for considering funding the continued training. Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Charly Boyd

Watershed and Shorelines Planner