Overcoming Locally Based Collaboration Constraints

Abstract

Abstract Scientific, societal, managerial, and political trends are all simultaneously pushing resource management towards more collaborative approaches. In response, innovative collaborative efforts have emerged to address natural resource problems—many of them originating at the local level. Based on research in Australia and the United States, this article highlights five constraints associated with locally based collaboration: transaction costs, limited perspective, organizational sustainability, policy issues, and the adequacy of representation. To overcome these constraints, it is argued that the concept of collaboration should be decoupled from the concept of localism. Collaboration can operate at several different institutional levels, and a nested set of collaborative arrangements in Oregon's Rogue River Basin helps illustrate how constraints related to a locally based approach can be overcome. Furthermore, these structures provide forums for a range of decision makers to address some of the broader and more fundamental natural resource management problems facing society today. Keywords: agency rolescollaborationcommunity-based decision makingnatural resource management Acknowledgments The author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in focusing this article and for drawing out some of the broader implications. Notes Note. †Indicates preliminary investigations; ☆ case study included analysis of all available meeting minutes; ⊡ author is a member of the Steering Committee; ★ survey was completed by 53 state agency staff during interview (response rate = 100%) ♦ participants were surveyed as part of a multistate survey of 550 stakeholders (response rate = 52%) # case study included analysis of all newspaper articles during planning process; ¥ case studies included surveys of staff and elected officials. South East Queensland: Survey of 64 elected officials (response rate = 41%). Denver: Survey of 129 elected officials (response rate = 30%). The question was open-ended. Responses were entered into a database, analyzed for content, and a list of commonly cited inhibitors was developed from the responses. The total number of people citing this inhibitor was 42 (n = 198). This section is based on Margerum and Whitall (Citation2004) and unpublished material written by Debra Whitall and Dr. Jonathan I. Lange, professor of communications at Southern Oregon University.