All conservation is local
Nine years ago I began one of my most rewarding writing assignments (because it was a topic I found interesting and important, profiling people I admired), which ended up one of my least impactful published works (because it was not widely read or noticed). But this week the story is back in the news.
I was profiling the Stillwater Mine Good Neighbor Agreement, a first-of-its-kind deal in which a mining company signed a binding agreement with an environmental group, without the hot-and-bother of a lawsuit. The agreement included mitigation of impacts, including a busing system for workers at the remote site, plus an unprecedented commitment to information sharing. My case study (sadly, no longer available on the Web) examined why each party felt it was valuable to come to the table, how the agreement almost derailed, and what lessons the participants drew for others seeking to do the same.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the agreement’s official signing. It’s commemorated with an outstanding article by Linda Halstead-Acharya of the Billings Gazette (who first did great reporting on these issues back in the 1990s). The article reports that participants see the agreement as an unglamorous framework for a lot of hard work. That’s no surprise to me, since that’s similar to the views I reported on many years ago.
Also writing this week is Art Ortenberg, whose foundation commissioned my work. Ortenberg used the case study, with a dozen others, as fodder for a major conference on the future of collaborative conservation. His blog post here celebrates what he sees as the legacy of that conference, while criticizing the Obama administration for failing to support similarly collaborative approaches.
I don’t want to take away from Ortenberg’s political point, and not having attended his conference, I don’t know what exactly it did to “start… it all.” But the major lesson I took from the Good Neighbor Agreement story points in a different direction: All conservation is local.
Congressman Tip O’Neill is famous for saying, “All politics is local.” I understand the quote to mean that O’Neill believed a Congressional representative’s primary responsibility was to take care of local constituents and solve local problems. The bigger national problems may be important, a road to statesmanship, but it’s taking care of the local problems that gives the representative the opportunity to tackle the big ones. And in this sense, environmental politics are no different than any other kind of politics. They’re local.
The people who forged the Good Neighbor Agreement told me they did so largely in isolation from national political trends. As George W. Bush replaced Bill Clinton, it didn’t matter to either side. What they were hammering out was a set of local concerns, about the economic stability of one small corporation and the water quality and other environmental features of one small region. The agreement they reached deserves all the praise it gets. But those interested in replicating it elsewhere must start by finding another set of local people with a another set of local concerns.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
I was profiling the Stillwater Mine Good Neighbor Agreement, a first-of-its-kind deal in which a mining company signed a binding agreement with an environmental group, without the hot-and-bother of a lawsuit. The agreement included mitigation of impacts, including a busing system for workers at the remote site, plus an unprecedented commitment to information sharing. My case study (sadly, no longer available on the Web) examined why each party felt it was valuable to come to the table, how the agreement almost derailed, and what lessons the participants drew for others seeking to do the same.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the agreement’s official signing. It’s commemorated with an outstanding article by Linda Halstead-Acharya of the Billings Gazette (who first did great reporting on these issues back in the 1990s). The article reports that participants see the agreement as an unglamorous framework for a lot of hard work. That’s no surprise to me, since that’s similar to the views I reported on many years ago.
Also writing this week is Art Ortenberg, whose foundation commissioned my work. Ortenberg used the case study, with a dozen others, as fodder for a major conference on the future of collaborative conservation. His blog post here celebrates what he sees as the legacy of that conference, while criticizing the Obama administration for failing to support similarly collaborative approaches.
I don’t want to take away from Ortenberg’s political point, and not having attended his conference, I don’t know what exactly it did to “start… it all.” But the major lesson I took from the Good Neighbor Agreement story points in a different direction: All conservation is local.
Congressman Tip O’Neill is famous for saying, “All politics is local.” I understand the quote to mean that O’Neill believed a Congressional representative’s primary responsibility was to take care of local constituents and solve local problems. The bigger national problems may be important, a road to statesmanship, but it’s taking care of the local problems that gives the representative the opportunity to tackle the big ones. And in this sense, environmental politics are no different than any other kind of politics. They’re local.
The people who forged the Good Neighbor Agreement told me they did so largely in isolation from national political trends. As George W. Bush replaced Bill Clinton, it didn’t matter to either side. What they were hammering out was a set of local concerns, about the economic stability of one small corporation and the water quality and other environmental features of one small region. The agreement they reached deserves all the praise it gets. But those interested in replicating it elsewhere must start by finding another set of local people with a another set of local concerns.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
