Stephen F. McCoolDepartment of Society and ConservationThe University of Montana(Steve.McCool@cfc.umt.edu)

A Social Scientist’s Perspective on the Evolving World of

Integrated Planning

From Staplers to Mylar to Roundtables:

State of Natural Resource Planning

• Paralysis• Conflict• Lack of trust• Anger• Morale

The Rise of Integrated Resource Management

• A response to– Mechanistic definitions of planning– Narrow definitions of public land values– Calls for thinking about the system as a whole

• Represents a response to the inadequacies of planning approaches– Adversarial– Marginalized forms of knowledge– Action requires many actors

Objectives

• Discuss how we have proceeded in developing paradigms of integration

• Raise questions and issues about these paradigms

• Suggest some lessons learned

The various titles could be subsection titles

• Land manager’s job is provide stewardship for public resources

• Public is deeply concerned about the future of these resources

• Broadening definitions of what roles public administered resources play in society– Ecosystem goods and services– Cultural, spiritual, and sustenance

Toward Integrated Planning

• Variety of attempts beginning in the 1980’s

• No real sense of what this meant, other than more than one discipline

• Learning has occurred, several generations of integrated planning

First Generation Integration:

The Stapler• Respond by involving a greater variety of

disciplines• Each approaches the planning issue from the

dominant paradigm of that discipline• Specialists pursue parallel, but separate courses• Extreme form, specialists compete to have their

values favored

The Results of First Generation Integration

• Separate chapters • Different metrics, scales, perceptions• Understanding of planning problem not

widely shared• Competition for financial resources among

specialists• Some appreciation that an action impacts

a wide range of values

Second Generation Integration:

Mylar, Maps and GIS• Initial attempts used mylar overlays to display

maps of different variables• Specialists attempt to display their fields

spatially• Emphasis on consistency in gathering data• What data to be gathered influenced by what is

available to display on maps• Evolved into GIS, and use of digital information• Spurred by advances in landscape ecology

Results of Second Generation Integration

• Better ability to understand spatial relationships of things that were measured

• Marginalized many values that are not expressed at a particular pixel size

• Spatial modeling into the future revealed a lot of assumptions

• GIS folks in control of the planning

• Disciplines developed out of a matter of convenience, but now interests and egos have formed around them

• The drive for integrated resource decision-making represents a critique of past approaches

• But what do we mean by integration?

More Important Outcomes

• Raised fundamental questions– What was to be integrated? Why? By Whom?

For what purpose? How? – For what reason do we integrate?– What things hinder and what things facilitate

integration?– Who decides when integrated planning is

appropriate?

Some Observations

• Staplers and Myla represent an operational perspective on integration

• Need a systemic view• Only values/interests represented by

experts included• Staplers and Mylar (GIS) only tools• Is the public interest revealed through the

application of expertise?

Third Generation Integration:

The Roundtable

• These questions stimulated development of a third generation

• Reasons for this paradigm:– Equality– Leadership– Used in other settings

Third Generation Characteristics

• Shared definitions• One puzzle, not several • Mutual respect• Systems focus• Notion of holism, emergent properties• Iterative thinking• Learning

Spanning, Balancing or Integrating: contemporary challenges in NRM

• Integration – balancing or accomodation?

Integrated Planning Issues

• Different paradigms operating• Some people don’t want to integrate• Few roundtables exist• Choice of paradigm• Role of science/expertise

What integration is not

• final step in a fragmented process• a book stapled together• a management plan• unequal treatment of values/uses• individual disciplines recommending

actions

Some Lessons Learned

• The better you know where you are going, the more likely you are to get there

• Outcomes are consequences of social processes

• Integration is continuous• Integration and complexity are linked

Some Lessons Learned

• Team members play by the same rules• Teams have a captain• Integration does not stop when report is

accepted• Acknowledge uncertainty

• Currently have a limited ability to predict consequences of actions at larger spatial and temporal scales

• Planning tends to be issue oriented rather than goal directed

• Responses to issues require, in many cases, collaboration and cooperation among many disciplines

What are characteristics of the pathway to the future?

• Complexity – different scales interacting with differing emergent properties

• Uncertainty – emergent properties we can’t anticipate• Non-linearly dynamic – small disturbances lead to large

changes• Instability – systems dynamic and difficult to predict• Learning – command control processes don’t work

Why integration?

• Stewardship involves relationships among people, processes and the environment

• Widening range of values must be considered in stewardship

• Limited ability to identify and predict change, particularly at larger spatial and temporal scales