LESSONS LEARNED FROM INTEGRATING SCIENCE INTO COMPLEX STAKEHOLDER-DRIVEN ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION MAKING

Since the advent of stakeholder-driven regional water planning in 1997, Texans have expected major water decisions to be similarly driven by stakeholder processes. And justifiably so: many environmental and water resource issues are extremely complex both politically and technically. Stakeholder processes afford decision makers time to understand the issues and the science before making decisions. Three major water policy questions in Texas--groundwater availability, protection of endangered species in springs fed by the Edwards Aquifer, and environmental flows in rivers and to bays and estuaries--have recently been answered by long-term stakeholder processes, each under a different approach. For groundwater availability, groundwater conservation districts were the stakeholders with a state agency serving as the science provider. This process worked fine except that appeals of districts’ policy decisions come to the same state agency that provides the science. For the Edwards Aquifer and environmental flows stakeholder processes, the stakeholders chose science teams to make science recommendations. A key to successful stakeholder processes is having a deadline. There’s never enough science or time to adequately address a policy question. With no deadline, these processes can last years with uncertainty in the science used to avoid making difficult decisions. However, there must be adequate time to address the questions and have the scientists and stakeholders build relationships before addressing difficult questions. In the case of the Edwards Aquifer process, the first year was spent working on less controversial policy and technical questions with the second year focused on the critical questions. Another key is keeping the science focused on the science and not letting policy implications impact science recommendations, something that’s easier said than done, especially with a diverse group of scientists from the academic, governmental, and private sectors. Finally, because our understanding of the natural world is ever-evolving, policy decisions based on the best available science need to be adaptive. This allows previous decisions to be revisited as the science improves.