Water Policy: Potential Models for Collaborative Governance

To build a more governance system that is more collaborative the public and between the public and government, Minnesota should explore models such as:

Harnessing community pressures for the common good:
The Wisconsin Buffer Initiative

A group in Wisconsin is hoping to bring farmers together to address watershed problems as a community.

The Wisconsin Buffer Initiative is a collaboration of farmers, scientists from the University of Wisconsin, and other citizens organized to develop recommendations for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on how buffers along streams and rivers can be better used to address agricultural nonpoint source pollution. The WBI is hoping to receive a grant to provide financial incentives at a small watershed scale, based on:

  • Performance: All farmers in the watershed would receive an incentive based on pollution reductions measured at the watershed outlet.
  • Participation: The greater the percentage of farmers participating, the greater the incentive each farmer would receive.

This model provides incentives to farmers to use their professional problem-solving skills and hold each other accountable for implementing best management practices to reduce nonpoint source pollution. Rather than treating each farmer as an isolated individual, it harnesses the power of peer pressure in the farm community towards addressing nonpoint source pollution together.

Aligning incentives for best management practices:
Independent certification in forestry

While many states have taken a regulatory approach to reducing forestry practices that cause polluted runoff, Minnesota has achieved comparable results with voluntary certification programs. This path receives praise both from those in government and in the forest industry and may be a model for other industries such as agriculture.

In the mid 1990s, the forest industry was feeling pressure from various sides to make their practices more environmentally friendly:

  • Public pressures from citizens (especially environmental and conservation interests) and people within government agencies to protect water resources.
  • Threat of regulation: States on the coasts had begun to enact regulations mandating certain management practices. Forest companies much preferred a voluntary approach, believing that regulations were too costly and prescriptive and would stifle innovation.
Pressures from a third angle have also grown in the past decade:
  • Economic pressures from forest product buyers. There has been a worldwide move toward environmentally sustainable forestry practices certified by third parties. Large buyers such as Time Inc. and Home Depot have insisted that their Minnesota suppliers obtain most of their wood from forests that have been certified to follow best management practices.

At the same time, the Minnesota Legislature directed the Minnesota Forest Resources Council -- a body representative of broad forest resource interests, including loggers, manufacturers and the forestry industry; conservation and environmental groups; labor organizations; the tourism industry; Indian tribes; private landowners; and federal, state and local governments -- to develop a set of voluntary best management practices that would improve environmental outcomes, including reducing forestry's contribution to water pollution.

The forest management guidelines developed by the Forest Resources Council have now been adopted as criteria for two forest land certification programs and a logger certification program. All are voluntary programs with periodic audits by independent, third-party review.

This system of independent certification has made Minnesota a national leader. Approximately 8.4 million acres of forest land in Minnesota are certified (of 16.3 million total acres), more than any other state. Most forest land owned by the state and the forest industry is certified. For non-industrial private forest land, certification rates are quite low, largely because of the cost of the certification process.

Such high participation strongly suggests that certification has improved environmental outcomes including water quality and reduced forestry's contribution to nonpoint source pollution, but more data is needed to confirm this conclusively.