Bruce Goldstein | University of Colorado, Boulder (original) (raw)

Papers by Bruce Goldstein

We welcome the added nuance that Marvier and Kareiva have included in their response [1] to our a... more We welcome the added nuance that Marvier and Kareiva have included in their response [1] to our analysis [2] of New Conservation Science (NCS). However, we take issue with multiple points that they raise. In particular, we do not believe that our arguments in any way ‘pit good values against each other’ or that we have painted conservation to date as a string of unqualified success stories. Nonetheless, we are glad that they now appear to embrace many of the same fundamental goals, strategies, and motivations that have long characterized conservation.
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This paper presents findings from an interdisciplinary research effort studying community resilie... more This paper presents findings from an interdisciplinary research effort studying community resilience in Boulder, Colorado. Boulder is a progressive region with a history of environmental leadership. The area is currently in the process of recovering from major flooding and has launched several new initiatives related to building longterm resilience to natural disasters and other stressors. In our research, we consider the stakeholders involved in building local resilience as well as the different and often contradictory framings of the concept. This study takes a phenomenological and inductive approach to understanding resilience. In contrast to more reductionist frameworks that are frequently offered, we argue that this allows for greater understanding of the polyvocal and emergent qualities of resilience.

This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to exa... more This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to examine the adaptive capacity of Zanjera San Marcelino, an indigenous irrigation management system in the northern Philippines. This common pool resource (CPR) system exists within a turbulent social-ecological system (SES) characterized by episodic shocks such as large typhoons as well as novel surprises, such as national political regime change and the construction of large dams. The Zanjera nimbly responded to these challenges, although sometimes in ways that left its structure and function substantially altered. While a partial integration with the Philippine National Irrigation Agency was critical to the Zanjera's success, this relationship required ongoing improvisation and renegotiation. Over time, the Zanjera showed an increasing capacity to learn and adapt. A core contribution of this analysis is the integration of a CPR study within an SES framework to examine resilience, made possible the occurrence of a wide range of challenges to the Zanjera's function and survival over the long period of study. Long-term analyses like this one, however rare, are particularly useful for understanding the adaptive and transformative dimensions of resilience.

In this paper, we consider how learning networks build capacity for system transformation. We def... more In this paper, we consider how learning networks build capacity for system transformation. We define learning networks as inter-organizational voluntary collaboratives that nurture professional expertise and describe their potential to catalyse systemic change by disrupting old habits, fostering new relationships, and providing freedom to experiment. We conducted a parallel study of four learning networks, which vary in age since founding from 2 to 25 years, applying three exploratory questions across our cases. We conclude by considering how learning networks can foster transformative capacity within social-ecological systems when they are designed and facilitated with a soft touch so that network members in different sites have the freedom to define their place and purpose within their system, as well as their role in bringing about a desired transformation. We suggest that system transformation is not just the sum of similar efforts at different sites and scales or a least common denominator between them but is emergent from interaction between the partially shared understandings of actors within and between sites, and across network scales. A well-designed network is a learning system that encompasses these multiple perspectives, and good netweaving mediates different ways of system knowing without collapsing them into one perspective.

This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to exa... more This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to examine the adaptive capacity of Zanjera San Marcelino, an indigenous irrigation management system in the northern Philippines. This common pool resource (CPR) system exists within a turbulent social-ecological system (SES) characterized by episodic shocks such as large typhoons as well as novel surprises, such as national political regime change and the construction of large dams. The Zanjera nimbly responded to these challenges, although sometimes in ways that left its structure and function substantially altered. While a partial integration with the Philippine National Irrigation Agency was critical to the Zanjera’s success, this relationship required on-going improvisation and renegotiation. Over time, the Zanjera showed an increasing capacity to learn and adapt. A core contribution of this analysis is the integration of a CPR study within an SES framework to examine resilience, made possible the occurrence of a wide range of challenges to the Zanjera’s function and survival over the long period of study. Long-term analyses like this one, however rare, are particularly useful for understanding the adaptive and transformative dimensions of resilience.

Problem: As planners grow increasingly confident that they have settled on the right concepts and... more Problem:
As planners grow increasingly
confident that they have settled on the right
concepts and methods to conduct stake-
holder-based collaboration, they are not
considering what can be achieved through
other collaborative approaches.
Purpose:
We aimed to explore
how creating
a network of place- and stakeholder-based
collaboratives using communities of practice
could strengthen individual collaboratives
and achieve network synergies.
Methods:
Using a case study approach, we
draw out lessons for collaborative planning
from our research on the U.S. Fire Learning
Network (FLN), a collaborative initiative to
restore ecosystems that depend on fire. We
analyzed data from over 140 interviews,
hundreds of documents including restoration
plans, newsletters, meeting summaries, maps,
and various other reports, and observations
at more than a dozen regional and national
meetings.

Two groups of biologists were responsible for an unprecedented delay in completing a endang... more Two groups of biologists were responsible for
an unprecedented delay in completing a endangered species habitat conservation plan in the Coachella Valley of
southern California. While antagonism grew as each group
relentlessly promoted their perspective on whether to add a
few areas to the habitat preserve, their inability to resolve
their differences was not simply a matter of mistrust or
poor facilitation. I analyze how these biologists practiced
science in a way that supported specific institutional and
ecological relationships that in turn provided a setting in
which each group’s biological expertise was meaningful,
credible, and useful. This tight coupling between scientific
practice and society meant that something was more
important to these scientists than finishing the plan. For
both factions of biologists, ensuring the survival of native
species in the valley rested on their ability to catalyze
institutional relationships that were compatible with
their scientific practice. Understanding this co-production
of science and the social order is a first step toward
effectively incorporating different experts in negotiation
and implementation of technically complex collaborative
agreements.

This paper uses videotaping and discourse analysis to study participants’ dialogue and conduct du... more This paper uses videotaping and discourse analysis to study participants’ dialogue and conduct during preparation of the Coachella Valley habitat conservation plan in southern California. The research uses social worlds analysis to reveal that the plan’s technical advisors did not find facts through the collective discovery of scientific truths with unitary meanings, but instead constructed facts by aligning professional visions of space, time, and agency. The validity of the resulting plan relied on its ability to be a “boundary object”, meaning different things to different groups, while simultaneously laying claim to universality and objectivity. However, its subsequent failure to satisfy an unexpected scientific peer review demonstrates the importance of anticipating downstream reception and use when developing such documents. This case study shows that planners can be epistemic mediators, creating and stabilizing technical knowledge claims that project authority by showing a responsive face to many audiences.

How can communities enhance social-ecological resilience within complex urban systems? Drawing on... more How can communities enhance social-ecological resilience within complex urban systems? Drawing on a new urbanist proposal in Orange County, California, it is suggested that planning that ignores diverse ways of knowing undermines the experience and shared meaning of those living in a city. The paper then describes how narratives lay at the core of efforts to reintegrate the Los Angeles River into the life of the city and the US Fire Learning Network’s efforts to address the nation’s wildfire crisis. In both cases, participants develop partially shared stories about alternative futures that foster critical learning and facilitate co-ordination without imposing one set of interests on everyone. It is suggested that narratives are a way to express the subjective and symbolic meaning of resilience, enhancing our ability to engage multiple voices and enable self-organising processes to decide what should be made resilient and for whose benefit.

A coalition of environmental activists and professionals created the San Diego Fire Recovery Netw... more A coalition of environmental activists and professionals created the San Diego Fire Recovery Network (SDFRN) while the largest wildfire in California history was still burning at the city’s edge in October 2003. Acting quickly while the citizenry questioned governmental ability to protect their rapidly growing region, SDFRN proposed to reduce fire risk in a way that altered residential knowledge practices and identity while reshaping governance relationships. While this effort stalled after governmental agencies restored public confidence through massive fire prevention initiatives, SDFRN’s efforts may not have been in vain. Retained within collective memory, SDFRN contributed to community resilience by diversifying possible responses to environmental change and uncertainty. In this way, flexible, informal learning organizations such as SDFRN may serve as “skunkworks,” seizing on disaster in order to incubate social–ecological relationships that might avert greater
tragedies to come.

Fire regime classifications are established and proven tools that guide fire policy, management, ... more Fire regime classifications are established and proven tools that guide fire policy, management, and science. They summarize and organize complex information into a concise measure of the timing, intensity, and distribution of fire. The idea of fire regime deserves careful examination because it provides the guiding rationale for managing vast acreage. We identify and unpack two fire regimes articulated in the intense public, professional, and scientific debate that following the 2003 ‘‘Cedar’’ fire outside San Diego, one of the largest and fastest moving fires in California history. We contrast these two regimes and describe their implications for science, management, policy, and land use.

After the largest wildfire in California over the past century, natural resource agencies describ... more After the largest wildfire in California over the past century, natural resource agencies described how they could reduce vulnerability to fire hazard by sustainability managing fuel levels. A community coalition challenged this narrative by placing the fire within evolutionary time and describing how sustainability could be achieved through collective action within a dynamic and vulnerable landscape. The agencies rejected the coalition alternative as a dangerous and scientifically dubious distraction from their security responsibilities. In this clash, differing knowledge practices delimited the possibilities of citizenship and governance in which alternative sustainability narratives had meaning and significance. Ambivalence persisted because sustainability narratives were informed and justified by knowledge practices that were both driver and outcome of efforts to achieve different sustainabilities.

Conservation Learning Networks (CLN) are an emerging conservation strategy for addressing complex... more Conservation Learning Networks (CLN) are an emerging conservation strategy for addressing complex resource management challenges that face the forestry profession. The US Fire Learning Network (FLN) is a successful example of a CLN that operates on a national scale. Developed in 2001 as a partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the US Forest Service, and land-management agencies of the US Department of the Interior, the FLN has solicited the participation of fire professionals from more than 600 partner organizations to collaboratively design and implement ecological fire restoration strategies. Our review of the FLN provides evidence of the network’s ability to improve conservation practices, points to its potential to transform and empower fire management practices and institutions on a national scale, and illustrates the utility of CLNs for other natural resource management challenges.

In response to the ongoing crisis in fire management, the US Fire Learning Network (FLN) engages ... more In response to the ongoing crisis in fire management, the US Fire Learning Network (FLN) engages partners in collaborative, landscape-scale ecological fire restoration. The paper contends that the FLN employs technologies, planning guidelines and media to articulate an FLN imaginary that co-ordinates
independent efforts to engage in ecological fire restoration work without need of either hierarchal authority or collective social capital. This imaginary may allow the FLN to draw on the creativity and adaptive innovation of collaboration to reform fire management institutions and fire-adapted ecosystems.

Through the U.S. Fire Learning Network (FLN), The Nature Conservancy and federal land management ... more Through the U.S. Fire Learning Network (FLN), The Nature Conservancy and federal land management agencies are attempting to reorient fire management from fire
suppression toward ecological restoration and community protection. In its first 2 years, the FLN linked place-based collaboratives at a national scale. Using structured planning exercises, the FLN mediated between central coordination
and collaborative autonomy by guiding partners through construction of place-based and mutually coherent narratives. These narratives situated landscape partners within an arc of conflict, crisis, and resolution, aligning partners with the goals of FLN’s sponsoring organizations while enhancing community solidarity and shared purpose. FLN’s narrative framework placed fire managers in a heroic role of restorationist, legitimized multiple professional ways of knowing, and built collaborative capacity, thus charting a path from crisis to renewal for ecological and human communities and for fire management itself.

Resilience thinkers share an interest in collaborative deliberation with communicative planners,... more Resilience thinkers share an interest in collaborative deliberation with communicative planners, who aim to accommodate different forms of knowledge and styles of reasoning to promote social learning and yield creative and equitable agreements. Members of both fields attended a symposium at Virginia Tech in late 2008, where communicative planners considered how social–ecological resilience
informed new possibilities for planning practice beyond disaster mitigation and response. In turn, communicative planners offered resilience scholars ideas about how collaboration could accomplish more than enhance rational decision making of the commons. Through these exchanges, the symposium fostered ideas about collaborative governance and the critical role of expertise in fostering communicative resilience.

This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to exa... more This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to examine the adaptive capacity of Zanjera San Marcelino, an indigenous irrigation management system in the northern Philippines. This common pool resource (CPR) system exists within a turbulent social-ecological system (SES) characterized by episodic shocks such as large typhoons as well as novel surprises, such as national political regime change and the construction of large dams. The Zanjera nimbly responded to these challenges, although sometimes in ways that left its structure and function substantially altered. While a partial integration with the Philippine National Irrigation Agency was critical to the Zanjera’s success, this relationship required on-going improvisation and renegotiation. Over time, the Zanjera showed an increasing capacity to learn and adapt. A core contribution of this analysis is the integration of a CPR study within an SES framework to examine resilience, made possible the occurrence of a wide range of challenges to the Zanjera’s function and survival over the long period of study. Long-term analyses like this one, however rare, are particularly useful for understanding the adaptive and transformative dimensions of resilience.