Volume 1/Chapter 3/Institutions

* CRITICAL FINDING

ASSESSMENT

New Forces for Change

Strategies

* The Feather River Coordinated Resource Management (CRM) Group

* Coalition for Unified Recreation in the Eastern Sierra

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* CRITICAL FINDINGS

Institutional Incapacities Many Sierran ecosystem declines are due to institutional incapacities to capture and use resources from Sierran beneficiaries for investment that sustains the health and productivity of the ecosystems from which benefits derive.

Sources of Institutional Incapacities Institutional incapacities arise from four primary sources: (1) fragmented control of ecosystems among different jurisdictions, authorities, and ownerships, (2) absence of exchange mechanisms among these entities to sustain rates of investment and cooperative actions that reflect ecosystem values, (3) detachment between those who control ecosystems and communities that depend upon and care for them, and (4) inflexibility in response to rapid changes in population, economy, and public interests.

Regionalism The souces of institutional capacity and of potentials to improve upon capacity differ among the regions of the Sierra, which vary greatly in their institutional as well as ecological, demographic, and economic characteristics.

ASSESSMENT

The Sierra Nevada is embedded in a wide range of human interests extending throughout the region and beyond. Public and private institutions relating to natural resource use and environmental quality have evolved in part to serve those interests and in part to safeguard the Sierra Nevada itself. Institutions include governmental jurisdictions and public agencies as well as market and community structures. Timber, water, wildlife, and mineralsresources traditionally associated with the Sierraare consumed by people outside the Sierra, principally in urban or agricultural areas of California. The amenity values of the Sierra drive a real estate market that increasingly draws on the wealth of exurbanite commuters or retirees. Recreational and spiritual values of the Sierra draw people from around the world. Although these values generate employment and income within the Sierra, a vast proportion of these benefits accrue to parties and interests outside the region. Several important social forces drive change in Sierran institutions, and problems emerge as they respond. Collaboration, market capitalization of the cost of ecosystem maintenance, activism, and legal rules contribute to the search for solutions to these problems.

Institutional Setting
The institutional context of the Sierra is a story of mechanisms that express social preferences. Institutional arrangements attempt to close the loop, or tighten the connection between the ecological systems of the Sierra and the multiple stakeholders of the region. Institutions govern both the means by which benefits flow to beneficiaries and the manner by which these beneficiaries absorb the cost of, and reinvest in, the ecological systems that support them. Reinvestment, broadly defined, includes a range of initiatives whose aim is to ensure the continued integrity and function of Sierra Nevada ecosystems. Reinvestment may include mitigation of environmental impacts or rehabilitation of prior environmental degradation. Market institutions used elsewhere to close the loop between consumers and resources are generally underdeveloped or missing in the Sierra Nevada, leaving government institutions as the principal means by which preferences are expressed and reinvestment promoted.

Government entities, rather than market mechanisms, manifest preferences and direct reinvestment in the Sierra Nevada. Over the years, an institutional landscape has evolved that is diverse, complicated, and fragmented (figure 3.1). Institutions differ by purpose, authority, and jurisdiction. A large part of the Sierra Nevada is administered by federal agencies, and public agencies have responsibility for two-thirds of the land in the region (see chapter 1).

FIGURE 3.1(Actual View 27K)

Public/Private interface, relative densities of fragmentation. Units are kilometers of boundary between public and private land per square kilometer.

The institutional arrangements in the Lake Tahoe Basin, where there are more than seventy different federal, state, and local government entities, epitomize the complexity present in the larger region. Across the Sierra, each institution responds to, and implements, a different array of policies. The picture that emerges is one of byzantine complexity in which institutions involving every layer of government focus on a single component or process of Sierran ecosystems. In other sectors of the economy, markets perform that function; public institutions struggle together to articulate the definition of public and private good for the Sierra.

Timber harvest and replanting on private land and state land is regulated by the Forest Practice Rules promulgated by the State Board of Forestry and enforced by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF); various stewardship programs funded by CDF, the U.S. Forest Services State and Private Forestry program, and the Natural Resource Conservation Service subsidize reinvestment. Congress, through laws and policy direction (e.g, National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other environmental laws), establishes the framework for the way national forests are managed. The Forest Service, guided by these laws and policy, determines timber harvest levels but attainment of these levels is dependent upon congressional appropriations.

Development of private land is regulated directly through General Plans developed by county governments as well as through legislation at the state level, particularly the Subdivision Map Act and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Certain areas, such as the Lake Tahoe Basin, have even more complex arrangements involving adjoining states, local governments and authorities, and the federal government. The extension of the road network by county and state transportation agencies influences land development indirectly.

Wildlife and plant species are managed by the California Department of Fish and Game. Funds for reinvestment in wildlife, wildlife habitat, or native plants come from hunting and fishing permits, special government funds earmarked for game species (e.g., Hill Bill, AB 1580), and, on national forest lands, from timber harvest receipts (Knutson-Vandenberg [K-V] funds). When species or their habitats become sufficiently rare as a result of a number of factors, including pressures related to human activity, they fall under the jurisdiction of the state and federal endangered species acts. At this threshold, a new web of regulatory authority is invoked to prevent harm to a species or its habitat. Depending on the habitat requirements of the specific species, government intervention may affect a wide range of activities in an attempt to preserve or restore certain ecosystem attributes.

Existing institutional arrangements related to water include the State Water Resources Control Board, which confers rights to water and is therefore required to articulate the public trust in in-stream flows. Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers are responsible for administration of certain reservoirs, dams, and other facilities. The overall structure also includes water purveyors (local irrigation districts, municipal water districts, state and federal irrigation projects), which convey water to users. Users are frequently located in areas quite distant from the Sierra. Public and private utilities and federal regulatory agencies together effect water diversions, in some cases only temporary, in order to produce hydroelectric power. The quality of the water that flows through the vast natural and human plumbing of the Sierra is overseen by several regional water quality control boards and affected by a wide range of activitiesroad building, timber harvest, mining, grazingeach of which engages its own special web of authorities.

Public and private institutions express the priorities of human society. As social needs change, public expectations of these institutions also change. Accordingly, institutions respond by attempting to change their outlook, function, and methods. In the case of private markets, competitive pressures lead to voluntary changes in private behavior. In public institutions, where competition is generally absent, large-scale population shifts, new social demands, and grassroots activism are the most powerful forces of change. Institutions now dominant may find their positions eroding as other institutions wax powerful and new institutions arise.

Promoting ecosystem sustainability is not a priority common to all of the regions resource-related institutions. Sustainability and ecological health are viewed by many public and private institutions as compatible with their other institutional priorities, but to some degree, sustainability is a goal added on top of more established organizational functions. Consequently, these institutions rarely perceive the implications of their actions for the larger ecosystem or effectively review the cumulative effects of actions across a region. Undesired environmental impacts may not be addressed by either public or private institutions, leaving these problems, such as the mitigation of impacts or restoration of impaired environmental resources, to be solved in the future.