Richard Haynes, Program Manager, USDA Forest Service
There have been increasing calls for effectively linking social and biophysical science in the development of forest policies. This challenges academic and science organizations to produce policy relevant science, scientists capable of working at the science-policy interface, and to provide oversight of the science role in policy development.
This paper examines the evolving challenges for scientists and science organizations by looking at four interrelated issues. First, is the changing nature of the questions compelling policy relevant forest science. Second, there is the evolution in the frameworks for considering the socioeconomic impacts of changes in the biophysical system components or vice versa. Third, there is the question of our ability to evaluate the benefits of broad scale management. Fourth, there is the challenge of attempting to reframe the policy debate towards balancing social and biophysical outcomes to consider mutual changes. Finally, I draw some inferences based on these overlapping issues for the science agenda and for science communities.
My perspective is based on my involvement in various forest policy efforts both as a scientist and as a manager of scientists. Most of these are U.S. efforts and have largely focused on timber supply issues including incentives for private forestry as well as changes in federal timber harvest. In the last decade they have evolved to include the broad scale impacts of habitat conservation strategies.
Research at the science policy interface differs from much of forest science in that the compelling questions are highly topical, often come from outside of the science community, are dynamic, and have a relatively short existence. These attributes are often confusing to many publics including some of the science community. Among the science community, the high propensity of questions to change and the extent that the content is often outside of their control is particularly frustrating. Another source of confusion is the expanding and diverse array of public goals for land management. This diversity of goals contributes to the likelihood of questions changing. Finally the growing interest among various publics in viewing science as an arbitrator in environmental disputes adds to the confusion by raising unnecessary expectations.
The emerging questions often involve integration of both social and biophysical systems and often require temporally specific and broad scale information. Many of these questions assume that the role of science and scientists are to be objective and neutral. This assumption is often expressed as the belief that the separation of science and policy is necessary to maintain scientific credibility. One subtle but very important issue is that many of the questions essentially reduce very complex problems to a few dimensions-often just the social and biophysical. As an example, consider the energy that has been devoted to the job versus environment debate. Here a complex set of problems has been reduced to a two dimensional problem.
In the United States formal policy analysis that integrated social (mostly economic) impacts of changes in the biophysical system evolved quickly in the 1970s. It included notions of systems variables, policy variables, and output measures and owed much of its theoretical and methodical basis to advances in the economics and decision sciences literature1. This evolution was speeded by legislative direction requiring the development of assessments as part of formal planning frameworks2. These factors influenced the development of forest sector models (see Haynes, 1993 for a synthesis of the development and uses of forest sector analysis) and their use to explain regional harvest and price trends and in policy analysis.
The evolution of forest sector models changed U.S. forest policy development from describing policy needs in terms of quantity shortfalls (that were not observable with real world data) to trying to identify policy needs in terms of price impacts. This shift occurred in the mid 1970s during a period of rapid change in commodity prices that raised concerns about the effectiveness of various policies to alter price trajectories. These concerns expanded to include estimates of consumer or producer impacts, estimates of welfare measures for addressing economic equity, and questions of who gains and who loses from different policy actions.
The power of looking at prices as a policy variable can be illustrated in Figure 1a and Figure 1b using data from a U.S. Forest Service Assessment (USDA Forest Service, 1982). Figure 1a illustrates the results of a gap analysis for projected supply-demand balances for U.S. softwoods.
Figure 1b illustrates a stumpage price projection for softwoods in the southern states of the U.S. associated with balancing supply and demand in the stumpage market.
To a policy maker, the inference in Figure 1a is that projected demands will exceed available supplies and that policy actions will be needed to reduce the gap. For example, the policy discussion could be framed around reducing some shortfall of, say, 2.7 billion cubic feet in the year 2000. Figure 1b illustrates the case where stumpage prices are used as the policy variable of interest. For example, if we assume continuation of recent timberland management practices, stumpage prices are expected to increase (net of inflation) at 2.1% per year between 1990 and 2030. The policy issue is framed around the societal acceptance of that rate of price increase. If for example, it is not acceptable we could institute programs to increase softwood tree planting and conversion of low value hardwood stands on privately owned timberlands that would stabilize stumpage prices in the near decades (1990-2010) and as the planted stands mature, eventually lower stumpage prices (see Figure 1b).
Both cases illustrate similar policy inferences but for different reasons. In the first case, perceived quantity shortfalls drive policy actions. In most countries, these shortfalls are not observable as price changes cause market adjustments that offset supply shortfalls. In the equilibrium analysis, perceived price changes drive policy actions. Usually, the lack of policy actions is observable in the sense of undesirable price changes.
These results demonstrated the broad market impacts of what is often characterized as a relatively local or regional policy issue. For example, early results demonstrated that reductions in the availability of Forest Service timber in the west did not lead to unacceptable prices for timber. Rather increased production from private lands mostly in the south and increased lumber imports from Canada greatly reduced the potential price impacts associated with policy changes. These results were quickly adopted in ensuing policy discussions and were reaffirmed again in the early 1990s following reductions in federal harvests in the west for habitat conservation.
In the early 1990s forest policy questions dealt with the twin issues of the market impacts of reductions of federal timber flows and the associated job impacts (FEMAT, 1993). Forest scientists were asked to play a key role in defining the context for a job or economy versus environment type of debate. At the time their efforts were extraordinarily controversial because they suggested that large-scale reductions in public harvest could be accommodated with few impacts on consumers, positive impacts on private landowners, but relatively severe local impacts on the forest products industry. The forest products industry and community groups argued that forest products industries as an export industry (in many western communities) were key to the survival of communities throughout the west. This controversy was so intense that it lead many to ignore two decades of research suggesting the opportunities for mutual gains among forested goods and services.
This controversy stimulated research on how policy impacts were measured. The original definition of forest dependency in the late 1970s was in terms of jobs leading to employment as a proxy for economic well-being. During the 1980s, controversy surrounded the choice of direct and/or indirect job measures and by the early 1990s job estimates were based on only direct jobs (see FEMAT, 1993). By the mid 1990s, broader notions of economic well-being of associated communities (both group and place, see McCool et al., 1997) were being used to gauge policy impacts. Job estimates still play a role as a policy variable but its power to persuade has diminished.
There was resurgence in the 1990s in the broader sets of values of various goods and services derived from forest management. For example the economic analysis used to estimate the impacts of habitat conservation strategies often included a modified market basket approach such as shown in Figure 2 (see Quigley et al. 1996 for details). It shows the variation in the mix of goods and services depending on levels of use and the different resource endowments. Figure 2 is based on the development of values for the various goods and services and estimates of outputs of goods and services.
This approach application has been limited by the paucity of output measures more than anything else.
At the same time advocates for looking at forestry more broadly than timber production have struggled to portray forest management as an opportunity to manage for mutual gains in an array of goods and services. Figure 3 suggests that compatibility likely exists between changes in environmental and socioeconomic changes, at least across a range of options. That is, opportunities exist for either mutual gains or increases in one dimension while the other dimension remains stable. Haynes and Quigley (2001) have found that for broad scale land management alternatives there are extensive opportunities for complementary changes.
Figure 3 illustrates one of the future science/policy dilemmas. That is, how do we participate in essentially what has become reduced to a two dimensional debate around the tradeoffs between jobs and environmental conditions.
These tradeoff discussions are by their nature contentious and often portrayed as there being a direct relation between positive environmental changes (such as gains in habitat) and negative changes in socioeconomic well-being. But as Figure 3 suggests an alternative proposition is that compatibility exists between changes in environmental and socioeconomic changes, at least across a range of options. A good example are the strategic discussions of broad scale forest policies that are being increasingly set in the context of whether we can sustain both increasing consumption of forest products and forest resource conditions.
One consequence of broad scale policy discussions is the need to develop composite types of measures for the various points being argued. Figure 3, for example, illustrates a policy discussion with two dimensions: ecological conditions and socioeconomic conditions. Both of these are composite measures that are themselves composed from various indicators based on direct, indirect or proxy measures. The development of broad scale measures of conditions and an understanding of how they are influenced by forest management is a pressing need in the forest science community. For example, how can the science community participate in discussions of the Montreal Process for assessing Sustainable Forest Management? Much of that discussion is framed around criterion that are substantially similar to the axes of Figure 3.
Forest Science, both formal and informal, is shaped by both broad policy and practical land management questions. Much of the context has been shaped by the strong emphasis on scientific management. Additional context is provided by the manifestation of social values and governmental policies as laws and regulations.
There is role question for forest scientists. Given the extent of public funding much of forestry research has evolved to fill three roles: (1) specific information needs of managers and policy makers; (2) the development of systematic approaches to complex problems; (3) and to provide a more rigorous understanding of processes where management direction has been more intuitive. But diligence is needed in distinguishing science from policy development and the roles that forest scientists often play as advocates for selected approaches and science findings.
When policy analysis is treated as a deliberate line of scientific inquiry, it is distinguished by its focus on contemporary questions, its inclusion of variables that reflect how policies are implemented, and its ability to develop relevant measures of policy outcomes. Often this research is done in collaboration with individuals working in policy development who are familiar with research findings and who act as information entrepreneurs facilitating both research and policy development. In the last decade, the evolving notions of civic science have often placed researchers in this role.
Being deliberate about the use of science in developing contemporary policies has lead to better decisions. This is not to say that deliberate policy analysis has resulted in less acrimonious debate or less controversy. Just that these debates have been better informed. At the same time greater direct participation by scientists in policy processes is changing the questions addressed by forest scientists, the forest science community and the scientists themselves.
There are changes in the sciences issues that challenge forest scientists. These issues include: how to develop composite measures of system performance; the dependence on expert judgment rather than experimental science; need for common protocols (what is the base time period, units of measure); output measures associated with changes in management, notions of costs/benefits, and an understanding of who gains/who loses.
Effective participation by scientists wanting to participate in shaping forest policies will require different approaches to science. First, the context is being set by an emphasis on scientific based management with an emphasis on outcomes. Changing questions will change the research agenda for scientists and add complexity to problems already being studied. The focus on broad scale issues will require greater reliance on ad hoc approaches to integration. There is only limited opportunity to gain experimental broad scale results. Policy relevant science also imposes requirements for timeliness. Shifts in the focus of science will include more development and applications (technology transfer) efforts. Finally, scientists themselves will be asked to play the role of an "expert" in what is often characterized as "duelling expects".
If the science community and its institutions want to increase their relevance in policy development, they will need to:
References
Forest Rangeland Renewable Resource Planning Act of 1974. (RPA). Public Law 93-378. Act of August 17, 1974. 16 U.S.C. 1601 (note).
Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team (FEMAT). 1993. Forest ecosystem management: an ecological, economic, and social assessment. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, U.S. Department of the Interior [and others]. Portland, OR: [Irregular pagination].
Haynes, R.W. 1993. Forestry sector analysis for developing countries: issues and methods. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-314. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, OR, p. 47.
Haynes, R.W., Quigley, T.M. 2001. Broad scale consequences of land management: Columbia Basin example. Forest Ecology and Management, 135, 179-188.
McCool, S.F., Burchfield, J.A., Allen, S.D. 1997. Social assessment. In: Quigley, T.M., Arbelbide, S.J., (Tech eds.). An assessment of the interior Columbia Basin and portions of the Klamath and Great Basins. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-405. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. Portland, OR: pp 1871-2009. Chapter 6, Vol. 4.
McKillop, W.L.M. 1967. Supply and demand for forest products, an econometric study. Hilgardia. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Agricultural Experiment Station; 38 (1): [pages unknown].
National Forest Management Act of 1976. (NFMA). Public Law 94-588. Act of Oct. 22, 1976. 16 U.S.C. 1600 (1976).
Naylor, T.H. 1972. Policy simulation experiments with macro-econometric models: the state of the art, Am J Agric Econ 52:263-271.
Quigley, T.M.; Haynes, R.W.; Graham, R.T., tech eds. 1996. Integrated scientific assessment for ecosystem management in the interior Columbia basin and portions of the Klamath and Great Basins. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-382. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. Portland, OR. 303 p. (Quigley, T. M. tech. ed. The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project: Scientific Assessment).
Samuelson, P.A. 1952. Spatial price equilibrium and linear programming. Am Econ Rev 42: 283-303.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 1982. An analysis of the timber situation in the United States 19522030. Forest Resource Report 23, Washington, DC, p. 499.
1Three seminal individuals who influenced this development were Samuelson, McKillop and Naylor. Samuelson (1952) conceptualized the equilibrium conditions in spatially distinct markets. McKillop (1967) is generally credited with developing econometric studies for forest products. Naylor (1972) described the use of macro-econometric models in the agricultural sector for policy simulation experiments. This form of the policy simulation approach is still used today.
2The Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) of 1974 as amended by the National Forest Management Act of 1976 directs the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to prepare a Renewable Resource Assessment. The purpose of this assessment is to analyze the timber resource situation in order to provide indications of the future cost and availability of timber products to meet the Nations' demands. The analysis also identifies developing resource situations that may be judged desirable to change and it identifies developing opportunities that may stimulate both private and public investments.
