Alan Lishness: A Raconteur Wraps It Up

Starting with some logistics: Lunch is coming right up after my talk, and after that you're on your own -- can stay and talk later if you like. Alan is taking on the job of being a raconteur -- a word he had to look up.

"A raconteur tells anecdotes in a skillful and meaningful way"

Alan says -- thanks for the blog: I didn't need to take notes and I got to listen better. I've also taken comfort from the fact that the people in the room have been such fervent participants. The people in the room know a lot more than me.

Alan has distilled what we heard, and has a few words about each of the conference speakers.

If you're a speaker, listen up for his summary. Did you say that? Did you mean that? Is that the most important thing that you said? And furthermore, think about what's next.

Lew Incze said that scientists operate on a premise of certainty, and that we may need to rethink that. He also said that the global models are not as well refined as the models of ocean in the coast of Maine.

Andy Pershing said that ocean data in the Arctic may give us in the Gulf of Maine a year or two preview of what's to come. And that long-term monitoring stations and their data are crucially important.

Kevin Friedland said that the NAO is a dominant force, and that its hard to predict what will happen to fish when we don't know the mechanics of how fish migrate and reproduce.

Dan Holland said that our fisheries regulation have made more specialized fishermen,

Rob Johnston said that we can deal with risky outcomes, but it's harder to deal with uncertain ones, and that the language of economics can help.

Jon Sutinen said that market prices don't tell the ecological truth and that markets, governments, and civil society are the three things that drive human behavior.

Bill Brennan said that communication is the fundamental place where science, economics, and policy must conserve.

Linda Mercer said that we need more flexible and adaptive management practices -- ecosystem based, not single species.

Meinhard Doelle said that we need to engage society in the required value choices, and scientists need to speak up before they get to the 95% confidence threshhold.

Justin Kenney said that scientists are very credible with the public, and that if we pose problems we need to link it to a solution.

Peter Lord said that editors want action, local relevance, and human interest, and that the political climate has made the environment go mainstream.

Jerry Fraser said there has to be comity (not "comedy!") in this debate, and that we need to let people figure things out for themselves on their own timeline. The people will get it right if you give it time.

Jeff Tollefson said that Al Gore didn't make the wave of climate change, it happened a long time ago and is just cresting now. He predicted a reversal of the debate -- business driving environmental regulation.

Alan synthesizes these points with some key terms: complexity, uncertainty, the concept of "sound science" (95% certainty before we speak), science vs. advocacy, the linkage of problems and solutions, and "whose news" (where do people today get their news or learn the truth about the world? 80% of Americans neither bought nor read a book in 2006).

He asks speakers to chime in: did I correctly characterize what you said? And what happens next?

Lew: I wasn't suggesting we move from the 95% certainty state for the purposes of science, but that we acknowledge we need to speak publicly and bring policy to the table before we've arrived at that state.

John Annala: most policymakers don't rely on a 95% certainty or confidence when evaluating solutions.

Barbara Vickery: The important thing is to identify monitoring systems for the experiment of public policy, to gauge whether policies we implement are working while we're doing it. We need more "sound science" in policy.

Bill Brennan: As a policymaker, a framework for making those decisions is something risk averse politicians would like, but you are forced often to make decisions based on gut instinct.

Jon Sutinen: Where there is controversy and competing interest, uncertainty kills action: progess is stalled because in a controversial uncertain situation, people tend to wait for certainty rather than risk being wrong.

Bill B.: That's the nature of our deliberative process.

Lew I.: I agree -- sometimes debates are thwarted, even by nonsense, where we acknowledge

Where we do make progress in uncertainty where we have a prior history and a background of conversation on the topic, we do better. We often cast these problems in terms of a single decision point, but what we need to look at is the larger process of bringing the public into environmental debate. The seawall article is the product of a larger series, about 10 years, triangulating and talking about seawall policy. We don't want to be immobilized by uncertainty.

Dan Holland: It's clear that we're not going to get rid of uncertainty anytime soon. We need to set up systems that will perform pretty well and robustly regardless of which way things move. Rather than fixating on outcome, we should put our energies into designing institutions that adapt well to changing circumstances. We need to design adaptable systems, that don't end up having to have decisions forced on inflexible institutions, and have that drive policy.

Rita: Is that a new governance regime?

Jon Anala: This more flexible system is being implemented in the southern hemisphere. Adaptive institutions aren't new governance systems, but rather a different approach to risk -- you can't wait to be certain; you have to take risks and learn from the outcomes.

Bill Brennan: New governance approach should change the scale of decision-making, to a more local level where the better information resides. Messy town-meeting style governance works -- zone councils put people together who have different incentives, rather than leaving it to a dispassionate government entities who aren't as connected to the resource. (The scribe wonders: But doesn't that miss the interconnections with other fisheries and other populations? I thought the thrust of yesterday was that international cooperation and larger scale ecosystem management was a better way of managing resources.)

Q: (I missed it) about the Magnuson Act. Didn't get it.

Q: Rita -- is the level of management required for fisheries translateable to a local government entity?
A: Bill Brennan: this is a personal responsibility issue. We need to reduce emissions on vessels. Power companies don't emit just because they have nothing else to do. They're emitting because they're producing something that the market wants, and nobody is requesting that they stop.

Patten: new boats can't buy used engines, now. You're not regulating existing boats, but you're putting new regulations on fisherman.

Andy Pershing: regulations are based on a hypothesis, but nobody's testing those hypotheses. You need to test the policy decisions you make to see whether the hypotheses you based those decisions on are valid.

Don Perkins: What's the most effective approach? -- focusing on outcomes, or on more narrow solutions (inputs). I'm not sure the policy world thinks like this. If there were more focus on outcomes, and about setting up systems that can respond and be more flexible, that will probably put us in a better and more resilient situation to adapt to the uncertain changes. I don't see a lot of research-driven debate about these two approaches. Example: no fishing on spawning herring is an outcome based approach, rather than closing a particular geographic region from May 15th and June 15th. Let people figure out how to get to the outcome, don't regulate based on an input.

Q: but that's hard to regulate -- you can only regulate behavior -- you need regulations you can enforce!
Comment: Charles N___: policy goals are preferred outcomes, but policymakers have to figure out what kind of regulated behavior will achieve those outcomes. That's what good policymakers have to do.

Rita: Would a scenario planning exercise be helpful to policymakers?
A: Linda Mercer: yes! Most of our actions are reactive. We should engage in scenario planning, but it always needs to be locally relevant. You need to make it more real to the people who are going to be impacted.

Don Perkins: The lobster community has been worrying about a crash for about 10 years. A scenario planning exercise, if structured and publicized right, could be welcomed by that community. Pat, what do you think about that -- how would the lobster community respond to a scenario planning exercise?

Pat: Lobster and herring are both crucial to the economy of the state of Maine. I'm trying to engage the lobstering community now, while there's not a crash, in how you reduce mortality. We're not crashing, but we're in decline -- landings are down everywhere except in way downeast Maine, and it would be good for us to reinvest our money now before we're in the situation they're in in Long Island. I'd love to engage these folks, and the herring community. The groundfish people are gradually cutting each of their fingers off. If we'd taken appropriate action back then, the groundfish situation wouldn't have gotten so bad. The parallels to the lobster industry are scary. I think what's kept us alive is that we've done some scenario planning.

Dan Holland: how do you set up scenario planning? You can't wait for a crash. You need to set up a signal, and identify that right, so you'll know when a decline or a crash is on its way and you can then engage the right social response.

Lew: Yes -- you need scenario planning on a couple of different timescales, and you need to identify the right signals for that.

Comment: You need a local mechanism to get lobstermen to the table. Conversations are remarkably rational when they take place around a kitchen table or in a church basement. You really have to start locally, in order for people to fully engage. Maybe I'm naiive, but when those safe places are established, I think the process works really well.

Peter Lord: There's a 5 year time lag between a collapse and the congressional response of appropriating money to study it and propose solutions. Maine had better pay attention.

Rita: Is it a responsible or good idea as a policy measure to "blame the climate" -- fishermen are so eager to tell the policymakers that it's not our fault, will adding an additional uncertain but possible cause of fisheries decline be irresponsible?

Lew: It's not responsible to blame climate change if we don't know that it is a cause. These kitchen table conversations by fisherman are great, but we need to move things more formal. It's not fair in public debate to reframe fisheries decline as a climate change issue when we know there are other causes, and other management solutions.

Pat: Even if the management decisions won't change (e.g. restrict fishing) or the cause (climate change vs. overfishing) can't be addressed by regulation, knowing what climate change may do to fish populations, water temperatures, migratory patterns, egg production, that's important scenario planning that will inform decision making.

Lew: our warnings are couched in a lot of disclaimers: science is being asked to predict a lot of things that haven't been modelled before.

Pat: The reason we don't throw the scientists overboard for their dire warnings is that they've built a bunch of credibility. And we understand the need for them to get better data: that's why I was on my hands and my knees on the boat counting lobsters -- we need to be able to see what's happening, and so do they. The groundfish industry doesn't have such a good relationship to the scientists.

John Anala; (missed it)

Bill Brennan: management in a remote area, if local fishermen don't understand and agree with the regulations, it is very hard to enforce. Participants need to understand the basis for the regulation, even if they are not necessarily the cause of a decline.

Rita: What kinds of research suggesting more flexible management systems would be heard by policymakers? What are the steps toward making our regulatory bodies more

The Magnusson Act came from academics. But it's like the tax code -- you keep trying to fix it by adding crap to it.

Geoff Smith from the Nature Conservancy: the law does have some flexibility in it -- it provides for science and research to

Kevin Friedland: innovations in management come at the development team level?

Jeff Tollefson: Think tanks are driving some of the new schemes: the cap and trade approach came from think tanks. Ideas can come from almost anywhere, but it's a long and normal process. Policymakers don't come up with solutions themselves. Ideas perk for a long time, and crystallize, and gain a constituency, and that's what moves through the policy arena and gets chosen by politicians.

Jon Sutinen: How do we reach Congress?
Brian: How much does it crystallize at the state legislature level? Is the state legislature a parallel process, or is it a feeder to Congress?

Jeff Tollefson: American government was designed not to work. That's a deliberate structure. You have to have a certain amount of consensus before something can get through Congress. States are the laboratories. You need to get a certain amount of crystallization before an idea will take place.

Jon S: yes, but the groups you named as impacting Congress are in DC, having drinks with staffers. We researchers are far from the Hill. Do we have a chance of getting our ideas?

Jeff: There are a few key people who carry ideas forward. You need to figure out who those people are. Where business and environmental groups come together, that's a signal to reporters and politicians that you've resolved some complex and important issues at a fundamental level. That gets the attention of staffers and Congressmen.

Bill Brennan: Amen. If someone comes into your office and says, "We've taken this complex issue and have arrived at important compromises, and distilled it to its essence, and here it is," that makes a Congressional staffer's job easier, and they'll listen.

Jeff: And even then it's still going to be messy.

Alan: What next?

This group wants to do some scenario planning. We should engage some managers. Who's missing? Managers (invited but didn't come to this meeting). Industry types should be here.

Pat: my goal to come here was to listen and bring back what's going on here to the Atlantic states. I'm just a juror. This will influence my future decisions, although not necessarily a huge amount. Your efforts here aren't lost. But if you invite lobsterman and it's a sunny day after three days of rain, you're not going to get more than 50%. I don't get paid to go to meetings like this, but the people who care will try to show up.

Linda Mercer: there's a lot of energy around ecosystem-based management. There are a lot of meetings. Practically, how do you put effort into things, when you're inundated by meetings?

Jon S.: I suggest that an effort be made to guide the scientific research community to communicate to the public. I don't know how to write well. A lot of us hunker down in our offices and labs and do our work. I see a need to reach out, write op-ed pieces, do a responsible job getting good science out there to counter the bad science and the irresponsible journalism out there.

Geoff Smith (Nature Conservancy): If we want to do scenario planning and we can't get the lobstermen to come to us, can we bring ourselves to them? Bring this information to a lobster zone council meeting to impart information and collect it from them?

Pat: No way. It's got to be filtered or gel, first. They're not ready for it.