Proceedings of the Society for Range Management International Affairs Committee Symposium February 17, 2002, Kansas City, Missouri, USA RANGELAND PROFESSIONALS AND POLICY: Prospects for Effective Influence in the Developed and Developing Worlds Symposium sponsored by: U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management Dow AgroSciences LLC Proceedings edited by: María E. Fernández-Giménez, School of Renewable Natural Resources, 325 BioSciences East, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 Urs P. Kreuter, Department of Rangeland Ecology and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2126 TABLE OF CONTENTS RANGELAND PROFESSIONALS AND POLICY: PROSPECTS FOR EFFECTIVE INFLUENCE IN THE DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING WORLDS M.E. Fernández-Giménez and U.P. Kreuter…………………………………….………...………2 RANGELAND PROFESSIONALS AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES L.D. Butler and D. Thompson………………………………………………………...…………10 RANGELANDS AND RANGELAND POLICY IN ARGENTINA I. Feldman…………………………………………………………….……………...…………..17 RANGELAND POLICY DIALOGUE, FORMULATION, AND IMPLEMENTATION: PERSPECTIVES FROM BOLIVIA, ETHIOPIA, AND KENYA D.L. Coppock, A. Aboud, H. Alzerréca, and S. Desta…………………………………………..22 RANGELAND POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA: DRIVERS AND PASSENGERS D. Grossman………………………………………………………….………………………….34 EFFECTIVE RANGELAND POLICIES FOR IMPLEMENTING GLOBAL CONVENTIONS IN AFRICA G. Oba…………………………………………………………………...……………………….42 TAKING STOCK: POLICY, PRACTICE, AND PROFESSIONALISM IN RANGELAND DEVELOPMENT R. Mearns……………………………………………………………………….………………..52 1 Rangeland Professionals and Policy: Prospects for Effective Influence in the Developed and Developing Worlds MARÍA E. FERNÁNDEZ-GIMÉNEZ AND URS P. KREUTER Authors are Assistant Professor, School of Renewable Natural Resources, University of Arizona, 325 Biological Sciences East, Tucson, AZ 85721; Assistant Professor, Department of Rangeland Ecology and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2126 Introduction Rangeland management is a profession dedicated to the goals of promoting stewardship and scholarship of rangeland resources; efficient and sustainable management of rangelands for a variety of values and products; public appreciation of the social and economic benefits of rangelands; and the professional development of its members (SRM Mission Statement). Our membership is dominated by professionals with training and expertise in the applied life and physical sciences. Yet, whether we work “on the ground,” “behind a desk,” or “in the ivory tower,” rangeland professionals today negotiate an increasingly complex policy landscape. Often we encounter policy in its formal manifestations--laws and regulations--as bureaucratic obstacles to be overcome or avoided, and not as a process in which we should actively engage. In the developed world, changes in public values have both obstructed management through litigation, and fostered new and creative institutional arrangements such as the collaborative stewardship and LandCare movements in the USA and Australia respectively. Rangeland professionals in the USA were actively involved in the early prototypes of collaborative stewardship—Coordinated Resource Management Planning and the Experimental Stewardship Program. In the developing world, growing attention to biodiversity preservation, and the increasing vulnerability of pastoralists to climatic variation and economic and socio- political upheaval create opportunities for both disaster and constructive social change. While social values of rangeland resources have been evolving, the field of range ecology also has advanced new non-equilibrium theories of rangeland dynamics, a paradigm shift with important implications for rangeland policy and management. These changes in social values and ecological theory, coupled with the ongoing discussion of SRM’s role in Washington DC, led us to ask several questions: ?? How do science and politics affect rangeland policy development? ?? What is and what should be the role of rangeland professionals in developing and implementing rangeland policies? ?? How can rangeland professionals around the world meaningfully influence rangeland policies at the local, national and global level? ?? Should professional societies be actively involved in the policy arena? 2 ?? What, if any, is the appropriate place for expatriate influence in the domestic rangeland policy of developing nations? ?? What are the respective roles and effectiveness of decentralized vs. centralized institutions in formulating and implementing policies that promote sustainable rangeland management? ?? What can we learn from each other about the ways that rangeland professionals contribute, or don’t, to policy formation in our different nations? To address these questions, the International Affairs Committee of the Society for Range Management sponsored a symposium that was held during the 55th meeting of the Society held in February 2002 in Kansas City, Missouri 1. The purpose of this symposium was to initiate a dialogue on these issues, bringing them from the domestic arena to an international one. The papers presented during the symposium, which are included in this volume, offer diverse perspectives on these questions from academia, government, professional societies, and international donor organizations in the United States, South America, Africa and Asia. In this introduction to the symposium proceedings we provide an overview of the major findings and views reported in these papers, concentrating on the roles of rangeland professionals, range science, and politics in policy-making. In our concluding summary we highlight four major themes that emerge from the six papers presented: 1) short-term social and economic concerns override technical factors in most rangeland policy-making; 2) links between science, policy and management must be strengthened through adaptive management, participatory research and proactive communication by rangeland professionals; 3) rangeland policies must account for the historical environmental, social and economic conditions of specific locations; and 4) broad participation in policy-making should be promoted at all levels of governance. We conclude that rangeland professionals must engage actively in policy development if our goals of enhancing the sustainable management of rangeland resources are to be reached. We also identify areas in which we need to build our professional capacity to achieve this objective. Finally we suggest that this shift in our professional scope calls for rethinking range education. The Role of Rangeland Professionals in Rangeland Policy Development In most of the world, rangeland professionals currently appear to play a minor role, if any, in the development of policies that affect rangelands. In fact, much of the developing world lacks policies directed specifically towards the conservation and management of rangeland resources or the well-being of pastoral or ranching populations that depend on them. As Feldman points out in his introduction to Argentine rangelands, Argentina lacks policies or regulations for its rangelands, despite the fact that the beef cattle industry, which depends heavily on natural pastures, is historically a major economic driver in Argentina. Feldman attributes the paucity of attention to rangelands in part to the more subtle physiognomy of rangeland vegetation types compared to dramatic forests, and the fact that changes in rangeland vegetation cover or composition are less noticeable to the untrained eye than the felling of a forest. 1 This symposium is the second in a two-part series. The first symposium in the series, presented in Kona, HI in 2001 was titled “Rangeland Professionals and Society: Future Directions.” The papers presented in that symposium were printed in Volumes 23.5-6 and 24.1 of Rangelands. 3 In their overview of rangeland policy in Bolivia, Kenya and Ethiopia, Coppock et al. also observe that policies specific to rangeland management are rare, and rangeland professionals have little influence on their design. The principal policies affecting rangelands and their inhabitants in these nations are those that dictate access to land and land use planning. In Kenya and Ethiopia, short-term political and economic considerations tend to override long-term sustainability in the political calculus of policy-makers, leading to policies that promote environmentally and economically risky investments, e.g. cereal crop production in fragile soils. In all three countries, pastoralists whose depend on the land are often politically marginalized, and key resources needed to sustain their production systems (the more productive patches in the matrix of arid land) are captured by political elites and converted to other uses such as cropland. In his review of past trends and future directions in World Bank rangeland investments, Mearns points out that "natural resource management" per se is seldom a priority identified by pastoralists, whose concerns tend towards more immediate needs such as water development and veterinary services. Land tenure and resource access again emerge as key policy domains influencing rangelands and their pastoralist populations in the developing world. Mearns also points out that historically, rangeland professionals influenced the direction of development on arid rangelands, with distinctly mixed results. The failure of many range improvement and pastoral development projects in the mid 20th century led to a pronounced decline in donor investments in these