NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION TASK FORCE REPORT PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT The views expressed in this report are those of the Task Force members and were not the subject of endorsement by the full Council. Many of the federal officials who serve on the Council also serve on the Council’s Task Forces and participated actively in developing the Task Force’s recommendations, but those recommendations do not necessarily reflect Administration policy. PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TASK-FORCE-REPORT-ON-NATURAL RESOURCES To obtain copies of this Report, please contact: President’s Council on Sustainable Development 730 Jackson Place, NW Washington, D.C. 20503 1-800-363-3732 (202) 408-5296 Website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/PCSD TASK FORCE MEMBERSHIP CO-CHAIRS Richard Barth, Chairman, President, and CEO, Ciba-Geigy Corporation James R. Lyons, Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture Theodore Strong, Executive Director, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission MEMBERS Bruce Babbitt, Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior James Baker, Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce Carol Browner, Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency A.D. Correll, Chairman and CEO, Georgia-Pacific Corporation Fred D. Krupp, Executive Director, Environmental Defense Fund Michele Perrault, International Vice President, Sierra Club John C. Sawhill, President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TASK-FORCE-REPORT-ON-NATURAL RESOURCES TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE. i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. ii INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER 1:TASK FORCE APPROACH. 5 The Role of the Watershed. 5 Workshops and Case Studies. 7 The Water Science and Technology Board. 8 Natural Resource Accounting Study. 9 CHAPTER 2:FINDINGS. 11 Workshop and Case Study Findings. 11 Water Science and Technology Board Findings. 20 Natural Resource Accounting Study Findings. 22 CHAPTER 3:POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS. 24 Soil, Air, and Water Quality. 24 Natural Resource Inventory and Assessment. 25 Accounting for Natural Resources. 26 Sustainable Forests. 33 Restore American Fisheries. 35 Incentives for Conservation of Natural Resources. 37 Integrated Land Use Planning. 40 Integrate Sustainable Design Principles Into Land Development. 43 Partnerships for Conservation. 45 Improve Natural Resource Decisionmaking. 47 Finding Consensus Between Stakeholders and the Federal Government. 50 Community-Based Multi-Stakeholder Collaborative Watershed Approaches. 52 ENDNOTES. 54 APPENDICES A:Task Force Members. 57 B:Task Force Meetings and Workshops. 59 C:Eastern Regional Team Reports. 61 D:Western Regional Team Report. 101 E:Report of the Water Science and Technology Board. 102 F:Natural Resource Accounting Report. 125 G:President’s Council on Sustainable Development Members. 125 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 126 CHAPTER 3 i POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS PREFACE This Task Force report is one of seven prepared for the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. The Council was established by President Clinton through Executive Order No. 12852 on June 29, 1993, to: l Make recommendations to the President to advance sustainable development, including a national sustainable development action strategy. l Expand public awareness of the challenges inherent in moving toward sustainability, including the need to manage the nation’s natural resources carefully. l Institute a Presidential Honors Program recognizing exemplary efforts that advance sustainable development. Members of the Council are leaders in industry; the federal government; and environmental, labor, and civil rights organizations. Shared responsibility for success was a hallmark of the eight task forces organized by the Council. Their purpose was to provide advice to the Council in major issue areas, spur dialogue, and involve the public. The work of the task forces culminated in policy recommendations for consideration by the full Council. Individual Council members served on the various task forces, together with a network of several hundred professionals from throughout the country. The eight task forces were: Eco-Efficiency; Energy and Transportation; Natural Resources Management and Protection; Population and Consumption; Principles, Goals, and Definition; Public Linkage, Dialogue, and Education; Sustainable Agriculture; and Sustainable Communities. Each developed a workplan responding to the challenges posed by the respective sets of issues and developed recommendations through workshops, demonstration projects, case studies, regional roundtables, public comment, and other methods. The task force reports serve as a record of each task force’s deliberations and contributions to the Council’s deliberations. This report is intended to illustrate the lessons learned and advice prepared for the Council’s consideration by the Natural Resources Task Force; it is also intended to stay true to the voices of the various participants in the task force process. The data and descriptions in this report reflect the circumstances that prevailed at the time when the document was written. Because there was a considerable time lag between the writing of this report and its publication, some of the information and statistics contained herein are somewhat dated, and, in some cases, the facts reported have been overtaken by subsequent events. CHAPTER 3 ii POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Chartered by the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) in 1994, the Natural Resources Task Force was charged with developing a vision of sustainable management of renewable natural resources in the United States and with making policy recommendations that will help the nation realize that vision. To fulfill its task, the Task Force regional teams convened 16 workshops across the country, all focused on grassroots successes, experiences, and perspectives on sustainable use of natural resources. Based on these workshops, Task Force discussions, findings from reports prepared for the Task Force by the National Academy of Sciences’s Water Science and Technology Board and by the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, and the Bruntland Commission definition of sustainable development (“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”), the Task Force identified six major themes regarding sustainable natural resource management: l Despite progress, unsustainable natural resource management policies and practices persist. l To ensure sustainability, economic and social values need to be balanced against the protection of natural resources. l By bringing stakeholders together to seek and act on their common interests, community conflicts regarding natural resource management can be resolved. l The burdens placed on natural resources by rapid population growth mean that human life style choices are an important input to effective natural resource management. l Natural resource management by social and legal systems organized by national, state, county, and municipal boundaries unknowingly promotes community conflict through the creation of a regulatory morass. l Natural systems-based approaches provide a useful framework for natural resource management and conflict resolution. These themes comprise the principles upon which the Task Force formulated its vision of sustainable natural resource management and the policies it recommends for realizing this vision. The Task Force sees the goal of sustainable development as preserving and enhancing the natural systems upon which humans depend for their economic and social well-being. Meeting this goal means ensuring that human pressures do not exceed each system’s limited capacity to sustain itself. The policies recommended by the Task Force iii PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TASK FORCE REPORT ON NATURAL RESOURCES are directed toward better management of specific resources (air, water, soil, forests, fisheries, and biodiversity, among others) and the utilization of more effective management tools and techniques. Specifically, these policy recommendations are: 1.Soil, Air, and Water Quality. Revitalize the country’s collective efforts to secure healthy, high-quality air and water resources and productive soil—not only for ourselves, but also for our children and their children. 2.Natural Resource Inventory and Assessment. Integrate existing federal, tribal, and state natural resource inventories and assessments through the development and use of compatible standards, methods, and protocols. 3.Accounting for Natural Resources. Link natural resource conditions and trends to national income accounts and to economic assessments and analyses. Develop a set of indicators based on the above linkages that assess the flows, conditions, and trends of natural resource stocks. 4.Sustainable Forests. Convene a National Forestry Advisory Council comprised of a representative balance of stakeholders to define and help achieve sustainable management of forests on a national basis by the year 2000. 5.Restore American Fisheries. Eliminate over-fishing and rebuild depleted stocks in U.S. waters; adopt the precautionary principle in decisionmaking—in the face of scientific uncertainty, err on the side of resource conservation. 6.Incentives for Conservation of Natural Resources. Create and promote incentives at all levels