Partnerships
The USDA Forest Service, the largest agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has a long and distinguished history of public service and land stewardship. Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service, said that the agency should always work to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the long run. How the people use public lands has changed significantly and so has the way the Forest Service works to achieve the mission.
The Intermountain Region works with may partners to coordinate and reach common goals with mutual benefit. Forest Service, “partnerships” are often broadly defined as relationships between people, organizations, agencies, and communities that work together and share interests.
The Forest Service regularly works in partnership with other entities including Tribes, states, federal agencies, non-profits organizations, businesses, communities and private landowners. It is important to understand that the world “partnership” also has a more precise meaning according to federal policy. Federal policy defines partnerships as “arrangements that are voluntary, mutually beneficial and entered into for the purpose of mutually agreed upon objectives.” In this definition, “mutual benefit” specifically means that each partner shares in the benefits the projects provide.
The Forest Service frequently works with partners through informal activities that may be a springboard for formal arrangements later. For example, many agency employees participate in community networks to offer educational events and share skills and expertise with local citizen without a formal, documented arrangement. In practice, this broadens the meaning of partnership beyond the specific definition under federal policy and beyond formal arrangements.
Why partner with us?
Partnerships can be established to:
• Broaden mutual benefit and support towards mission activities
• Connect managers to other government or public programs to maximize effectiveness
• Conserve public lands and resources
• Establish links among the agency and stakeholders
• Facilitate an understanding of the Forest Service mission, mandates, and goals
• Facilitate cross-boundary solutions to broad conservation challenges
• Help to efficiently meet our agency mission
• Linking agency change and advocacy functions for greater impact
• Minimize the potential for contradictory activities between the Forest Service and other agencies and partners
• Promote public education activities
• Share information and resources
• Strengthen local NGOs and others’ capacity as development vehicles
• Strengthen the institution (finances, technical capacity)
What is Collaboration?
An integral part of many partnerships is the collaborative process. In natural resource management, collaboration increasingly refers to a process where groups with different interests come together to address management issues across a specified geographic region (e.g., forest, watershed or landscape). The goal of collaboration is to build and promote a collective vision for how to manage the land.
Through collaboration, groups that may disagree are able to explore their differences, identify common interests, and seek common-ground solutions. A collaborative relationship may be documented through a formal arrangement, but often it is not. It is important to note that well-defined collaborative processes do not transfer government authority; government agencies remain responsible for their actions and retain their decision-making authority.
Why Collaborate?
The collaborative process can offer a lead agency many benefits, including:
• Better Information. By engaging diverse expertise a collaborative body can reach a more informed agreement and advise decision-makers accordingly. Similarly, a diversity of perspectives, transparency and openness inherent to collaboration tends to encourage creative thinking, which can also lead to more informed and better decisions.
• Fairer Process. Effective collaboration involves most or all interests involved in an issue. This increases the likelihood that important interests, particularly those from traditionally disadvantaged or under-represented communities, will be invited to participate.
• Better Integration. Since collaboration emphasizes a sharing of ideas, opinions, and sometimes resources, it can enhance integration and coordination among parties. For example, NEPA’s interdisciplinary framework has the potential to allow agencies to integrate, coordinate, and streamline the multiple reviews and analyses associated with different legal and permitting requirements and serve to reduce delays and make time lines more predictable.
• Conflict Prevention. Parties working collaboratively often surface and resolve differences as they arise, thus preventing conflict or at least mitigating its impact down the road.
• Social Capital. Collaborative processes can build trust between people who will work together on other projects, lead to the formation of partnerships, and increase public confidence in government.
• Easier Implementation. Collaboration can enhance and ease the implementation of a decision. If stakeholders feel vested in a decision, they will have a stake in its implementation. They can also bring the knowledge they gained during the collaborative process to bear on decisions relating to monitoring, enforcement, and other issues.
• Enhanced Environmental Stewardship. Collaboration can promote stewardship of human and natural resources through mutual understandings and cooperation.
• Reduced Litigation. Collaboration can reduce the likelihood of litigation by including key stakeholders early and often, solving problems at the lowest possible level as they arise, and building agreements between stakeholders. Even if litigation ensues, the collaborative process may help narrow issues and make them more amenable to agreement.