Do we need Shared Governance to capture Shared Value?

Tim Gieseke's picture
Submitted by Tim Gieseke(0)5 October, 2011 - 21:24

As corporations, industries, governments and non-profits begin to define agricultural sustainability criteria, farmers often run into an entangled accounting system.  In these top-down efforts, agencies rely on USDA’s and EPA’s program and practice-driven processes.  However, too often non-profits see their efforts implode when sustainability is defined, and industry reaches the same plateau as Congress – the stalemate area between discussion and decision.  Some food-processors that took Porter’s “shared value” approach are making progress, but still are not integrating government, industry and non-profit efforts.

A recent AgEQA (Agricultural Environmental Quality Assurance) project in Minnesota applied a shared governance model to assist farmers to provide “reasonable assurance” that they met TMDL goals.  Stakeholders aligned their conservation efforts toward a common outcome, using land-based indices as the “market signal”.  The intent was for the farmers to use these ecoservice portfolios to obtain value (regulatory assurance) from the State.  With this bottom-up approach, the farmer could also pursue other ecoservice values from industry, corporations, non-profits, utilities and other governmental entities.  These varied assets include monetary value, market access, participatory benefits, liability reduction and resource-credits. 
 
The relative success of the AgEQA may be seeded in the somewhat crudely worded “Carlson’s Law” that states, “due to access to cheap tools, innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb.” 
 
To capture the ecoservice values, do we need to construct a bottom-up web approach rather than rely on the top-down linear model?
 
Author bio: 
Through his consulting business, Ag Resource Strategies, Tim Gieseke develops environmental quality assurance programs for industry, government and non-profits involved in agriculture. He has centered his career around agriculture with experiences with conservation districts, federal farm policy, farming, and author of EcoCommerce 101: Adding an ecological dimension to the economy (www.ecocommerce101.com). He applied these ecocommerce concepts in his most recent work that included the EQA project (report at http://www.agresourcestrategies.com/LEQA.php) mentioned in the commentary. He is currently working with the Solutions From the Land Dialogue to integrate ag, forestry and ecoservices. He received his M.S. Env. Sc. from MSU-Mankato (MN). He, his wife and three boys are the fourth and the fifth generations on their Minnesota farm.

Comments

sue.lurie
sue.lurie19 weeks 17 hours ago

Maybe another consideration

Maybe another consideration is a combination of the bottom-up and top-down approaches. That seems to be a typical recipe for shared governance. And no wonder movement is glacial: governance is messy--the disparate goals, incentives and constraints among a broad range of policy actors necessary for a workable model of shared governance predicated on shared value have to be reconciled sufficiently for benefits to outweigh costs. With that in mind, what would a practicable institutional framework look like? What sorts of incentives and assurances are needed to engage not just the providers but the other policy actors?

Tim Gieseke
Tim Gieseke18 weeks 6 days ago

Sue - Yes, an integrated or

Sue - Yes, an integrated or hybrid approach would seem to be the most effective.   After stumbling across the shared governance process in the AgEQA, a brief research stint revealed that the nursing-medical field and some universities have applied the model in the recent decades will limited success.  It appeared that the greatest challenge in SG was including the participant that was directly correlated with the outcomes; nursing-medical was the patient, university was the student and state water quality the farmer.  Interestingly, each of these models have outcomes that can be difficult to measure with traditional means; health, learning and NPS ecoservices. 

A practical institutional framework to address these complex and dynamic outcomes may need to involve far more ownership/benefit of those participants that are difficult to include.  The "wealth" of this institutional framework can then be determined by what resides within each of their portfolios.  For example, increasing the water quality function of the natural capital of a watershed can only occur by increasing the WQ portfolio of each land manager within the watershed.  The intellectual capital of a university can only be as great as that of the faculty and students.

I think the incentives need to reside and weighted at the far end of the shared governance process with assurance illustrated by imperfect indices and metrics.  Those upstream up this value will begin to align themselves to receive value by assisting those at the end of the value chain.   It is a complex task, but one can make a pretty good argument that the medical and conservation governance systems are not functioning - and higher education systems are experiencing some difficulties as well.  The most common trait of these new governance models will emerge from the capabilities of interconnecting via social and personal networks.

Jan Jansen
Jan Jansen18 weeks 15 hours ago

Perhaps, to capture the

Perhaps, to capture the ecoservice values, we need both to construct a bottom-up web approach and rely on the hierarchical political-administratve structure. Traditionally, commons have been managed locally, which can be viewed as a rather bottom-up web approach to take care of the natural resources for the sake of the local communities. Although historically globalisation also had its influence, present globalisation processes are often so much complicated and at such a scale that an adequate response of the local management needs support from broader organisations that are assumed to be capable of better interpreting the global developments and who in addition may be able to translate these developments in cooperation with the local networks into sufficient resilience of the local/regional ecosystems and the socio-economic system.
It will be important that the authorities will recognise "Carlson's Law"  and really have the intention to become operational. By the way I never heard of this law but I think it brilliantly formulates a pattern which I observe almost everyday as an ecologist when I am dealing with nature conservation issues regarding Natura 2000, the largest network of nature conservation areas in the world. This network is based on European legislation and embraced (or rejected) by politicians, lawyers and people from the administration. But in practice many opinions/interests are opposed as these are often based in a one dimensional sectoral approach whereas a multisectoral view is strongly needed. For myself I see solutions, but I am just a small part in the process in which many stakeholders participate and the question is also who has the political power and whether technical scientific knowledge is acknowledged. Here is a tension between the local and the broader scale and here in this field of tension, the bottom-up approach meets the top-down approach. Although there are differences between the EU and the USA, I think that this field of tension exists in both areas and also that both approaches are in need of their mutual support. Thus yes, I think we need shared governance to capture shared value and at the same time keep Carlson's Law in mind.