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Public Lands Foundation
Position Statement:
2010-04
Sustainability and Management Policy
for the National System of Public Lands
June 7, 2010
Executive
Summary
The Public Lands Foundation (PLF)
asserts that the lands and resources managed by the Bureau of Land
Management, now known as the National System of Public Lands, can best
be—and must be—sustainably managed for the American people under the
conservation mandate set forth in the Federal Land Policy and Management
Act of 1976 (FLPMA).
The Multiple Use and Sustained
Yield direction laid down in FLPMA requires competent, objective,
professional management, and informed responsible public land users. This
is no simple task. It involves a multitude of resources, uses, and
issues, all with major environmental, social and economic consequences and
a history of conflict.
Therefore the PLF, in this
Position Statement has set forth four broad principles, which we believe
should guide BLM. These four principles: Renewability, Adaptability,
Stewardship, and Equity, if diligently adhered to in the promulgation of
policy, development of plans, and daily on-the-ground decision making in
conformity with the FLPMA mandate, will result in the lands and resources
of the National System of Public Lands being truly sustainable.
Background
The PLF, at its
annual membership meeting, September 2008, heard a variety of
presentations relating to the application of ‘sustainability’ to public
land management, including papers on environmental, social, and economic
sustainability. A synopsis of the papers presented at that meeting is
available from PLF.
Sustainability is a word that
came into common use in the last two decades of the 20th century and is
much in vogue in the first decade of this century. Determining what is
meant by ‘sustainability’ when applied to specific actions, and more
particularly specific policies, strategies, and tactics appears to be a
complex and relativistic exercise. It is a term that serves many masters.
Sustainability was
used by the Brundtland Commission which coined what has become the most
often-quoted definition of sustainable development as development that
"meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs." The Wikipedia internet article on
sustainability defines sustainable development as a pattern of resource
use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that
these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite
future.
The language of the Federal
Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA, 90 Stat. 2743) provides
that public lands will be retained in Federal ownership, managed on the
basis of multiple use and sustained yield, in a manner that
will protect the quality of environmental values through a process of
inventory, planning, and decision-making that requires participation by
affected citizens.
Specifically these terms are
defined in FLPMA as follows (emphasis added):
Multiple Use
and Sustained Yield
“The term
“multiple use” means the management of the public lands and their
various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that
will best meet the present and future needs of the American people;
making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these
resources or related services over areas large enough to provide
sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing
needs and conditions; the use of some land for less than all of the
resources; a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that
takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable
and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation,
range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic,
scientific and historical values; and harmonious and coordinated
management of the various resources without permanent impairment of the
productivity of the land and the quality of the environment with
consideration being given to the relative values of the resources and not
necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest
economic return or the greatest unit output.
The term
“sustained yield” means the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity
of a high-level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable
resources of the public lands consistent with multiple use.”
Discussion
The PLF strongly
supports applying sustainability principles to the management and use of
the National System of Public Lands. Because of the multifaceted uses of
the term however, the PLF is issuing this Position Statement to clarify
what is meant in taking this position.
The FLPMA Mandate
The PLF asserts that the
mandate for Multiple Use and Sustained Yield management as expressly
stated in FLPMA constitutes an explicit application of the principle of
sustainability to the management of the National Public Lands.
It would be hard to
find a better prescription for a sustainable ‘conservation” approach to
the management of the National System of Public Lands and their resources
than the above FLPMA mandate. It is a mandate derived from a philosophy
that defines ‘conservation’ simply as: ‘use - but don’t use
up!’
Application of this
sustainable conservation mandate as a policy for the management of public
lands and resources is not, however a simple task. The National Public
Lands are widespread and diverse. There are a multitude of resources and
uses, both commodity and amenity values, and a long history of uses,
interests and both social and economic dependencies based upon those
uses. The history of public lands is a history of conflicting interests
and users and the difficulty of managing those conflicts responsibly. In
recent decades the dramatic increase in access and transport to public
lands has been matched by exploding technological development as well as
by a near universal public demand for both recreation and environmental
protection. In addition, the national demand for energy resources has not
only vastly increased the exploration for and extraction of non-renewable
energy resources from the National Public Lands, but they are also being
looked to as a significant place for the development of renewable energy
sources, solar and wind, with the concomitant demand for the facilities to
transmit the energy produced on or near those lands.
Anyone who thinks
that multiple use management is simple should consider the challenge
facing the BLM field manager responsible for recreation in the California
Desert watching the California Desert Lily Society hiking up one side of a
sand dune – and the Barstow Bombers Motorcycle Club roaring up the other
side. And that particular dilemma involves managing only one (recreation)
of the multitude of uses of the National Public Lands.
Sustainable
Conservation Principles
Because
implementation of a sustainable conservation mandate for the National
System of Public Lands involves the development of policy at the national
level, the formulation of plans for managing specific areas of public
lands, and implementing those policies and plans on a day to day basis
through decisions made by managers in the field, the Public Lands
Foundation believes that BLM should be guided in that entire process by a
set of principles that serve to define how best to carry out the mandate.
PLF proposes that the following four principles be used to guide public
land policy and decision making at all levels of government. By following
these four principles, FLPMA’s direction for multiple use management of
the National Public Lands can assure ‘sustainability’ for these lands and
their resources for tomorrow’s generations.
1 - THE PRINCIPLE OF RENEWABILITY
The language of
FLPMA states that the management of public lands and their resources shall
take place “without permanent impairment of the productivity of the land
and the quality of the environment”. The intent is that we should leave
to our children – from generation to generation – our public estate in at
least as good condition as we found it.
No
Net Loss
The concept of no
net loss has been mistakenly rejected by BLM, pressured by a variety of
resource consumers, under a foolish misunderstanding of its meaning. What
it means is that we should not spend our principal. It does not mean that
we should not use it, and recognize that it may be changed in the process
– so long as the overall health of the land, and the productivity of the
wealth of resources, both commodity and amenity, present and future, is
maintained.
Obviously, when a
non-renewable mineral resource is extracted from the public lands it will
never again be available in that form from that place. In addition, the
productivity of that particular site and the attendant impacts of
extraction may dramatically reduce the productivity of the renewable
resources located there – for a time. The sustainability principle of no
net loss recognizes this through practical and enforceable requirements
for restoration, rehabilitation, and off-site mitigation where necessary
to fully comply with the FLPMA mandate.
This concept also
recognizes the importance of priority in terms of fundamental resources
that form the basis for all natural resource productivity, beginning with
soil and water, then to micro flora and fauna and on up through vegetation
to the top of the food chain. It is based upon an understanding of what
is required to maintain land in a healthy condition. And it stresses the
importance of planning and managing on the basis of watersheds and
coherent landscapes, rather than political or other boundaries not
grounded in the resources themselves.
Restoration
Sustainability
and renewability have much in common. Given time and wise management
degraded lands can be restored. The more nearly the fundamental
productivity of such lands has been maintained the less cost and effort
will be involved. What does this mean vis a vis “non-renewable”
resources? By this we normally mean hard rock minerals, oil and gas,
coal, sand and gravel and the like. The question here is not whether these
products can be renewed. In one sense they are not lost to us, they are
just changed in form, some can be recycled, some form byproducts that
pollute or otherwise impact other resources, carbon emissions being the
classic example of concern today.
What we are
concerned about relative to sustainability is not to impair the productive
potential of the renewable resource that is impacted in the process of
extraction. Here the model to follow is one called sustainable
development. There has been remarkable progress in the application of
this approach to the National Public Lands. This approach requires that
the investment made in the extraction of the non-renewable resource
includes the long term benefit to the social, economic and environmental
values attendant to the location of that particular project.
In many ways this is no
different than the approach that should be taken in the case of certain
renewable resources, timberland being the classic example. Forests once
harvested are renewable and are sustainable if managed for long term
social, economic and environmental benefits and values. In one sense, of
course, growing 500-year-old trees for wood production is ‘non-renewable’
economically, but maintaining a forest capable of reproducing 500-year-old
trees is an essential component of renewability.
Balance
It is important to maintain a
balance between use and protection of public land ecosystems to insure
they contribute their share to satisfy current human needs and the
long-term sustainability of the earth’s life support system for
posterity. An example of this concept of balance can be found in
sustainable forest management.
The forest as a whole, if
managed for sustainability, must contain a number of ecological succession
stages such as stand development, young forest, mature forest, and
structurally complex forest. At each stage the forest takes on different
ecological characteristics. Sustainability requires the maintenance of
forest productivity regardless of the stage of growth and development
while enjoying both the benefits of the timber and the wildness of the
woods. Timberland
sustainability will not be achieved by focusing and limiting forest
management to only certain succession stages of development.
Sustainable forest management
requires maintaining the health and productive capacity of the forests to
produce timber that can be harvested on a sustained yield basis as well as
maintaining other values associated with the forest including old growth
values. This includes protecting forest lands from disease, pests and
fire. Sustainability of renewable resources includes restoration, health
and balance.
2 - THE
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTABILITY
Management of the
National System of Public Lands must recognize and accept our limitations,
both to understand and predict the impacts of decisions, either to act or
not to act. There are natural forces and processes at work on the public
lands that are certainly beyond our absolute control, and often beyond our
desires. These include, fire, drought, climate change, and invasive
species impacts among others, and, most importantly the uncertainty of
change inherent in time itself.
Adaptive Management
Policy setters and
managers dealing in these realms will do well to remember the doctrine of
unintended consequences. A responsible caution is the hallmark of a good
resource manager. By the same token, intelligent efficiency in management
processes and actions requires the timely application of sound common
sense based on experience and available knowledge. The assumption that
all must be known before acting has resulted in a wasteful paralysis by
analysis. It is the downside and perhaps the strongest argument
threatening such otherwise important and valuable laws as the National
Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. Perhaps the most
important process dictated by FLPMA is that land use decisions should be
informed by a transparent program of land use planning with public
involvement. But, as S.I Hayakawa said, “The map is not the territory”;
there is no such thing as a perfect plan. The plan is only an agreed upon
guide to action in a not fully known future. For this reason adaptive
management is a logical and quite often the critical factor in the
successful use of land use plans. Planning for planning’s sake is not
sustainable development.
Science
Public land
management should utilize the best available science and technology to
inform and advise both policy setting and decision-making. The more
objectively and reliably accurate our understanding of the forces and
processes at work on the natural systems of the National Public Lands, the
greater the chances are that the decisions and actions taken will produce
the results intended. Great care must be taken, however to assure that a
passionate concern for a particular resource or single use or interest
outcome does not seek to use “science” to drive rather than inform
decisions. Because of their complex nature and impacts, a wide range of
technical specialties must be brought to bear on many public land
decisions. Realistic sustainability necessitates the fair and balanced
representation of these specialties in the common cause of sound multiple
use decision making.
3 - THE PRINCIPLE OF STEWARDSHIP
Citizen
understanding and responsibility are fundamental to reaching practical
sustainability for the National System of Public Lands and their
resources. Instilling responsibility and a sense of obligation to
sustainability and the conservation mandate in all users of the public
lands and resources is a primary goal of the Public Lands Foundation and
should be a goal of all public land agency policies and management
actions. This will require full and open communication and dialogue
between BLM and the American people conducted with integrity and
transparency.
A
Land Ethic
Aldo Leopold wrote
brilliantly about what is needed to achieve an ethical relationship with
land. What stewardship requires, he pointed out is an intense
consciousness of land. His concept of a “land ethic” is undeniably
necessary for us to achieve sustainability for our public lands and
resources. What we all must do, he said, is to, “Examine each question in
terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is
economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the
integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when
it tends otherwise.”
Stewardship works
when there is a nexus between the people and the land they care for. One
of the factors that has frustrated people from considering themselves
stewards of public lands has been the lack of a clear identity to the
lands themselves. Fortunately a major first step has been taken to solve
this problem with the signing of a Secretarial Order by Interior Secretary
Dirk Kempthorne on December 16, 2008 formally designating the 258 million
acres of BLM managed lands as The National System of Public Lands (NSPL)
giving them formal identification for the first time. This gives official
notice to the American people who own these lands of the critical
importance of the National Public Lands to our quality of life, their
value to present and future generations, and the purpose for which they
are preserved in public ownership.
This official
designation should become institutionalized as quickly as possible by
giving clearly identifiable names to distinct blocks of the National
System of Public Lands so that they can be shown on maps and in
guidebooks. An excellent start has been made with the identification of
the National Landscape Conservation System, which is a part of the
National System of Public Lands. Every additional site-specific
identification of local blocks of public land will invest these lands with
public interest and public commitment to their sustainability.
Partnership
The sustainability
of the National
Public Lands and
their resources demands a level of commitment to the conservation mandate
over a long period of time; and, because of the wide range of multiple
uses these lands provide, this commitment must be made by an equally wide
range of individuals, user groups, communities, and levels of
government. The development of partnerships based on a mutual interest
in the sustainable development of National Public Lands and resources is a
very positive trend in federal land management. There are an increasing
number of outstanding partnerships at the State, regional and community
levels. National policies that encourage public land managers in the
field to participate in, foster, and encourage such partnerships are
essential.
Obligation
Sustainable
management of the National System of Public Lands requires a sense of
obligation and responsibility to the land at all levels. It requires
principled judgment from elected officials, legislators, and
administrators; judgment that does not falter in the face of pleas or
threats from special interests.
It requires
continuing support for the conservation mandate and strong feelings of
social and environmental responsibility on the part of all users of the
National Public Lands, be they (and perhaps particularly if they are) oil
drillers or ATV riders, foresters or bird watchers, or any of the other
myriad commodity and amenity users.
And it requires the
career long commitment by objective professional public servants from a
wide range of technical fields and with effective management and
leadership skills. It is essential for these professionals to always
remember that they are acting in the service of all of the people.
All of these are
vital to assure fair, efficient, and informed policies and management
decisions that affect all of the multiple benefits and values of the
National Public Lands held in trust for the sustainable use and
responsible enjoyment of the American People.
4 - THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUITY
To say that the
public lands and resources have not historically been sustainably managed
would be an understatement. Once treated as “free goods” these lands and
resources were early victimized by the Tragedy of the Commons.
As a result, communities, businesses and individuals developed over many
years a set of expectations about their relationship with public lands
that are inconsistent with sustainable development principles.
Sustainable development is often described as a three-legged stool with an
equitable balance between the three legs of economic, social, and
environmental values.
Fair and Orderly
Sustainable
development balance is relatively easy de novo, but what happens
when appropriately sustainable management decisions negatively impact the
expectations and benefits deriving from precedent social and economic
values and uses of public lands and resources? The answer to that
question usually involves bureaucratic mandates, political trumpery and
litigation. The principle of equity means that sustainability for the
public lands can not come about overnight, rather it requires a fair and
orderly process over sufficient time to reasonably adjust historical
expectations and accommodate the social and economic changes concomitant
with that adjustment. This will require longer term thinking than public
land agencies usually apply (unfortunately never apparently exceeding four
years).
By the same token,
the sustainability principle of equity requires adequate reimbursement in
support of public land management in return for the profits and benefits
made possible through the use of those lands and public resources. This
process must account for and assure to the National Public Lands
appropriate reimbursement for the external costs of public land and
resource uses. Addressing this principle will require a change in
historic laws and policies such as the Mining Law of 1872 and grazing fees
where a responsible market value of the resources taken is not presently
returned to the public to pay the costs of public land management.
Unity
The National System
of Public Lands and their resources are of inestimable value to the
American People, a fact that is reflected in FLPMA’s commitment to the
retention of these lands in public ownership in the National interest.
Even so, they are, in truth, part of a greater whole, which includes other
lands in a variety of public ownerships as well as private lands. When it
comes to the sustainability of the basic resources upon which all of us
depend, that whole includes regions, states, our Nation, and our whole
earth. Much can and must be done to achieve sustainability for the
National
Public Lands and
their resources, but that effort would be frustrated without a growing
sense of conviction and action seeking resource sustainability across all
ownerships and all lands. Within such an important objective we would
hope that our actions on our National Public Lands reflect an appropriate
role as a significant component of a total set of National and global
values, priorities, policies and needs.
PLF
Position
The Public Lands
Foundation affirms that the direction for the use and management of the
National System of Public Lands under the Federal Land Policy and
Management Act is a mandate for sustainability. In carrying out that
conservation mandate the Bureau of Land Management should consider and be
guided by the four principles of Renewability, Adaptability, Stewardship
and Equity set forth in this PLF Position Statement.
The PLF believes
that the application of these principles will enable BLM to meet the
standard of Multiple Use and Sustained Yield for the National Public
Lands:
1.
Lands
which will be retained in public ownership;
2.
Lands
that will contribute to meeting the Nation’s need for domestic sources of
minerals, food, timber and fiber;
3.
Lands
that will be managed to protect the quality of scientific, scenic,
historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water
resource, and archeological values;
4.
Lands
that will provide food and habitat for fish and wildlife and domestic
animals, and that will provide for outdoor recreation and human occupancy
and use;
5.
Lands
that will be preserved and protected in their natural condition;
6.
We
believe that the National Public Lands, managed with wisdom and foresight
under FLPMA, are truly sustainable.
Updated from No. PLF 35-09,
January 2, 2009
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