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| Invitee Comments: President Jim Baker | ||
| (Return to Comment Selection) Learning to Manage the Environment: 358 Hayden Hall University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA October 4, 2002 INTRODUCTION: SUSTAINABILITY IN A GROWING WORLD At the beginning of 2001, I finished eight years in the Federal Government as the Administrator of NOAA and the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. This was a fascinating job, which took me from working with the Vice President on declassifying satellite data to helping generate enthusiasm for beach and estuarine cleanup. NOAA has five national services focused on weather, fisheries, research, satellites, and coasts. These national services are responsible for weather and climate forecasting, management of marine fisheries, coastal zone management and mapping, and protection of marine mammals, coral reefs, and coastal habitat. All of these topics are of national importance and we had many issues to deal with. In the course of my eight years, I had the experience of working with superb people in the agency I headed and of serving on a number of interagency committees on environment, science and technology, and sustainable development. The hands-on approach required – in most cases, when we were presented with a problem, we had to find some solution – led us to learn quickly how to pull together all known information and come up with the best possible solution. You can't work very long on such questions without being forced to think more broadly about sustainability, and in fact, as I worked with the many excellent people in NOAA, her sister agencies, and the dedicated people in the various industries, environmental groups, and Congress, I was brought to their central view that the fundamental question of our new century, transcending cultural differences and conflicts, is whether the arc of human existence is sustainable. Will the world that the present generation leaves behind offer the same opportunities to future generations? As world population continues to grow and economic development continues to raise the standards of living of people around the world, we are using our natural resources at an ever-increasing rate. We know we live in a finite world – but how finite? Can the world sustain a population of twice what we have today where everyone has the standard of living of today's developed world? What kind of world do we want, and what kind of world will we have? I believe that the decisions that we make today will determine the course of human history well beyond the end of this century; in fact, could have effects for many hundreds of years. If we look at the course of human events in the past thousand years, we see that the most rapid changes – in industrialization, in population, in globalization and interdependence, and in use of natural resources – have all come in the past hundred years or so. On a thousand year time scale, we are at the time of most rapid change into a new world. Can these rates of change remain the same? The simple answer is no, simply because the world is finite and natural resources are limited. But how finite and how limited? On the population side, demographers are now forecasting that the rate of change of human population is slowing so that we may well reach an equilibrium of 10 to 12 billion people. And the quality of life for people in both developed and developing countries, overall, is improving on most counts. But it is harder to quantify the changes in our use of natural resources, as we mine and extract minerals from sources that are not replenished and as we destroy our forests and fisheries without finding ways to keep these renewable resources actually renewable. Moreover, as we use resources, we are making other changes in our environment. The changing chemical composition of the atmosphere, caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted as a product of increased industrialization and transportation, and the changing chemical composition of the coastal ocean, caused by polluted runoff and coastal development, are byproducts of our increasing economic development. In the atmosphere, the resulting global warming, acid rain, and changing weather patterns caused by the heat islands of increased urbanization must be dealt with by adaptation or mitigation. In the ocean, the chemical changes lead to loss of fisheries habitat, beaches for recreation, and an inability to provide the coastal development that is required for economic health. In both cases we are heading for a loss of that very quality of life that we hope for. In the ocean and on the land, we have not yet learned how to use our forest and fisheries resources sustainably. Forests are declining in overall acreage, and in biodiversity. Marine fisheries are also declining, and are facing an even more rapid decline as new fishers enter the field from developing countries. How do we make the bridge between the cosmic problems of the world and sustainability and specific, local, environmental issues? The fact is that the literature, despite the rhetoric on both sides, is conspicuously lacking in specific solutions to specific problems. But this is where we need to start. The fact is that people live in towns and cities and regions, and experience the climate and weather and air quality locally. They are affected economically by local loss of either resources or of jobs. How can we find solutions to the overall problems of changing our trajectory from an unsustainable one to a sustainable one, and do this so that people on a local scale are engaged and their life is improved? How does one put together coalitions of interest groups, Congress, and government agencies to make progress on these issues, and how does one overcome the many obstacles that are put up along the way? After I left office, I decided that I would write a short book on some of the NOAA experiences on some specific issues, trying to show how reasonable people take on these big problems, and actually make progress. As a logical person, if I don't know the answer to a problem, I will usually talk to experts and search the literature when faced with a problem. But in most of the cases we were presented with, we found that the literature was strong on identifying problems but weak in showing solutions, and that experts could help only up to a point. In my book I want to show how we could make progress using every means at our disposal. Where we didn't make progress, I have tried to show why and how, and suggest ways that the process could be improved. In the book, I am taking several case studies to show how we tried to work through these during 1993-2001. I have used five successes, five failures, and three cases which I will call "muddle through," in other words we spent a lot of time and money and it's not clear that we made any progress. In the end, I and my colleagues always had to find some solution that was reasonably acceptable to our executive branch leaders at the Department of Commerce and the White House, to Congress, to our constituents in industry, universities, and the non-governmental organizations, and to the Courts. We rarely made everyone happy, but we did not walk away from any issue that we brought to us. We tried to consult as widely as possible, but were not always able to do that. And let me say up front that when I say we, I mean the people at NOAA that I worked with. It's not always easy to assign credit or blame on issues, and certainly I didn't do many of the things that were accomplished. For today's talk, I'll take just three of the case studies: improving weather forecasting by merging satellite systems – a success, setting quotas for the spiny dogfish – a partial success, and finding an international solution for the tuna-dolphin problem – a failure at the present time. I'll finish with an inside look at how we managed to put together the first National Ocean Conference in Monterey in 1998, bring new attention and resources to oceans issues in general. CASE I. Convergence of weather satellites: Whenever there are two programs doing essentially the same thing, there is money to be saved. It's not easy, especially in the government where protecting turf and budget often comes before operational efficiency. As a consequence, many attempts to eliminate duplication fail because not enough of the involved parties want to make it happen. But there are successes. A good example is the elimination of the duplication between weather satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force. We essentially turned two independent programs into one, saving at least $2 billion that would have been spent if the programs had continued independently, and reducing the number of people involved by 50 percent. When I came into office in 1993, each agency was flying two polar-orbiting weather satellites – with slightly different missions and instruments, but essentially the same kind of system. We asked: could we reduce the number of satellites being flown and save on costs of planning and management while still meeting the needs of both the civil and military agencies? We were not the first to identify this question: at least eight previous attempts had been made to make a formal partnership between the civil and military environmental satellites. But each of these had failed for one or another reason, as both NOAA and the Air Force felt they needed their own programs to meet their needs. Lesson: An important problem may not get solved just because it's important Satellite data for weather is known to all Americans as they watch the nightly news: the wonderful pictures and animations and visualizations all come from the basic data provided by satellites, as well as measurements on the ground. All of this is put together with models by computers, and the systems of highs and lows can then be mapped and provided in a movie-like form for the TV weather forecast. Without the satellites, we simply couldn't provide the broad view that is so critical for forecasting, and we would have essentially no data over the oceans, a critical aspect of tracking hurricanes. The timing and location of the orbits of the satellites are also critical. The satellites go around the Earth in about 100 minutes at a height of about 600 miles. They go over over the poles in a circular orbit whose plane is adjusted continually to follow the sun. The orbits are characterized by the time that the satellite goes over the equator. The NOAA satellites are overhead at the equator at 10:00 a.m. and at 1:30 p.m. The Air Force satellites are overhead at 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. Thus the two NOAA satellites are called "morning" and "afternoon" satellites. And the data is shared around the world. It was recognized early on that all countries could benefit greatly from the global coverage of the U.S. satellites. As a consequence, the U.S. decided that data from its civil weather satellites would be available at no cost and in real time to anyone who set up an antenna. This generous policy was very helpful to countries around the world who began to depend on NOAA's satellite weather data. For example, the Europeans have used the data from the beginning, and only in the late 1990s, began planning for their own polar-orbiting satellite. The Chinese told me on a trip there in the Fall of 1999 that it was because of the free access to the NOAA satellite data that they were able to learn how to use satellite data and eventually build and fly one of their own. Thus in our convergence/merger discussions, we had to include the issue of how to make the data as openly available as possible. Although the satellites are critical for weather, their importance is not always understood by the public, and this lack of understanding leads to lack of support by many in Congress, since the systems are expensive. There is confusion between the private sector and the government provision of services. In a hearing in 1995 of the Committee on Science of the U.S. House of Representatives, newly-elected Representative Dick Chrysler stated that there was too much duplication between the Federal Government and the private sector, and he used weather as an example. Chrysler said: "...people think that we get our weather information from NOAA (parent organization of the National Weather Service). The fact of the matter is that 85 to 90 percent of the newspapers, the television stations, and radio stations receive their weather information from private sources." When asked by Representative David Minge: "Do you know where those private sources obtain their basic weather data? Isn't it correct that they obtain that from NOAA?", Chrysler replied: "They receive it from the weather satellites that are currently managed by NOAA." When Minge pressed and said, "But, in fact, NOAA is furnishing that basic data at this time to the private weather services. Wouldn't that be accurate?", Chrysler backed off and said, "I don't know. I don't know." Lesson: Just because something is important doesn't mean that it is understood From 1960 to 1972, the civil side was managed by NASA, with input from the U.S. Weather Bureau, now the National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). From 1972, NOAA took over the management and operations, but still uses NASA for procurement of the satellites. The military side was managed by the U.S. Air Force from the beginning. NASA established a line budget item called the Operational Satellite Improvement Program in 1973 which worked well during the 1970s providing research and development for the operational satellites. But, by 1981, NASA was facing cost overruns with the Space Shuttle, and decided not to continue to fund the Operational Satellite Improvement Program. As a consequence, NOAA, with its limited budgets, no longer able to do more than make limited improvements to existing instruments. Here, as John McElroy, former Assistant Administrator of NOAA for the National Environmental Satellite and Environmental Data and Information Systems, points out: "governmental oversight of management failed. A necessary activity in one agency was terminated without being replaced in another. The Congress did not act to restore the program, either in NASA or NOAA. Thus the nation ceased in 1981 to have an effective R&D arm for its civil operational weather program – a situation that continues." This was written in 1995. NASA had not stopped its earth remote sensing program, however, quite the contrary. A vigorous Earth Observation System (EOS) program had been launched as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program with a budget close to one billion dollars per year. During the planning for EOS, the question was raised about the links between this planning and the operational programs, but the link was never forged in a lasting way. How to make this link remained a question that needed to be resolved, since the requirements for the new generation of weather satellites required advanced versions of the instruments being flown on the current NOAA and Air Force satellites. NOAA also faced budget constraints, and decided in the early 1990s that it could reduce costs by using the growing expertise of the European Meteorological Satellite organization, EUMETSAT. This organization was interested in flying their own polar-orbiting satellite in a morning orbit, with instruments similar to the NOAA ones. It thus made sense to consider having a EUMETSAT satellite replace the NOAA satellite in the morning orbit. Discussions began to see how this could happen. The initial goal was a European satellite which would carry the NOAA satellite instruments, and data would be shared by all. These discussions continued to be pursued by NOAA, because it meant that a large part of the costs of a two-satellite system would be borne by Europe. This was the beginning of convergence, and the discussions between NOAA and EUMETSAT in the early 1990s helped pave the way to the full convergence to come later in the decade. Lesson: To make it happen, do it one step at a time So by 1993, the elements for a successful convergence were in place. The final push came from the need to reduce the deficit – a budgetary constraint. What was needed was to get people at the top engaged and committed. When I came into office in 1993, I told Vice President Gore and Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown that merging the two systems would be a high priority for me, and that it would be a classic "win-win" situation: a more productive program with stronger interagency cooperation, and saving money and using fewer people. John Deutsch, who was then Under Secretary for Acquisition at the Department Defense, agreed that the program made sense and offered his help. We were supported in this idea by two important letters, one from Representative George Brown to me, and another from Senator James Exon to the Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, both of whom said that the time is come for converging these two systems. Lesson: Congressional support is critical for major new programs But before we simply charged ahead and proposed such a major change, we wanted to understand what had failed before, and how we could address those problems. The biggest obstacles in the past had been (1)the unwillingness of both sides, NOAA and the Air Force to give up one of their programs to joint management, possibly losing the assurance of the continuity of critical data – either to joint management with the civilian community, or to no hand in management at all; (2) military security concerns – what if the U.S. wanted to deny data to a country that we were at war with?; (3) concern on the part of the civil community that military needs would take precedence in any joint operation; (4) the need for congressional support. The Congressional policy side was clearly in hand now, but we still needed to work the appropriations committees. We also needed to find a way to handle the evolving NOAA plans for joint operations with EUMETSAT, and to engage NASA as a key player for the research and development. President Clinton's call for a balanced budget helped us here. The military was downsizing, and wanted to put its funding into the highest priority projects. John Deutsch told me that we might be able to make this work in spite of the normal bureaucratic opposition to change, because it was a way for the Air Force to save money and still get the data. We would have to find a way to ensure that data was always available, and we would have to find an agreeable joint management scheme. Deutsch, the Vice President, and I had a conversation in summer 1993, in which we agreed to the terms of the joint management – civil control, but a three-way management group consisting of NOAA, the Air Force, and NASA. The basic agreement was that NOAA would manage the operations with Air Force support, and that NASA would provide R&D support for instruments and satellite busses. Lesson: It helps to have friends in high places The new program would be called the "National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System" with acronym NPOESS. There would be three satellites all carrying the same critical instruments for imaging and sounding, measuring the local space environment, and providing data collection platforms. One satellite would have an early morning crossing time, a second would have a mid-morning crossing time, and the third would have an afternoon crossing time. The first two would satisfy the Air Force needs, and the second two would satisfy the NOAA needs. Each satellite would back up the other, thus providing a more robust system than ever before. The plan was that the satellite with the mid-morning crossing time would be provided by the Europeans through EUMETSAT, and that the U.S. would provide the instruments. Many details remained to be worked out, but we were on our way. This was the first real change in satellite operations since the beginning of the space age, and provided the nation, and the world, a robust system for monitoring the weather. With three agencies all committed, there was little chance that the system would fail. Once the NPOESS program was agreed to, it gave us a formal context to work within. We were able to use it to get NASA engaged in a critical way. It was clear that the new operational instruments would have to be based both on the current instruments and on new instruments being flown on NASA's research satellites, the Earth Observing System. A bridge between NASA's research and development and the operational systems was once again required. This time, the tri- agency program found a solution. NASA agreed to build and fly a test, or bridging, mission with the first version of the new instruments. This mission, the NPOESS Preparatory Project, would fly in an experimental mode the instruments that will become operational on NPOESS, thus providing the bridge between the Earth Observing System and the operational programs. Thus we now have a direct link between the NASA research and development in the EOS program, and the needs of the operational systems that are needed by the NPOESS program. This new arrangement goes well beyond the previous Operational Satellite Improvement Program in NASA because it is closely linked both to NASA's EOS program and to the operational NPOESS. Coordination of Budgets One of our most difficult problems was the coordination of budgets. Experienced hands on Capitol Hill don't like trying to fund joint programs because it means that many different committees are involved, and all of them have to agree. A joint program doubles (at least) the number of committees involved: each program has to be approved by the authorization committees (House and Senate) and by the appropriations committees (House and Senate). So instead of four committees (and more if another committee wanted to weigh in), a joint program has at least eight committees. Whether any program can survive intact from the scrutiny and horse-trading of eight committees is problematic at best. We tried to make this easier by agreeing from the outset that the budget would be a 50-50 split between NOAA and the Air Force. Then there would be no argument about who had the upper hand. But this means that each agency needed to carefully protect its own budget request through the system in order to avoid budget cuts proposed by the other. What happened to us here was that we would work in NOAA and Air Force at the program level to decide what budget was required, then submit the budget request up the chain in each system. If the Department of Commerce budget office decided to cut the NOAA part, then that information would reach the DOD budget office, and they, being predisposed to budget cuts like all budget offices, would match the cut. Or the opposite would happen: DOD would make the cut, then it would be matched by DOC. We had a lot of tense meetings to ensure that we had, even with the cuts proposed, an acceptable program that we could present to Congress. Then we had problems with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who thought the program was too expensive, and kept trying to reduce costs below where we could really operate. At one point, I got the Vice President's National Security Advisor to call OMB and support the program. Then the next time I complained about a problem, OMB said OK, we know who you're going to call, please don't do it, we'll give you your budget. This taught us a useful lesson. Lesson: Two budget lines are hard to manage – too much opportunity for mischief We also found it difficult to get the Europeans on board. EUMETSAT is a very different organization than NOAA or Air Force or NASA, because it is a governmental group with 22 equal partners. The U.K., Germany, Turkey, Greece, etc., all have to agree before any commitment can be made. And we found communication difficult, since meetings and decisions would take place without joint discussion. That's the way we saw it from our side. Of course, the Europeans believed that we were making decisions without consulting them. We finally agreed on having a representative from the U.S. sit in the EUMETSAT offices, and a EUMETSAT person sit in the joint Program Office. This helped greatly in making more transparent decisions. Before this arrangement was in place, we thought we had an agreement with EUMETSAT that they would fly two satellites with the older NOAA instruments and then, when the U.S. was flying the first converged NPOESS satellites with new instruments, they would fly a METOP with the new instruments. Then we would have a fully converged system in the sense that each satellite was flying the same instruments. But then we learned in late 1998 that EUMETSAT had decided on budgetary grounds to build three identical satellites, not two, and that all three would fly the older instruments. This meant that the first METOP flying with the new NPOESS system and instruments would not be compatible, since METOP would have the old instruments. This was a breakdown in communications, but worse, did not provide either the military or civil side of the U.S. to have a third satellite in orbit with the same instruments that could be used interchangeably and could be a backup for the other satellites. As a consequence, plans were being put in place in late 2000 in the U.S. to fly a third morning satellite that would have the same instruments, until the EUMETSAT situation could be changed. It is most likely that EUMETSAT might be willing to fly a new METOP with the new instruments after the third, bringing a full convergence into play in 2013- 2015. This also added to the overall cost of the program, but the agencies and OMB agreed that a fully modernized morning satellite was required. Lesson: Agreement at high levels is not always implemented at lower levels The good news is that we have a program with a schedule, and all the major players have agreed about what it should do. Since it's an operational program, with a set of products that have to be delivered routinely, the operations and plans for operations will dominate the program. This means that short-term weather forecasts and Air Force needs have priority. But the very existence of a long-term platform in space means that there are climate interests as well. We were not able to get these into the planning at the beginning, and we are still working on it. To date, the program has moved along well. The data requirements have been set, and the contracts let for the development of the instruments that will provide the necessary data. A joint Integrated Program Office was established with the involvement of NOAA and Air Force. A new command and control system for the Air Force satellites was installed at the NOAA Space Operations Control Center in Suitland, Maryland in November, 1997, and full control of the Air Force satellites was turned over to the Integrated Program Office in May, 1998. The push that led to finally getting agreement on merger only on the 9th try after almost 40 years is only partially met by convergence of the polar satellites. We have a long way to go to get a coordinated and comprehensive remote sensing plan for the United States. We have made some progress here, as we have discussed, on the polar satellites. But we have no such plan for the geostationary satellites or for the land remote sensing program. It seems clear that there is a long-term commitment for the geostationary program, but it would benefit from closer cooperation between NOAA, NASA, and DOD. The issues dealing with the failure to provide a long-term LANDSAT program is worth another chapter. Suffice it to say that if we in the U.S. don't make such a provision, then other countries may step in to take the lead. Let's review the lessons learned:
CASE II. Quotas for Spiny Dogfish How to set sustainable quotas for fish? A good example that covers many of the issues is the one I was involved with – setting quotas for the commercial fishery of spiny dogfish. According to Henry Bigelow's Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, the spiny dogfish is a slender little shark, growing to about one meter in length, with a large sharp spine lying in front of the dorsal fin. Bigelow says it is "voracious beyond belief, and travels in packs, hence the name dogfish, and eats every species in the Gulf of Maine". The dogfish is largely caught for export, primarily for use in fish and chips in Europe. The fishery increased following the decline of higher value, traditional species, such as cod. In fact, the value of the commercial dogfish fishery in the late 1990s was about $8 million. In 1998, dogfish were identified as overfished, triggering a Magnuson-Stevens Act requirement within one year to develop a fishery management plan. But how to get to such a plan? It was clear from the outset that drastic measures would be required. We had seen the population decline twice, once in the late 1970s from foreign fishing, and then from our own industry. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (2001-2002 Spiny Dogfish Specifications, by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the New England Fishery Management Council) U. S. fishermen have been landing spiny dogfish since the 1880s. Prior to about 1965, before the passage of the Magnuson Act, commercial landings were very small, in the range of 1/4 million pounds per year. From 1962 to 1966 the average was about 1.2 million pounds per year. Then a strong foreign fishery, mainly the USSR, rapidly drove the fishery up to close to a peak of 54 million pounds in 1974. With the foreign fishery closed, the fishery landings dropped to an average of about 12 million pounds per year. Then, beginning in 1990, the U.S. commercial fishery for spiny dogfish began to expand dramatically. Landings increased six-fold from 10 million pounds in 1989 to 60 million pounds in 1996, and then began to decline again. The U.S. fishery succeeded in removing as much fish by weight in eight years as the foreign fishery had removed in the 13 years prior to the passage of the Magnuson Act. But it was worse: although the weight of landing was similar, the recent U.S. fishery generated significant discards and the landings consisted almost entirely of mature females. The females are larger than the males, and large fish are preferred by the processors. What's more, there is a significant bycatch of dogfish in other fisheries. As typical sharks, the females take a long time to mature, as shown on the next viewgraph, as much as 25 to 30 years. In the 1980s and 1990s, the female biomass declined drastically as females were targeted. The recruitment index as defined by the number of baby sharks, also declined drastically. This combination of increased fishing mortality, declining biomass of mature females, and low recruitment have contributed to the overfished condition of the stock. It does not appear that either the fishery or the processing sector can be sustained without rebuilding the population of reproductively viable females. A plan, agreed to by both the New Eng land and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Councils, was put in place in late September 1999 which essentially was an exit fishery, ending the directed fishery, and leaving only bycatch from other fisheries. The idea was that this was the only way to get the stock to rebuild. Then in November of that year, the New England Council voted to reconsider the plan and increase the fishery. So we were faced with a conflict: the New England Council wanted to go to 22 million pounds and the Mid-Atlantic Council wanted to stay at the bycatch fishery only of about 2.9 million pounds. You can see from the landings that any number above 10 million pounds has never been sustainable, and that does not take into account the loss of females, which is well documented. A better number is half that, about 5 million pounds. The political side wanted to find a compromise solution, and in fact, a compromise is often the best answer to a political problem. But compromise at too high a number would not work here: if the landings are too high, the stock will not survive. Here we had two councils, one recommending the prudent course that would allow the fishery to rebuild, and one saying we can't lose the economic benefit of the fishery. Representative Barney Frank wrote to the Secretary that "I am hopeful that the Councils will see fit to develop a rebuilding target and harvest quota which protects the adult females but still allows sufficient landings to give the industry a chance to survive." Was that possible? The Secretary was inclined to be responsive and go for a quota of 12 or 13 million pounds. And at the same time, the New England Council decided to drop their number from 22 million to 14.3 million. So there was some progress, but still these numbers meant that the dogfish would be heading to extinction. At this point I was called in to talk to the Secretary and see if we could make the science clear. I spent time with the NMFS people, got the necessary information, and then spent an hour with the Secretary explaining the science. He was not happy to see the detailed evidence that leads inevitably to a number around 4 to 5 million pounds per year, but he agreed that the scientific evidence was sound. Suffice it to say that in the end, we finally got agreement from both councils, and the February 2001 alternatives agreed to was a quota of 4.5 million pounds, including a research set- aside of 500,000 pounds to investigate ways of directing fishing effort away from the females. The fishing mortality rate was agreed to be set at a level ten times less than the current fishery. I was pleased to see that the science was sufficiently strong to lead to a quota that may well work in the long term. Lessons learned:
CASE III. Tuna-Dolphin interactions We also learned how to work in the new world of environmental lawsuits. As our eight- year term wore on, the number of lawsuits brought against NOAA, particularly in fisheries, greatly increased. This was a new factor, not entirely bad because in some cases the lawsuits would force a better solution to a problem that we had come up with within our constraints. But lawsuits are always expensive, and funds used there could more profitably be used in other areas. I hope that the lessons that we have learned can mitigate the need for lawsuits so that we have a process that works better. The case I have chosen here is the problem of reducing dolphin mortality in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Purse Seine Fishery. In the early 1950s fishers in this region discovered the (as yet unexplained) association between schools of large yellowfin tuna and some dolphins. Fishers began setting nets around dolphin to catch the tuna swimming below, often killing the dolphins involved. In the 1960s and 1970s the Eastern Tropical Pacific was dominated by U.S. vessels and annual dolphin mortality was estimated at more than 350,000 animals per year. Then with the enactment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) in 1972, in large part in response to public reaction to the high levels of dolphin mortality associated with the tuna fishery, incidental mortality from U.S. domestic fleet began to decline. Participation in the fishery by foreign vessels increased, and by the mid 1980s foreign fleets dominated the fishery and dolphin kill. To address the concerns about increased mortality from foreign vessels, Congress amended the MMPA to tighten the importation requirements for tunas harvested by foreign tuna vessels in the eastern Tropical Pacific and impose additional requirements on both U.S. fishers and import of foreign tuna. In 1990 Congress enacted the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act, which established standards for tuna labeled as dolphin-safe. The law did not require dolphin-safe labeling, but due to public pressure, U.S. canners voluntarily purchased tuna only from vessels where no dolphins were intentionally encircled during the entire fishing trip. Then the U.S. fleet participation in the eastern tropical pacific tuna fishery declined to fewer than ten vessels due to other economic opportunities, and their unwillingness to deal with the MMPA prohibitions in that area. (There's a poignant personal story about this on the web: "The Rise and Fall of the Tuna Industry in San Diego" at www.flash.net/ afernand/). In the late 1970s the tuna fishery was contributing $30 million to San Diego's economy. With the Japanese shipping thousands of tons of frozen tuna, the U.S. fishers were forced to go to large super seiners. They reduced the number of dolphins caught by using the Medina Panel, a small mesh at the end of the net that keeps dolphins from becoming entangled. Eventually due to rising costs the big corporations closed the canneries on the west coast, sold the fleets to foreign interests – many of the U.S. captains stayed on. Now the big canneries are in American Samoa, Thailand, and a host of other countries. In 1992, the total dolphin mortality from foreign fishing was about 15,100, while U.S. associated dolphin mortality was only 431. Congress passed the International Dolphin Conservation Act to encourage an international moratorium on the practice of harvesting tuna through the use of purse seine nets deployed on or to encircle dolphins or other marine mammals. The Act also made it unlawful for any person to sell tuna that was not dolphin-safe in the U.S. after June 1, 1994. Tuna sold in the United States could not have a dolphin-safe label if the tuna had been caught using purse seine nets intentionally deployed on or to encircle dolphins. The U.S. legislation and corresponding standards caused the loss of a large market for those countries that continued to set on Eastern Tropical Pacific dolphins with purse seine nets. To begin to address this problem, the U.S., Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Spain signed the La Jolla agreement in 1992. Here the participants agreed to place voluntary limits on the maximum number of dolphin that could be incidentally killed, and agreed to lower the maximum each year, with the goal of eliminating mortality. With this agreement in place, mortality dramatically dropped to a few thousand animals, 99% less than had occurred in the early 70s, and today is less than 2,000 animals per year. From 1992 to 1995, the countries involved worked with five environmental groups: the Center for Marine Conservation, Environmental Defense, Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, and the World Wildlife Fund, in order to open the U.S. market, lift the embargo, and find a way to permanently strengthen international dolphin conservation efforts. The outcome of these discussions was the Declaration of Panama, signed by 12 countries, including the U.S. The Panama Declaration endorsed the success of the La Jolla agreement and adjusted the marketing policy of dolphin-safe tuna in recognition of this success. The signatory nations expected that if they reduced their dolphin mortality, the U.S. would amend its laws so that participation in the new program would satisfy compatibility requirements of U.S. law. They hoped that it would result in the lifting of embargoes on yellowfin tuna and its products that were caught by purse seines set on dolphins. Congress, in its new International Dolphin Conservation Program Act passed in 1997, focused on necessary research, noting that even if dolphins were not killed or seriously injured in the purse seine nets, the physiological stress they suffered during the year-round chase and encirclement would impede the dolphin population's recovery. Congress rejected the Panama Declaration language which sought an immediate change in the dolphin safe label, and identified a number of research projects on prevalence and magnitude of stress. The Secretary of Commerce was to make findings as to whether the dolphin sets were having a significant adverse impact on any depleted dolphin stock. NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service began a series of studies. There was to be an initial finding in 1999 and a final one between July 1, 2001 and December 31, 2002. Here is where the interesting part starts. By April 1999, NMFS had carried out a first year of status of stocks studies, and collected environmental information in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. NMFS was not able to find much more negative evidence other than the fact that currently depleted populations of both northeastern offshore spotted dolphins and eastern spinner dolphins were not increasing at the rate expected, and noted difficulty in attributing the cause of the low or declining growth rates. Sparse and unreliable data on the coastal spotted dolphins, the third depleted stock, failed to provide population abundance estimates. NMFS also found that it was impossible to get reliable new data on the stress caused by the chasing, and used existing literature to estimate the impacts. The NMFS reports pointed out that existing literature could not provide a quantitative answer, and noted that stress could have a population level effect on the depleted stocks.(the latest results on a chase-related stress study can be found on the Southwest Fisheries Center web site (swfsc.nmfs.noaa.gov/mmd/2001cruises/CHESSFront.htm). CHESS is an acronym for Chase Encirclement Stress Studies. Ironically, many in the environmental sector have objected strenuously to experimenting with intentional encirclement, believing it will harm animals with little benefit, but NMFS is trying hard to find an acceptable protocol. Summarizing all the information they had, NMFS decided that given the best available information and within the constraints of the legislation, it could make an initial finding that there was insufficient evidence to determine that the chase and encirclement of dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific by the tuna purse seine fishery was having a significant adverse impact on any depleted stock in the area. They relied on the fact that the stress studies are multi-year activities that were to be completed by the final finding in 2001/2002. Based on this initial finding, tuna products containing tuna harvested by purse seine vessels would be labeled dolphin safe only if no dolphins were killed or seriously injured during the set in which tuna were caught. On April 12, 1999, the Commerce Department issued the finding that Mexico was in conformance with the requirements of U.S. law. Mexico was pleased: their fishers had reduced their dolphin catch greatly, and now it looked as if they could start to import their tuna caught in purse seines set on dolphins to the U.S. But at the same time a new group was using the power of the courts to stop the implementation. Earth Island, with a different group of animal rights groups (Humane Society, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Defenders of Wildlife, International Wildlife Coalition, Animal Welfare Institute, the Animal Fund, and the Oceanic Society) challenged the Secretary's finding in U.S. District Court in California. A second case was brought in the Court of International Trade in New York. The judge in the California court ruled against the government and overturned the determination. The other nations reacted negatively to the decision, reaffirming their long-standing position that the label change must be part of any solution. The government appealed the decision, expecting to win. I was part of several discussions with the Mexicans, who felt betrayed: they had greatly changed their fishing techniques, and believed they were now being punished. The latest action was a denial of the appeal. The appeals judge ruled in favor of the original decision. The situation now is that NMFS is waiting for the results of the stress studies, and is doing additional work. The other countries are deciding what they will do, but may well decide that the U.S. will never change its laws. The danger there is that they drop the current dolphin safe techniques and we end up with much higher dolphin mortality. But it is also clear that the science evidence is uncertain. My view is in favor of going ahead with the new labeling, because I see the greater danger in country's abandoning their current techniques. But here, public opinion for marine mammal protection has led us in a different direction. Lessons learned:
CASE IV. The National Oceans Conference Ever since NOAA was formed in 1970, it and its sister agencies had felt that ocean issues had not been given the priority they deserved. When I came into NOAA in 1993, I and my team met with other agencies to talk about how we could get better recognition for these important issues. But it was not until 1998, in the context of the international Year of the Ocean, that we were able to make real progress. In this section, I'll discuss how we organized a National Oceans Conference to make things happen and the lessons we learned. We started the process in 1997. I worked with Sally Yozell and Monica Medina of our senior policy staff, and they were assisted by Lori Arguelles, head of our office of public affairs. We started by getting together with a group of colleagues in the Administration to see how we could produce a U.S. response to the many international activities that were being proposed for the 1998 international Year of the Ocean, and how we could use that context to promote awareness of ocean issues in the U.S. There were a lot of different things being discussed by different countries, but nothing that would lead to enhanced resources. My own experience with various "Years" was that there was lots of activity, but not much impact in the long run. A parallel effort was going on in Congress with the development of a National Oceans Act, led by Senator Fritz Hollings who had been a key figure in the implementation of the recommendations of the Stratton Commission in the late 1960s that led to the establishment of NOAA. We hoped that the Conference would help raise awareness of ocean issues, and help with the passage of the National Oceans Act that proposed a new Presidential Commission to make recommendations about the ocean. How could we make substantial progress? I had seen the 1994 White House Conference on Travel and Tourism, and saw the President get fully engaged and offer his support for the subject. There was extensive media coverage. I had also seen other National Conferences where the White House offered its prestige to raise awareness of disease or child care or employment issues. It t seemed to me that this would be a good way to get support for initiatives that we might propose in the future if we got attention now. And we were looking for a way to get White House support for the National Oceans Act,. I suggested to a small group that we try to get a White House Conference on the Oceans, not really knowing at the beginning what it would entail. To start the discussion I used an informal body that had not been convened for some time, the Ocean Principals: a representative from each agency that had an interest in oceans: NOAA, Navy, Coast Guard, Interior, State, NSF, EPA, NASA, and FEMA. I said, let=s put on a show, and invite all the stakeholders: academia, private sector, public, state and local government, tribes: everyone who has a stake in the ocean. There was enthusiasm from some quarters, reluctance from others. NOAA and Coast Guard liked the idea, State and Navy were reluctant at the beginning, partly because of disagreements over the National Oceans Act. NSF and NASA hung back, having broader priorities. The White House representatives wanted to know what we hoped to get out of this. The first lesson we learned was that not everyone was as enthusiastic as we were, but we slowly got them to agree. Lesson: Not all agencies will jump immediately onto a good idea. But we worked with each agency to find something that would help their agenda: for NOAA, a new ocean climate program and a fisheries initiative including support for new ships, for Interior and NOAA support for coral reef management, for Coast Guard, new modernization for ports, for Navy, declassification of data and for Navy and State, passage of the Law of the Sea Treaty. For NSF, we looked for an ocean exploration initiative and for EPA, a beach health initiative. So now we had everybody with something to gain. This was a key part of our efforts: to engage as many as possible. Lesson: Find a way to bring the major political players on board There continued to be wrangling over what group should manage the effort, the informal Ocean Principals, or a more formally organized Interagency Working Group that had been set up at the beginning of the Administration, chaired by State. We next turned to see how we could get the President engaged. We were sure to get the Vice President: he had been interested in these things for a long time, and is a personal friend of mine. We talked to Karen Skelton, who was the democratic coordinator in California, and she suggested that look at a location, Monterey, that, being on the sea was good for photo opportunities. It also houses an important and scenic Navy facility, the Naval Postgraduate School and is close to Stanford University. If we chose the date right, the President and the First Lady would be visiting their daughter Chelsea at the end of the school year. We picked June 12-13, and for all these reasons and possibly more, the President, the First Lady, and the Vice President all agreed to come. This was more than we had hoped, and now we had what we wanted: White House support and exposure for our issues. We learned that venues are important, and made a point in future events to always request the President or Vice President in an ocean setting for ocean-related announcements. Lesson: Venues outside Washington are more attractive for the Administration I thought we had done what we could for this effort. But then, the most interesting and unexpected thing, at least to me, happened: I was visited by the Office of Management and Budget who wanted to know what I wanted from them for this event. I was not sure how to respond to this, but they explained: since the President is coming, he has to make a substantive statement. Such a statement requires new initiatives with budget support. So we're ready to negotiate your budget initiatives now instead of in the fall. When I understood what was happening, I said, to myself – Yes! – and proceeded to work with the other agencies to put together a series of requests for support for existing and new initiatives. This taught us the power of Presidential involvement. Lesson: A National Conference brings support for new initiatives Now we were rolling: high level attendance, new initiatives with OMB support, and great media attention. The only place we were lacking was a broad based congressional delegation. The local members, Sam Farr, Barbara Boxer, and former member Leon Panetta, were all on board and ready to participate. But we wanted Republicans as well, since oceans issues are bipartisan. But in the end, even though several Republicans had agreed to attend, we only had one or two. I expect that the high-level White House presence and the attendance of local Democrats made it more partisan than we had expected. This is one area where we failed to do what we wanted, but it may be that the politics made it impossible to be really bipartisan. Lesson: It is not easy to get bipartisan attendance at a White House dominated event Finally, we wanted to ensure all sectors of ocean players, so we worked with various groups to make sure that the environmental community, the private sector user community, state and local government were all invited and agreed to come. The H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, led by William J. Merrell, held a series of meetings involving all of these stakeholders leading up to the conference, to provide input. The Heinz Center reports that came out of these meetings were very valuable as reference material for the conference itself. So all was in place, and we were ready for the event: the people, the initiatives, the organization, and the media. Lesson: Hard work will bring in the stakeholders But then, almost at the last minute, a new aspect appeared: the White House wanted to add a new moratorium on offshore drilling. The proposal was to continue the moratorium that already existed from the George Bush administration for a number of coastal areas, and to put a new moratorium on drilling in Marine Sanctuaries. Although this is not an unreasonable proposal, and only a modest change from what Bush had done, the offshore drilling community felt blind sided. I think this was mainly because they didn=t know about it, and think they were led to believe that drilling moratoria would not be part of the effort. As a consequence, they pulled out, and dropped their support for the National Oceans Act. It was not until two years later that Senator Hollings was able to get the Oceans Act passed. This was the unintended consequence of White House involvement in the conference. Lesson: Involvement of the White House may bring some initiatives you didn't expect We had excellent coverage of the issues, everyone got their points across, and I think a grand time was had by all. What were the lasting consequences? In the end, thanks to the fact that the Congress saw that the Administration was publically behind oceans issues, we got substantial new funding for several of the agencies involved: NOAA ships, ocean climate monitoring, interagency coral reef funding, new interagency coordination on marine protected areas, and an ocean exploration initiative. The coral reef support led to the establishment of a Coral Reef Task Force that was very effective in the next two years in getting resources to protect these national treasures. On the negative side, although the Conference gave its highest priority to the U.S. joining the Law of the Sea Treaty, a point that was made strongly by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, the Administration was not able to convince Congress to agree to the treaty. A final result was that after two years, Congress passed the National Oceans Act, which led to a Presidential Commission appointed by President George W. Bush. Lesson: A National Conference can bring substantial new resources and policy direction So, from underfunding and inattention, we were able to bring substantial new light to oceans issues. Of course there is much more to be done, but because the conference was a success, and viewed as a success by the White House, we were able to continue to have ocean events led by the President: – four in the last year of his presidency which announced follow-ons to those things I already discussed. Bill Daley, Secretary of Commerce, continued to provide strong support, and his replacement, Norm Mineta, declared that oceans would be one of his major priorities. A National Conference is clearly a useful tool in getting awareness. WORKING IN WASHINGTON: USING THE LESSONS Working in Washington has a special character all its own. Any decision that is to stand has to have the agreement of four parties: the executive branch, the public as represented by Congress, the courts, and special interest groups like the private sector, universities, non- governmental organizations, or others. When all four of these sectors can work together, progress can be made. What I have tried to do here is to show you how some problems can be approached, and what lessons were learned to help us do better in the future. By using case studies, I hope to add substance to the existing debate about implementing sustainability. I realize that each case is unique and that the opportunities and constraints at the time we dealt with the problem can't be duplicated. But there are some general lessons to be learned, and perhaps our efforts to take on these problems and deal with them head on will inspire others to do the same and make progress in different ways. I strongly believe that in the end, it is only through specific application of ideas on the ground that will make a difference, and get us on the road to sustainability. • Return to Baker's Carnegie Commission remarks. (Return to Top) Posted 10.07.02 |
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