Using a Collaborative Approach to Solve Land-Management Problems

September 21, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute

Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resource Management
by Julia M. Wondolleck and Steven L. Yaffee

When it comes to tackling environmental problems on or near public lands, a growing trend in resource management emphasizes collaboration — rather than conflict — among government agencies, private landowners, environmental activists, and non-profit groups, write the authors.

Ms. Wondolleck and Mr. Yaffee, both professors at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, present case studies of such public-private partnerships to illustrate what they see as the benefits of collaboration. They also outline steps that environmental groups, government agencies, and activists can take to create local alliances to solve environmental problems.

For example, they use the experiences of the Cameron County Agricultural Coexistence Committee in southern Texas to show how alliances between traditional adversaries can help all parties approach problems in new and different ways. The committee comprised farmers, government officials, and environmentalists working together to address the threat agricultural pesticides posed to endangered animals in the Laguna Atacosa National Wildlife Refuge.

Publisher: Island Press, P.O. Box 7, Department 2PR, Covelo, Calif. 95428; (800) 828-1302; http://www.islandpress.org; 277 pages; $50 cloth, $25 paper; I.S.B.N. 1-55963-461-8 cloth, 1-55963-462-6 paper.

About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.