Ecosystem management, decentralization, and public opinion

Abstract In recent years there has been a movement by administrators and policymakers across the country to reorganize and reinvent government to improve program efficiencies, to harness resources outside government in the service of public policy goals, and to better facilitate the input of affected interests and the general public. Central to this effort are innovative, decentralized institutional arrangements which delegate significant authority either to private citizens, program managers within existing bureaucracy, or market-based mechanisms. Ecosystem- and watershed-based management, which seek to both prevent pollution and sustain development, are in the vanguard of this movement. This paper examines this trend toward decentralizing environmental policy and the use of ecosystem management from the perspective of the public. Planning and implementation of devolved environmental policy will require the support of local stakeholders and citizens. Using data from a national public opinion survey conducted during the summer of 1998, the paper examines factors associated with public acceptability of ecosystem management and the preferred level of government and citizen participation that should be involved in the implementation of such management strategies.

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