USGS Seminar

Seminar: Joint Fact Finding – Finding Your Way through the Thicket of Science Intensive Disputes.
Sept 20-21, 2005
Tues: 9am-5pm
Weds: 8am-4pm

USGS Office of Employee Development, National Training Center
Denver, Colorado
Snowmass Room E-2309

Citizens discover that a proposal to clean up contaminated groundwater will also draw down precipitously the water levels of local ponds and streams essential to the local economy and quality of life.

 

A recent scientific report that future volcanic eruptions could impact the nation’s lone long-term storage facility for high-level nuclear waste, fuels threats of litigation to prevent its use.

 

Activists angrily confront scientists at a public meeting over the fact that remotely sensed data revealed fishing grounds that are culturally important to native peoples.

 

A group of angry property owners insist a proposed offshore wind energy farm will destroy migrating birds and bats, harm marine mammals in the area, and demand that the Department of the Interior stop such a development.

How can technically credible and publicly legitimate information be provided to resolve, or at least focus, the debates in these situations? Have you been in these or similar situations where science is inappropriately used or even ignored? Can DOI representatives who are expected to provide high quality, non-partisan scientific and technical information help?

 

Over the last twenty years, a strategy has emerged that enables scientists, policy makers, and stakeholder representatives to interact more effectively in these kinds of science-intensive disputes. This strategy is known as joint fact finding (JFF). JFF includes scientists, decision makers, and citizens in collaborative efforts to scope, conduct, and utilize technical and scientific studies for better decision-making. As a unique part of consensus building, JFF offers a practical approach to integrating science and politics in ecosystem and resource management. JFF enables scientists to participate in contentious debates without compromising their independence or their commitment to the ‘best practice’ of scientific inquiry. JFF also helps agency scientists and engineers ensure that policy makers and stakeholder representatives don’t ignore good science, but rather, include it meaningfully into their decision processes.

COURSE OVERVIEW

The MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative and the Consensus Building Institute have developed and will offer this course. Course trainers include a senior research scientist with more than 25 years experience and a veteran mediator of complex environmental and natural resource disputes. This course is informed by twenty-five years of experience and two intensive years of action-research at MIT.

This course will introduce scientists and field- through senior-level managers to the theory and practice of joint fact finding. The course is intensive, highly interactive, and uses materials developed explicitly for DOI agencies.

 

What you will learn…

• What is joint fact finding and how it includes a spectrum of techniques.
• How JFF fits into larger consensus building efforts.
• How JFF is and is not being used by DOI bureaus.
• How to determine if a situation is appropriate for joint fact finding.
• How JFF processes can be designed and implemented.
• How joint fact finding (JFF) can help create knowledge that is technically credible, publicly legitimate, and relevant to policy and management decision makers.
• The key steps in the JFF process and the techniques required to carry them out:
  1. Understanding the interests and issues at stake.
  2. Determining whether JFF is appropriate.
  3. Scoping a JFF process.
  4. Defining the precise questions to be asked and the most appropriate methods of analysis.
  5. Concluding a JFF process and generating agreement.
  6. Implementing the results of JFF and collaborative decision-making.
• Institutional obstacles to JFF in ecosystem and resource management and strategies for overcoming them.

What you will do…

• Utilize actual cases and exercises of joint fact finding to explore concepts, techniques, and lessons learned.
• Practice with others designing and implementing a joint fact finding process.
• Discuss how JFF can be used in your particular circumstances through a facilitated clinic.
• You’ll learn from your fellow participants as well as the three instructors.
• Reflect on the challenges you are likely to face in applying JFF in your own situation.

INTENDED AUDIENCE

The course is designed for scientists and field through senior level managers from all DOI agencies. The course is intended to include a diverse mixture of participants to ensure a lively and instructive dialogue. We encourage scientists, field staff, and managers all to attend. This course is intended for those with a general familiarity with collaborative processes. It is not intended for those who already have extensive training in consensus building, public participation, and collaborative problem solving unless they wish to refresh their skills and knowledge.

REGISTRATION/TUITION

DOI attendees, fax a completed SF-182 Training Authorization to Gloria Armstrong (Fax: 303-445-4665, tel 303-445-4676 garmstrong@usgs.gov). Please include your telephone, Fax and E-mail address on the fax coversheet. All registrations accepted on a “first received, first seat” basis.

USGS attendees, please register via the Training Management System http://oedntcw1.cr.usgs.gov/tms/tmsinstructions.html

All others please contact Gloria Armstrong, above.

Tuition for All Attendees: $575.00

DIRECTIONS TO THE USGS NATIONAL TRAINING CENTER

Go to http://training.usgs.gov/ntc/about_facility.html

INSTRUCTORS

Herman Karl
USGS, Chief Scientist: Western Geographic Science Center
Co-Director: MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative

Patrick Field
Managing Director: Consensus Building Institute
Associate Director: MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program

Peter S. Adler, Ph.D.
President: The Keystone Center

The MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (MUSIC) is a partnership among the USGS Science Impact program, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Environmental Policy Group in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MUSIC fosters field-based efforts to test and evaluate the effectiveness of joint fact finding as an approach to improve linkages between the use of science and management and policy decisions and to understand better the relationship among joint fact finding, other collaborative processes and approaches such as adaptive management. MUSIC also encourages the education of a range of interested publics regarding the role of experts and stakeholders in science-intensive environmental policy-making. The hypothesis driving MUSIC is that public involvement in science-intensive policy disputes can only be meaningful or effective when and if proper tools are used to allow stakeholders with varying degrees of scientific and technical knowledge to engage in high-quality joint fact finding. This hypothesis links the substance of expert analysis with indigenous knowledge through process methods such as formal consensus building in an endeavor to produce better natural resources and ecosystems management decisions that lead to stable environmental policy.

The Consensus Building Institute is a non-profit organization created by leading practitioners and theory builders in the field of dispute resolution. CBI serves public agencies and private sector clients worldwide by providing dispute resolution services, training, negotiation and consensus building techniques, and evaluative research. Since 1993, CBI has worked in 11 countries and 28 states to provide consensus building advice and assistance to more than 100 agencies, corporations, and associations.

CBI plays a key role in helping to build the intellectual capital in the dispute resolution field through pioneering work on global environmental treaty-making, documentation of “best practices” in the dispute resolution field, joint training in negotiation, design of simulations, and other advanced training techniques in the mediation of multi-party, multi-issue public disputes. CBI is associated with the Public Disputes Program of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Environmental Policy Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Founded In 1974, The Keystone Center develops practical and implementable solutions to pressing societal and environmental problems. Keystone believes the key ingredients for fashioning solutions are people concerned about pressing issues, solid technical and scientific information, collaborative reasoning strategies, and critical-thinking. The hallmarks of all Keystone programs are neutrality and independence, the careful use of scientific and technical information to aid decision-making tool, the enabling of improbable partnerships and collective leadership, and the use of “outside-the-meeting-room” experiences to understand problems and ground-truth possible solutions. The Center accomplishes its mission through two centers of excellence, one of which focuses on public policy, the other of which focuses on education. Each year the Center conducts 10 to 20 policy dialogues in the areas of environment, energy, and public health; trains 200 teachers in new methods of science education; and provides field experiences in scientific problem solving for 3,000 middle and high school students.