2018 Conference

Discussion Symposium

I am proposing a discussion symposium on the topic, “Bringing Bio-Environmentalists and Social Greens Back In: Reflections on Fostering Transformative Change within US-Based Professional Environmental Management Programs.” Panelists would reflect on, and discuss, ideas related to the (evolving) paper I drafting that critiques what appears to be two related trends within US professionasl environmental management programs: an emphasis on technical skills and quantitative modeling training at the expense of theoretical, conceptual and philosophical scholarship; and the embracing of market mechanisms and utility maximization frameworks over environmental problem solving (a more detailed justification abstract is below). I am proposing that a panel of scholars respond this paper as a way to foster thinking about how to transform environmental management programs that reinforce, rather than detract from environmental problem solving.

Format: 1) Panelists would take 5-8 minutes to reflect in arguments/themes raised in the paper. 2) We we would then turn to an audience Q and A for remainder. 3) Ideas for action from the symposium would be produced in a briefing note and circulated to participants.

• Are professional environment schools preparing student for the next generation of environmental problem solving?
• Is the neo-liberal trend among universitiesw in general, and reliance on private sector resources, minimizing education needed to address deep challenges that much incorporate, rather than eschew, class, power, gender, and ethical obligations?
• Do professional environmental management programs also help reinforce similar shifts towards markets and private sector solutiosn now common in international, domestic and environmental organizations?
• What are solutions for overcoming these challenges?

PAGE AND HALF ABSTRACT OF CASHORE’ PAPER,

BRINGING BIO-ENVIRONMENTALSTS AND SOCIAL GREENS BACK IN:

Reflections on Fostering Transformative Change within US-Based

Professional Environmental Management Programs

DRAFT.

 Comments welcome: Benjamin.cashore@yale.edu

ABSTRACT: I apply Clapp and Dauvergne’s (2005) ‘four environmental world views’ framework to argue that the original inspiration in the late 1960s and early 1970s for the championing of professional graduate environment studies and management training can be traced back to ‘bio-environmentalists’ who targeted large scale industrial activity and likeminded ‘social greens’ who asked how local cultural practices might confront the homogeneity of economic globalization. These problem focused communities of practitioners and scholars championed new arenas of learning within existing universities to create space that would be devoted to training students about scientific research and knowledge regarding species decline, biodiversity loss, land use degradation, pollution, and implications for ‘ecosystem management’. For instrumental reasons, these efforts also included coalitions with political science and law trained ‘institutionalist’ world views scholars who focused on regulations and cooperation, as well as economists fostering ‘market liberal’ world views who drew on utility maximizing frameworks to foster efficient implementation of strong environmental regulations. Today, I argue, there seems to be prima facie evidence that the ‘pecking order’ of world views within some professional environmental graduate programs has been reversed[i]: market liberal and likeminded game-theoretic ‘rational choice’ scholars dominate, while social greens are tolerated when their research and teaching emphasizes human needs as the problem definition, which works to subtly reinforce development and/or economic growth as first order problems over environmental problem definitions. Those holding a bio-environmentalist world view now seem themselves, an endangered species.

If plausible, the implications for pedagogy also appear significant. Today, it seems that students in some cases, are being taught, and trained to believe, that utility maximizing frameworks provide the ‘rigorous’ ‘data driven’ scientific answer about whether, rather than how, society is able to address environmental problems.  Similarly, it seems that many scholars and practitioners previously classified as bio-environmentalists, now reinforce market liberal utility maximizing ‘ecosystem services’ approaches even when doing so is inconsistent with basic scientific research and evidence about a particular environmental challenge. These changes coincide with a perspective that views as ‘unprofessional’ the types of civil disobedience tactics the led to significant transformative change in the 1960s.

These trends, I argue, have occurred alongside increasing engagement with powerful ‘stakeholders’ – often with those whose businesses practices caused the environmental degradation in question –whose motivations for engaging, and providing resources for teaching, internship opportunities, and training, is to promote compromise that undermines environental priorities. The result over time is a subtle, but powerful shift, from the championing of ‘science’ as a source of knowledge for understanding, and addressing, environmental problem solving in the 1970s; to instead, as a powerful ideational tool in which a subjective belief system that promotes balancing environmental, social and economic goals, reinforced by the twin concepts of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainability science’, is taught, incorrectly, as being scientifically objective. Ironically, the pursuit of science in selected professional environment programs is now treated synonymously with ‘conflict resolution’ ‘neutrality’ and ‘balance’. If this argument has merit, then the concern is that, in the name of ‘rational science’, some approaches may reinforce ‘irrational’ policies championed by powerful interests who prefer compromise over problem solving.[ii]

I elaborate the argument by locating the decline of bioenvironmental world views in professional environmental management programs as part of broader global and domestic trends (Bernstein 2001, Shapiro 2007). I then identify implications for choices about what type of research priorities are emphasized, disciplinary and methodological biases governing faculty recruitment, administrative leadership, and on the types of centers and programs that are nurtured. I turn to ‘micro-level’ examples to illustrate the plausibility of these arguments, and as a way to pave the way for more systematic, empirical, and comparative analysis. I then identify initial propositions that might explain the decline. I reflect on solutions for enhancing the role of bio-environmentalists and social greens in ways that allow them to integrate insights from, rather than be dominated by, market liberals and like-minded institutionalists.

To do so, I argue graduate professional environmental management programs must reinstate the environment as their ‘raison d’etre’. (Just the way public health continues to be the focus of professional public health programs; forestry practices the focus of professional forestry programs, mining the focus of professional mining programs, crop management the focus of agricultural programs, sick and injured people are the focus of medicine and nursing programs, people in need of help are the focus of social work programs, business organizations are the focus of business programs, and government is the focus of schools of public administration and public policy). I argue that, if future research supports this argument, the current trajectory is bound to end up badly for three reasons. First, the logical conclusion of the expansion to such a broader set of economic and social science problem orientations is that environmental management programs could simply mirror longstanding topics already covered well in various programs and departments of social sciences, humanities and economics (and which existed long before the environmental agenda emerged, and before professional environmental programs were created to fill perceived university gaps). Second, and similarly, the turn to an emphasis on ahistorical technocratic skills (whether they be cost-benefit analysis, multi-goal policy analysis, communications[iii], public speaking skills, budgeting, or how to manage multi-stakeholder ‘dialogues’) are problem agnostic - professionals in any industry or sector, focusing on any problem ought to have exposure to them to advance their own organizational goals (be they focused on promoting palm oil expansion for economic development, or stopping palm oil development to save forests). While environmental management programs should make sure their students have access to these skills as they are fundamental for fostering ‘equilibriums’ with those professionals trained in programs and schools that teach extraction who also have these same skills, these should not be treated as the ‘bread and butter’ of problem focused environmental management programs. In fact, universities already tend to teach these skills elsewhere, including in programs/schools of management/business; public administration/policy, planning, law and communications/journalism.

Hence, the logical consequences of expanding well beyond, and undermining, the environmental problems alongside teaching ahistorical technocratic skills is that professional environmental management programs will render themselves superfluous – as there are other longstanding institutions, programs, departments and schools within the university that already teach, research, and train in these areas.

Third, and most importantly, if this trajectory is borne out by future research, then it does not simply raise profound institutional challenges regarding the mission and direction of professional environmental management programs within university settings. In addition, there are strong societal consequences and implications at play. This is because, I argue, such worlds views and associated influences on pedagogy risks producing well-trained environmental professionals to ‘manage the deck chairs on the Titanic’, while downplaying skills necessary for steering society away from, rather than accepting as inevitable, the ecological catastrophes towards which the planet is headed.

[i] Some of these changes in world views might have happened quickly, rather than years later. But the rationale, I argue, is the same as EPA, endangered species act, UNEP environment agencies. Hence need to subject the exact nature of these changes to empirical scrutiny. But there is little doubt the rationale for environment management programs were to focus on the environment as the problem definition, which is a bioenvironmentalist emphasis.

[ii] This ‘rational/irrational’ turn, is reinforced by filling faculty and administrative hires with those whose expertise emphasizes market friendly, technocratic and large-N ‘data-driven’ approaches, while downplaying, or ignoring, faculty and disciplines that emphasize historical and qualitative research on power, inequality, race, gender, justice and class. These biases are then reflected throughout the entire systems, including environment school administrators’ evaluations of student led civil disobedience tactics as ‘disrespectful’ and ‘unprofessional’, when widespread research on environmental social movements (now conducted largely outside of professional environmental programs) emphasizes their role in fostering meaningful and transformative change (including the creation of professional environmental management programs in the first place).

[iii] In other words, we can and should be asking, and answering, the following question: are students being taught ‘environmental communication’ learning the same skills as those being taught in, say, ‘mining communication?’