BU-07565     2000  

The Promise and Challenges of the Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships

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Scott J. Peters, Karen P. Lehman, Julie Ristau, Okechukwu Ukaga, and Don Wyse

In the twenty-first century, people and organizations face the increasingly urgent task of creating effective opportunities for facilitating sustainable development. A timely and innovative initiative for pursuing this task, the Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships, was established in Minnesota in 1997. At this early stage in its development, stakeholders and policymakers at the regional, university and state levels face an array of critical program and policy decisions. To help inform the tasks and decisions stakeholders and policymakers face, this paper explores the accomplishments, challenges and promise of the regional partnerships initiative.

Scott J. Peters is Senior Associate, Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Karen P. Lehman holds the School of Agriculture Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems.

Julie Ristau holds the School of Agriculture Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems.

Okechukwu Ukaga is Executive Director, Northeast Regional Partnership.

Donald Wyse is Professor, Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics.

David S. Wilsey is Research Assistant, Sustainable Financing for Rural Minnesota.

Debra Elias Morse is Lead Consultant, Sustainable Financing for Rural Minnesota.

Introduction

With the support of the Minnesota legislature, the University of Minnesota is working to advance sustainable development and community resiliency in Minnesota through an innovative initiative, the Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships. With significant activities in three regions of the state and start-up processes in two others, the Regional Partnerships have provided over $1 million to 49 sustainable development-focused projects in Greater Minnesota since they began operating in 1998.

The Regional Partnership initiative is important both for its focus on facilitating sustainable development and community resiliency, and for its establishment of a new, ongoing mechanism for strengthening the voice and role of citizens in the work of their land grant university, the University of Minnesota. The special promise of the Regional Partnership initiative is its aim of deepening the relevance and utility of the University of Minnesota as a partner in long-term sustainable development work.

The Regional Partnership initiative is still in its infancy. At this early stage in its development, stakeholders and policymakers at the regional, university, and state levels face an array of critical program and policy decisions, including how to build trust and respect between citizens and faculty, how to determine what programs to support, how to overcome institutional barriers, how to evaluate success, and whether or not the initiative should be expanded to cover additional regions. To help inform the tasks and decisions stakeholders and policymakers face, this paper explores the accomplishments, challenges, and promise of the Minnesota Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships.

Background

In its 1987 report, Our Common Future, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. 43). The Minnesota legislature adopted this definition in 1996, adding that sustainable development "maintains or enhances economic opportunity and community well-being while protecting and restoring the natural environment upon which people and economies depend" (Minnesota Statutes, Section 4A.07). The Minnesota legislature"s definition reflects an understanding of sustainable development as a "three-legged stool" incorporating economic, environmental, and social dimensions.

Pursuing this view of sustainable development is complex and challenging work. Such work requires a blend of organizing, education, and policy-making that respects and promotes the inseparable interconnections between economic, environmental, social, political, cultural and spiritual issues and goals. It requires explicit efforts to support change and innovation in complex systems that include people, communities, institutions and industries related to sustainable development.

In its 1998 report to the governor, the Minnesota Round Table on Sustainable Development recommended the establishment of a new institution outside of government to facilitate sustainable development. "Sometimes, new concepts need new institutions to support them," they argued. "While we are committed to change within existing institutions ~ and consider such change essential ~ we also believe that a new institution may be needed to help people and organizations understand and pursue opportunities for sustainable development" (Minnesota Round Table on Sustainable Development, 1998, p. 18). As it happens, the Minnesota legislature had already provided support for an initiative devoted to this goal in 1997 when it passed a $1.2 million per biennium appropriation for the establishment of the Minnesota Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships. While maintaining strong linkages to government and Minnesota"s publicly-supported land grant university, the regional partnerships initiative provides a new citizen-driven mechanism for ongoing learning and work on sustainable development.

The original concept of creating a set of regional sustainable development partnerships was initiated in 1993 by Donald Wyse, Executive Director of the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (MISA) and a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with a diverse group of stakeholders in the university and the community. The concept was revised and further developed by the MISA staff and board over a four-year period (1993-1997), drawing on the suggestions and ideas of a diverse group of farmers, rural citizens, legislators, and university students, faculty and administrators. The revised concept, which was broadened beyond agriculture to include tourism and natural resource-based industries, was included in the 1997 legislative session request of the College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences (COAFES), the College of Natural Resources (CNR), and the University of Minnesota Extension Service. The request was successfully passed in June 1997, resulting in a biennial appropriation of $1.2 million to establish the sustainable development partnership concept in three ecologically distinct regions of the state. An additional $1.2 million per biennium was appropriated in June 1999, allowing for the establishment of two additional regional partnerships (Northwest and West Central) and the hiring of staff to provide statewide support and coordination. Several additional regions have been identified for future expansion.

The Minnesota Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships

Purpose

Data from interviews with persons who participated in the development and implementation of the Regional Partnership initiative reveal an ambitious view of the initiative"s purpose as a means for addressing a broad set of problems and challenges related to sustainable development and community resilience at both regional and university levels. At the regional level, these problems include a host of economic, environmental, social, civic, and cultural challenges related to the effects of mainstream practices in agricultural and natural resource-based industries, and the dislocations and shifts of an increasingly competitive global economy. At the university level, the list of perceived problems includes the erosion of financial support and internal rewards for "public interest" oriented research and outreach; the influence of private sector money on research agendas and the lack of public money and influence available to citizens; and a lopsided focus in research and extension work on technical efficiency and productivity that does not adequately address the environmental, social, civic, and cultural dimensions of sustainability. Overarching the problems identified at the regional and university levels is the problem of an erosion of respect and trust between citizens and university faculty and administrators.

The core purpose of the Regional Partnership initiative is not to single-handedly "solve" all the above-named problems. Rather, the core purpose is best understood as having two interrelated parts or dimensions:

1. To provide an ongoing, structured opportunity for citizens and faculty to discuss and shape educational work on sustainability and community resilience in specific regions, incorporating the knowledge, values and views of all stakeholders in reaching a measure of public judgment about what needs to be done.
2. To provide citizens with the resources and authority to engage the University of Minnesota and other organizations and resources in collaborative public work initiatives that address the goals, values and insights that regional processes produce.

The Regional Partnerships" focus on public judgment and collaborative public work reflects core principles gleaned from recent scholarship on sustainable development.

While the literature on sustainable development contains a good deal of disagreement and debate over definitions of terms and the specifics of policy and practice options (Elliot, 1999), there is an underlying measure of agreement on four core principles (e.g., Chambers, 1993; Lee, 1993; Maser, 1997; Lubchenco, 1998; Roling and Wagemakers, 1998; Pretty, 1995; Prugh, Costanza and Daly, 2000).

1. Sustainable development must be viewed as having three interrelated dimensions: environmental, economic, and social. Two-sided definitions that focus only on economics and the environment lead to ineffective policies and practices.
2. The problem of facilitating a shift to sustainable development is not simply a problem of technical change; the development and adoption of new technologies must be accompanied by fundamental shifts in both culture and politics.
3. Successful approaches to sustainable development require transformations in the role and work of scientific experts and policy-making professionals that allow for a more civic or public practice that encourages respectful and reciprocal partnerships with a broad range of stakeholders.
4. Sustainable development is not an endpoint or a predefined goal: It is a continuous journey that requires community- or place-based mechanisms that offer ongoing opportunities for a diverse base of participants to work and learn together.

To a remarkable degree, the Regional Partnership initiative explicitly embraces each of the above principles. It also reflects the conclusions of recent scholarship on the challenge of civic renewal and community resilience, which stress the need for developing practical, innovative mechanisms for building and engaging the civic capacities, spirit, and voice of ordinary people (e.g., Barber, 1984; Yankelovich, 1991; Chrislip and Larson, 1994; Boyte and Kari, 1996; Box, 1998; Mathews, 1999).

Accomplishments

The Regional Partnerships" accomplishments begin with the definition of their boundaries. While the regions are drawn with attentiveness to formal political boundaries, they are also defined by natural, bioregional features such as watersheds, plateaus, prairies, and glacial features. Each Regional Partnership relies first on an assessment of its unique natural and social features before developing a plan of action.

From our interviews and observations, we have identified a number of significant accomplishments the Regional Partnerships have achieved in their first few years. The Partnerships have:

• Established citizen boards, including university faculty and staff from the regions, to guide their work;
• Hired executive directors in each region to develop local boards, administer programs, access university resources, and organize relationships between the university and the regions;
• Involved hundreds of people in providing direction to regional work on sustainable development through regional asset inventory processes;
• Established regional working groups to develop strategies for addressing issues the board and other members of the region have ranked as priorities. These include food and agriculture, energy, water quality, and tourism;
• Worked closely with university faculty and staff on campuses and through county extension offices to bring university research and technical assistance resources into the regional work on sustainable development;
• Begun to develop an educational model that blurs the boundary between university and community and creates the opportunity for questions of sustainability to be at the center of applied university research;
• Provided $1 million in funding to 49 joint community-university programs addressing regional sustainable development issues;
• Laid the groundwork for a long-term, university-community commitment to facilitate access to university resources by citizens from the regions.

Linking the Environmental, Economic and Social Aspects of Sustainability

All three regional partnerships are promoting initiatives that address the environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainable development. Citizen boards from the region decide which projects should receive resources to enter into partnership with the university.

Central Regional Partnership

The Central Region, which includes Todd, Morrison, Crow Wing, Cass, Becker, Hubbard, Wadena and East Ottertail counties, has awarded over $150,000 to nineteen projects. These include projects in agro-tourism, sustainable community economic development, direct marketing of farm products, and the implementation of sustainable practices in agriculture. These projects represent the collaborations among a variety of community and university actors necessary to promote sustainable development. For example, the Hubbard County resort owners are collaborating with the Chamber of Commerce, county extension staff, farmers, and the University of Minnesota Tourism Center to develop a pilot program for an agriculture tourism venture. The Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and the Central Chapter of the Sustainable Farming Association are working together to develop "farmer profiles" of farmers interested in direct-marketing their products. The university"s department of Agricultural Economics will work with four pilot communities to develop sustainable community development projects.

Northeast Regional Partnership

The Northeast Regional Partnership has supported five major projects with collaboration at the local, state, and even international levels. Based in St. Louis, Lake, Cook and Carlton counties, the Partnership is working with the Sustainable Farming Association to implement a community-based strategic planning program. At a regional level, they are joining with the State of Minnesota"s Department of Natural Resources and seven other partners from Canada and the U.S. to develop a long-term monitoring program in the Rainy River watershed. They are also working with the Gunflint Trail Forest Restoration Research and Education Project to develop a sustainable management plan to help landowners deal with the natural disaster that resulted in the blow-down of 450,000 acres of forest in the region. These efforts bring both university and community resources to bear on complex regional problems.

Southeast Regional Partnership

The Southeast Regional Partnership, self-named the Experiment in Rural Cooperation (ERC), is a laboratory for approaches that may shape how the work of partnerships in new regions is done. Covering the majority of Goodhue, Wabasha, Dodge, Olmsted, Winona, Mower, Fillmore and Houston counties, the ERC is aggressively promoting sustainable development and community resiliency in a variety of ways and has developed and implemented several experimental approaches to linking university and community partners.

In addition to soliciting and providing support for a broad range of specific programs that address sustainable development and community resiliency in the region, the ERC has initiated three working groups to explore issues and questions that have regional implications: the Equity Finance Task Force, the Southeast Food Working Group, and the Animal Processing Study Group. Composed of community residents and university faculty and students, these working groups are establishing long-term collaborative relationships that are developing new ideas for addressing sustainabil-ity that could have impact well beyond the Southeast Region. For example, the Equity Finance Task Force, initiated by a banker who serves on the ERC board, is breaking new ground in economic development strategies for rural Minnesota. The group is developing a model for sustainable financing incorporating innovative mechanisms to stimulate local and regional investment in southeast Minnesota businesses. These efforts are fundamental to the long-term resilience of southeast Minnesota communities facing the simultaneous challenges of agricultural crisis and urban sprawl.

The ERC is focusing much of its energy on gaining access to resources at the University of Minnesota. It is developing "Quick Hitch," a collaborative model for education, research, and outreach that promises to improve the speed, effectiveness, and breadth of community linkages to a variety of university programs, departments and centers. Within this framework, the ERC is developing a three-year commitment to serve rural Minnesota from a broad range of departments that have not previously worked closely together. The Carlson School of Management, the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the Institute of Technology, and the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, among others, have begun exploring how they might work with the traditional "land grant" colleges, departments, and centers based in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, the College of Human Ecology, and the College of Natural Resources on the St. Paul campus in projects that address sustainability in rural communities.

As a first step in this exploration, these colleges and departments are engaging in a dialogue with the ERC"s Southeast Food Working Group. Composed of programs that have entered into partnership agreements with the ERC, the Southeast Food Working Group is taking a long-term systemic approach to food and agriculture-based sustainable development in the southeast region. The group has developed a list of over thirty research, technical assistance, and marketing questions to present to university colleges that have expressed an interest in collaboration. These range from studies of regional marketing efforts in other areas of the country to business planning for sustainably-produced beef and pork, to biodiversity studies for new woody agriculture systems. The long-term vision of the group was well-expressed by a farmer with a fruit and vegetable business who asserted that "I don"t just want to go to the university, get support for my project and leave it at that. I want to know that this will add up to something for the region over the long term."

The university has responded to the opportunities for collaboration the ERC is offering in creative and important ways. One of the ERC supported projects, an apple cooperative that is experimenting with new ways of marketing frozen Minnesota apples to high-end bakeries, has been accepted as a "client" by a marketing class in the Carlson School of Management. Another ERC supported project is linking a team of greenhouse experts with two vegetable growers who are experimenting with greenhouse designs that use renewable energy.

Even the mechanics of this process have created new opportunities for collaboration with the university. Prior to the regional partnerships, the university could only relate to community collaborators as "vendors" of services. As a result of the ERC"s work, the university has created a new category of "Partnership Agreements" that best represent the new collaborative relationship between the university and community partners. These partnership agreements are the means by which all regions may implement their partnership work.

Challenges

While significant accomplishments have been made in the early life of the Regional Partnership initiative, there are two major sets of challenges that must be addressed to increase the Regional Partnerships" chances for success. The first set of challenges centers on the complexity of the issues themselves. There is an underlying tension between different views about what sustainable development is and how it should be pursued. This tension will always be present in a diverse world. The challenge is to learn how to negotiate conflict and discover common ground, allowing multiple voices and perspectives to be heard without resulting in polarization or paralysis. Furthermore, while the Regional Partnerships have generated much initial excitement and hope, the tough, ongoing work of pursuing sustainability requires persistence, patience, and follow-through. How to keep people at the table through the inevitable times of conflict and frustration is a key challenge.

The second set of challenges lies in the university/community nexus and how each actor defines itself in relation to the other. The Regional Partnerships initiative is not a market-based approach that sees the university as a "service provider" to passive community "customers." Rather, it is a deeply civic initiative that depends upon the active participation and contributions of each partner. It returns the University of Minnesota to its land grant roots as a "people"s university" devoted to engaging faculty, staff, students, and community members in collaborative public work aimed at enhancing the commonwealth. In a time when market models and approaches are becoming increasingly influential in shaping higher education"s culture and practices (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), adopting and pursuing civic approaches can be extremely challenging. Yet there are signs of an emerging movement for civic renewal in higher education that may lend support to the Regional Partnership initiative. As a signatory of the Presidents" Fourth of July Declaration on the Civic Responsibility of Higher Education, the University of Minnesota is committed to reinvigorating its public purpose and civic mission, joining a national movement of over 400 colleges and universities devoted to the task of strengthening higher education institutions" role as "vital agents and architects of a flourishing democracy" (Ehrlich and Hollander, 1999).

The Regional Partnership initiative"s civic approach is also supported by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities (University of Minnesota President Mark Yudof serves as a member of this commission). In its 1998 report, Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged University, the commission defines engagement as "two-way partnerships, reciprocal relationships between university and community, defined by mutual respect for the strengths of each," where the "purpose of engagement is not to provide the university"s superior expertise to the community, but to encourage joint academic-community definitions of problems, solutions, and success." To pursue this view of engagement, the report recommends, among other things, that interdisciplinary work be encouraged and that new incentives be created to advance engagement.

Several of the challenges facing the Regional Partnerships are related to the challenges of pursuing the Kellogg Commission"s robust view of engagement.

• The regional partnerships face significant challenges inherent in the mechanics of collaboration. The community and university timeframes are out of sync. The university must often plan a year in advance to marshal its resources, especially those tied to students and classes, while community people often want and need assistance immediately.
• The university and rural communities are both complex social organizations. Points of entry are not always clear in either case, and the potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding are great.
• There is an ongoing challenge in developing mutual respect between ordinary citizens and university experts and scholars. The knowledge and capacities of both citizens and faculty must be honored; each must have enough humility to be open to learning from the other.
• Faculty rewards for working across disciplines or for working with the community range from strong to weak across colleges and departments, making it difficult, in some cases, for faculty to direct resources to interdisciplinary, community-oriented programs.
• Collaborative governance mechanisms that allow for significant citizen authority and power in influencing university-related work are difficult to build and sustain. These mechanisms must be in place to develop trust, making it possible to pursue the Regional Partnerships" mission.

Recommendations

Despite the many challenges they face, in our judgment the Minnesota Regional Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainable Development Partnerships offer a promising mechanism for facilitating sustainable development and community resilience. We have four primary recommendations for those who have a stake in the Partnerships" success. Our recommendations center on the task of building respectful and productive university/community collaboration and the public support necessary to sustain it.

First, the Minnesota legislature and the University of Minnesota should move forward in bringing the value of the Regional Partnership initiative to the rest of Minnesota by establishing new partnerships in all regions of the state. This is important for addressing concerns of ecology and equity. It will also help place Minnesota on the leading edge of implementing the "Legislative Framework for a New Covenant for the 21st Century" put forward by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities in their final report, "Renewing the Covenant: Learning, Discovery, and Engagement in a New Age and Different World" (Kellogg Commission, 2000). The framework calls for states to "provide continuing support and create partnerships with public institutions to engage with public needs."

Second, policymakers and stakeholders must respect and support the integrity of the long-term, developmental nature of the Regional Partnership initiative at this critical early stage by exhibiting patience. Pressures to produce immediate results, especially results framed around criteria of short-term, "bottom-line" economics, will weaken the commitment and courage to think and act in the long-term public interest, consistent with core principles of sustainability. Participants and policymakers alike must understand the time collaborative processes require for addressing sustainability. In a February 2000 analysis of its work, the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture noted that it took four years of hard work to develop enough support from the university and the legislature to establish the Regional Partnerships. It will require at least that much time, and possibly much longer, for the partnerships to build the breadth and quality of relationships needed to move sustainability to the center of university and regional priorities. It may be another decade before the full-range of benefits are felt in the regions and the state as a whole.

Third, strategies must be developed to deal openly and persistently with the challenges outlined above, establishing clear lines of authority and accountability, and providing for regular public evaluation.

Finally, efforts must be made to celebrate and give significant public recognition of successes. In the end, the partnership initiative depends on the ability to generate and sustain hope among those who are pursuing what will always be tough and oftentimes frustrating public work. The power of hope that is grounded in and flows from the recognition of real accomplishment should not be underestimated.

References

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