Riverkeeper's Journal

Environmental Power, Do we have it?

Power is the ability change things around us. But Power is also deeply mythologized and misunderstood. In the world of environmental activism political power can help define public priorities, set budgets, allocate resources shape public opinion and make a better world. Grassroots power can build a support base, a body politic and influence community and public opinion. Other forms of power can also make people rich, ensure that the water nearest you is clean and maybe even get you a date with a good looking person. It can impoverish others, spoil the planet and topple nations. But at its best, power is the ability not only to make change, but also to make the changes you want made. The question upper most in my mind in most dealings with our advocacy dealings for the environment is: what is the substance of our “power” on any given day? Do environmentalists possess power or instead are we peering through the glass lens from the outside, looking in on where the power is wielded and decisions are being made? When it comes to power, are we on a white horse up on a hill in charge of our terrain or are we on our knees our bellies crawling through a sea of compromise in order to zig zag our way to a better environment? I think we environmentalists have a strange relationship with power, almost approach/avoidance. If we understood power better, maybe we could achieve more of our aims.

I think a lot of folks have a high school civics view of what citizen power is, as in “we have certain inalienable rights”. The truth is, the kind of power needed by activists is dynamic and fluid in nature and never static in political situations. The changing nature of “power” is the essence of our political system. If our “values” are to win at any cost that is one thing. If it is to win without giving offense or disrupting the existing power structure, that is another.

There is usually split in tactics among our ranks with respect to our attitudes and use of power. Some who see our bargaining posture as inherently weak seeking to compromise with societal power versus those who recognize our relative weakness but who seek to make it strong through robust coalitions, skillful community organizing and razor share tactics. Yet we tend to be lumped publicly together. Our values and sense of tactics diametrically opposed even while working generally on preservation and conservation causes. Some accommodate the reigning political power structure with no aims to reform it, challenge it or oppose it.

We hear more about “balance” nowadays and increasingly we are asked to compromise our environmental aims in order to create a middle ground between competing interests. This notion has a murky public policy origin as its strongest virtue is that it helps elected officials alienate one group of supporters while endorsing another. We as environmentalists participate in transactions that have less than perfect outcomes in order to avoid a much worse consequence. Are these deals made from strength or are the destined to perpetually weaken our movement by forcing us perpetually into fresh positions of weakness, compromise? Does compromise in our movement meet the needs of the environment or the compromiser? Are we serving the public or just reinforcing dysfunctional process in our society?

So how do we get power?

So, you want to make the case for environmental preservation to an audiences of legislators? Most of the time we are scuffling to persuade elected officials that the environment is more important than property rights, that economic growth does not eliminate the need to protect our fragile resources from private profiteering. But many of us operate under the assumption that if we can get a bigger show of supportive hands than our opponents, that democracy should carry the day. Our ability to transact ideal solutions and broker optimum outcomes leads us to take our concerns into the political realm hoping our elected officials will do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. Further, we often try and transact our deals in publicly transparent forums such as public hearings but usually fail to recognize that frequently the most powerful negotiations and deals occur through private engagements that are off the public record and behind closed doors. Doors that are too often closed to those of us acting in the public interest. When we do negotiate in private we are sometimes blind to the motives and interests of the others in the room and so we find ourselves insisting on what we want without being able to advance solutions that will help our opponents get what they want. Commonly these are seen as situations for compromise on our part when in fact many of us lack the skills to capably for what we want. Sometimes we fail to recognize when the negotiating forums are inherently stacked against us. In short, sometimes we need to negotiate and on other occasions need strategies aimed at overwhelming the strategies being used by our opponents.

Most of us believe deeply in democracy and in the fairness and impartiality of power and the will of the majority. We do so even where those same processes have become deeply compromised by private interests. Power is so deeply biased toward money and private interest that it is sometimes baffling how those of us acting primarily in the public interest can retain any influence at all over the policy making that defines environmental qualities in our communities, or over the decisions being made every day that have enormous influence over the environment and the quality of life for real people.

Plainly the system does not always work as it should. If we redoubled our efforts to play by the rules, it unlikely we will prevail against its flaws and break through. Too often we advance legislative strategies that fail time and time again, yet we as an environmentalists in a movement of high ideals, we are chronically unable to re-evaluate our tactics, look closely at what among our many actions were viable (and which were not) and modify our future strategies in order to play up our strengths and overwhelm our opponents.

So, how do we in the environmental movement get the power we need in order to make necessary change?  How do we build power in our communities, how do we establish the perception of useful power with elected officials and how to we exercise power within the civic and citizen forums where our bread and butter work is usually done? Sure, consensus and democracy is what gets people elected but it isn't generally what governs political decision-making.

Elected officials can be counted upon to do what is expedient, but rarely does a democratic show of hands determine that expediency or the way they vote in the legislature. Meanwhile in our quest to save clean water, air and open space we often find ourselves on a collision course with moneyed, influential and very empowered adversaries. Is their own power embodied in their money or in their more effective tactics? Perhaps both. People with real power are rarely found pursuing their business and personal interests in impartial or in seemingly transparent deliberative forums. Such forums typically occur on the public record but are rarely the basis for actual decision making behind the scenes. Actually public meetings are often held simply because they are required, not necessarily because the government wants our opinions. But the exact way in which public engagement influences public decision-making is often very hard to quantify.

We need to write a new rule book about the quality and basis for our lobbying and outreach tactics. Here are some suggestions:

Tactics that are likely to yield actual progress toward environmental aims are:

  • Engage directly with opponents who have the profile of acting in good faith and not rely on politicians to arbitrate our outcomes. (take some power back from the politicians in the process)
  • Focus on areas of agreement in order to reduce the areas of discord. Do not assume that everyone who does not see things our way is an opponent. Consider that some people agree with on broader issues and may work on our behalf in order to preserve agreement. (build agreements that make the disagreements seem less important)
  • Engage our detractors with an open mind to learn firsthand what their objections are, learn to rebut their arguments and tactics instead of just asserting our own opinions expecting that facts will overcome perception. (We need to listen better to the substance of our dealings, treat conflicts as opportunities).
  • Acquire the habit of building coalitions not just of agreeable interests but ones capable of implementing actual political power and tactics. Forge linkages with people who are able to adapt their tactics to the challenges at hand. (Be flexible in our tactical thinking, try new things)
  • Work harder at winning the hearts and not just the minds of the body politic. One without the other is not much of a power base. (Be open to arguments that are effective even if not expressed the ways we might prefer)
  • Co-opt  (not compromise) in a benevolent way the support needed in order to win the day. Broker solutions that allow more parties to win in order to build deeper, broader and sometimes unlikely coalitions. (make it easier for adversaries to agree with us)
  • Learn not to argue beyond success. People generally agree in their own way, and express themselves using their own frame of reference. Don’t flog an issue to death by failing to hear when you have won. (Don’t alienate would-be supporters by forcing them to think the way you do)
  • Learn to recognize the many faces of “power” in any situation and do not shirk from engaging the source of so that at the end of the day you and our common cause have more power than when you started. (Become a student of benevolent power and use its lessons to get more of it)

Try it. See if it works for you. If it does, pass it on to someone else.

Frederick Tutman
Patuxent Riverkeeper
November 2010