A Framework for Environmental Collaboration

What’s the problem here?

• Many agencies and corporations do not clearly publicize their real objectives regarding environmental outcomes.  
• The public does not have a good way to find out what outcomes these parties are actively pursuing.  
• A discovery and presentation of those objectives, across all sectors, would facilitate awareness, alignment and collective accountability.
• Without shared accountability, positive outcomes are unlikely.

This approach has no pre-requisites, and can be started up anywhere, any time, by any parties.  In most cases, the resources, methods and policies needed to move forward are in place already.  The main problem lies with implementation, coordination, and follow-through. In the absence of such coordination, other motives that are better aligned, such as fear or profits, will determine outcomes.

Actual conditions in the real world, and reasons for such, are very poorly understood in most cases. Activists, analysts, and the general public rarely look to ground-level implementation when they want better results.  Instead, they look towards legislation, policy, politics, leadership, funding, news media, administration, etc.  Rarely do they know what is actually happening in the real world, where case managers sign permits, and programs interact hands-on with problems. But that is the place where results are ultimately determined.   

The following pages will present a simple method to improve collaboration, using tools that have proven effective in many systems. Simple, but not necessarily easy.