C I V I C I N F R A S T R U C T U R E

Conservation, Community, and Rural Economic Development

Rebecca Bryant

From Ecotrust’s office in a renovated red-brick building on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland, there is a view of Broadway Bridge and Union Station. The office is an open, high-ceiling room decorated with plants, pho- tos, maps, even a moose head, full rack and all. It could be any professional office, but “we’re not,” jokes communications director Ted Wolf. “We’re a demolition company.”

Wolf is referring to the organization’s penchant for demolishing existing paradigms, especially when it comes to the relationship between conservation, rural economic development, and community decision making. Ecotrust was founded in March 1991 by Spencer Beebe, an advocate of tropical rain forest conservation, who hoped to further the credibility of international efforts by demonstrating at home-in the Pacific Northwest-what he and others were preaching abroad. Drawn by the visionary Beebe, the fourteen-member staff of paradigm-busters are an eclectic group. What they share, says Wolf, is a belief that things can be done differently.

Ecotrust has a working board of directors that meets three times a year. Like the staff, it is diverse. Unified by a core commitment to conservation, board members have achieved success in different areas. Board chair Jack Hood Vaughn is a former director of the Peace Corps; others come from private con- sulting, nonprofits, and banking. Ecotrust also has a large advisory council to call upon when further expertise is needed.

The overriding mission or civic agenda is to conserve and restore ecosys- tems by helping local communities develop their capacity to fulfill human needs and maintain ecological integrity. Most of the work is decentralized. Within the bioregion of temperate coastal rain forests, Ecotrust has local part- nerships (each distinctive in character) at Columbia Pacific, Oregon; Willapa Bay, Washington; Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia; Kitlope River, British Columbia; Sitka, Alaska; and Prince William SoundKopper River, Alaska.

To support its local partnerships, Ecotrust has also been building biore- gional institutions. lnterrain Pacific, an effort supported by Intel and other cor- porate and university participants, uses geographic information system (GIS)

NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW, vol. 86. no. 2. Summer 1997 OJossey-Bass Pubhshers 181

182 Bryant

and other computer technologies to understand large-scale patterns of change. Mapping aerial and satellite images into computer databases provides a base- line for monitoring social, economic, and ecological changes in local eco- systems.

In its initial scoping for the Willapa Bay project, Ecotrust noticed that peo- ple didn’t lack creativity or business ideas. In short supply were business skills, marketing know-how, and risk capital for business ventures. To address those problems, Ecotrust persuaded Chicago’s Shorebank Corporation (parent com- pany to South Shore Bank, noted for its success in revitalizing housing in a blighted Chicago neighborhood) to collaborate on the Willapa Bay project. The progeny of Ecotrust and Shorebank is ShoreBank, Pacific: The First Environ- mental Bancorporation.

ShoreBank, Pacific will evolve into a system of wholesale banks and branches (both urban and rural), making loans primarily to businesses that do conservation-based work. ShoreBank, Pacific is already capitalized by $7 mil- lion in EcoDeposits made by foundations, individuals, and nongovernmental organizations; these insured deposits link investors to environmentally sensi- tive projects. The goal is to raise $12 million in equity for the bank holding company by the planned August, 1997 opening of ShoreBank, Pacific head- quarters in Ilwaco, Washington.

A nonprofit affiliate, called ShoreTrust Trading Group (STTG), provides business development and marketing assistance to entrepreneurs. STTG also manages a $2.5 million revolving loan fund (financed largely by Meyer Memo- rial Trust, the MacArthur and Northwest Area Foundations, and Weyerhaeuser Company) that has approved over $1.5 million to date for timber, seafood, real estate, and farming projects.

The Conundrum Ecotrust operates in two worlds-rural economic development and environ- mental advocacy-that have often been at odds with one another. To me the word rural has always evoked images of small, quaint American towns nestled in cotton fields or wheat farms, among cattle ranches or wilderness. We tend to think of rural America as a scenic landscape occupied by people whose lifestyles, values, and livelihoods are anchored to the land. Perhaps this is because rural America has long served as a psychic antidote for the relentless pressure of urban expansion and physical growth. Our image of rural Amer- ica is pastoral, a place or space that is out there waiting when people need it.

That image, however, changed for me when I began to interview rural community leaders throughout the United States to write their economic development success stones for a report to the US. Department of Agriculture. It wasn’t so much the stories about industrial parks and Mercedes plants and tourist corridors that changed my view. It was the statistics, the business sec- tor analyses. These little communities in the boondocks of South Carolina,

Conservation, Community, and Rural Economic Development 183

West Virginia, Minnesota, and New Mexico didn’t have an economic base of farming, fishing, and forestry Natural resources, in most cases, were a tiny por- tion of their economic base. Typically, the mainstays were manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, professional and related services-just like cities. Slice open many a rural town and you find an urban spore.

To my astonishment, I learned that what rural really means these days is how far a community is from an urban area and how its population size com- pares to an urban area. On road trips, the images I’d been blocking from sheer psychic preservation began to pour in: telephone wires criss-crossing the coun- tryside, sign clutter, sprawl, traffic congestion, Wal-Marts, parking lots. That open land-it wasn’t farms or ranches-it was real estate in a holding pattern for development.

How did this happen? How did we lose Arcadia, our domesticated Gar- den of Eden? This is how: through expansion to support our ever-increasing population and traditional models of rural economic development. In a recent essay, “Soul Searching: At What Cost Rural Economic Development?” William Falk, Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, concludes:

So will the soul of a rural community be lost inevitably, one way (population out-migration) or the other (outside economic development)? If the answer seems to be yes, how can rural communities secure new economic opportu- nities yet maintain the desirable traits that made them what they were or what they are imagined to be by potential new residents? A conundrum indeed.’

It is a conundrum I observe now, working with a group of small towns south of Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Residents there don’t know whether to fear more the growth spilling over from Ft. Smith or the crumbling of downtown build- ings. According to Ecotrust, conservation-based development is the answer to this riddle and others. Conservation-based development is, in short, both a reconciliation of economics and environment and a departure from each of these roots; it’s a form of economic development that produces an environ- mental return. Since 1991, Ecotrust and its philanthropic muses have staked $10 million on this approach.

The Rural Development Context Traditional models of rural development emphasize the creation of wealth by importing urban job generators into rural areas. Ecotrust has a different approach. If the demand for high-quality forest products, organic food, fish, wild areas, clean air, and unpolluted water is increasing while supply is decreasing, then it is possible to capitalize on the supply-demand gap, create wealth, and improve the quality of life by restoring natural ecological processes. Shorebank president Mary Houghton adds that the idea is to “sup- port measurable increases in the amount of local small business activity in the

184 Bryant

belief that you can get a synergistic effect.” She cites examples where networks or clusters of firms have succeeded in Northern Italy, Denmark, and Germany by virtue of such synergy. Importantly, conservation-based development puts the “rural,” with all its Arcadian connotations, back in rural development. In theory, at least, the conundrum is solved.

The Environmental Context While Ecotrust is to its core an environmental organization, it does not send out appeals to save whales or indigenous tribes of Bolivia. It does not lobby Congress to enact regulations. It does not stockpile wilderness. It does not bat- tle the U.S. Forest Service or local planning commissions.

What Ecotrust does, again, is economic development that produces an environmental return. In its early search for bearings, Ecotrust vice president Arthur Dye says, “We came to the conclusion that the environmental move- ment was headed in the wrong direction. We needed to build community capacity rather than regulations or legislation.” In its strategic vision report, Ecotrust contends, “No amount of outside intervention can substitute for the tenacity and commitment of those who live in a place and who have most at stake in its future.” Moreover, stockpiling wilderness to protect it from human threats and pressures is what Ecotrust calls the “museum-science” approach to conservation. Separating humans from their traditional habitat is not the solu- tion. The better answer is to build the capacity of local communities to stew- ard their natural capital. Recognizing that the goal of communities-long-term economic prosperity-is inextricably bound to the goal of environmental orga- nizations-the conservation and restoration of ecosystems-shifts the para- digm into a more constructive mode, wherein the forces of economic development and conservation are no longer enemies but allies.

Ecotrust, repudiating models and maps, has developed instead a compass, suggesting directions in which its local partners might move. Like all com- passes, it has four cardinal directions:

1. Understanding through ecosystem research, monitoring, and education. While Ecotrust may deplore the excesses of science that have contributed to human alienation from the natural world, it also believes that we must regain an understanding of our local environment. Extensive application of GIS data- bases, locally and bioregionally, is a case of using science to serve nature. Addi- tionally, Ecotrust and its partners have published books, CD-ROMs, and journals like Rain: Ajournal of the Cluyoquot Biosphere Project that link science and nature. Biologist E. 0. Wilson, speaking at a lecture sponsored by Port- land Arts and Lectures in May 1996, said, “By applying GIS to conservation problem-solving, Ecotrust and Interrain Pacific are helping to lead a national trend-1 hope a global trend-toward win-win political solutions that will allow us to do a vastly better job of conservation.”*

Conservation, Community, and Rural Economic Development 185

2. Conservation through protection, stewardship, and restoration. The Willapa Fisheries Recovery Strategy, a two-hundred-page document, has driven $1.2 million in salmon-habitat restoration projects along the Willapa and Bear Rwers in southwestern Washington. Ecotrust has also worked with nonprofit Sea Resources and the Chinook Indian tribe in the Columbia Pacific region of northwestern Oregon to develop a watershed restoration training program. At Kitlope Rwer, Haisla Rediscovery has conducted five summer camps to revive Haisla culture and its ethic of stewardship.

3 . Economic development that supports ecological businesses. 4. Policy reform, using local experience and needs, to inform regulation. Based

on research at Kitlope and Clayoquot Sound, the Haisla First Nation and Province of British Columbia adopted a joint management agreement that assures permanent protection of Kitlope Valley. At Willapa Bay, pollution caused by chemical control of spartina, an invasive aquatic weed, led to an education and lobbying effort that resulted in the state legislature enacting a new permitting process to regulate control activities.

The Nonprofit Context

Many community activists say that there hasn’t been as much organizing for change at the grassroots level as there used to be in the sixties and seventies. Conservation organizations in particular haven’t a strong tradition of commu- nity-based efforts. According to Ecotrust policy director Erin Kellogg, this trend seems to be shifting because people are recognizing that not all solutions can come from government. Kellogg says there aren’t enough resources at the fed- eral and state levels and, besides, those often aren’t the appropriate agents for change. Now, she points out, there is more movement to do things from both the bottom-up and top-down. Communities are taking responsibility for com- ing up with their own solutions; federal and state entities are partnering more with local communities instead of regulating them. This retooling of the pub- lic sector-trading partnerships for regulations-has its genesis in the Clinton administration’s desire to reinvent government.

If the first-generation approach among nonprofits engaged in community development (economic development and conservation) was, “Stand back; we’ll do it for you,” the second generation is a construct of public involvement and self-empowerment . In devising local solutions, community activists are putting more stress on collaborative decision making amongst Stakeholders and less on adversarial politics. This new dogma of collaboration between stakeholders at the community level in a consensual process troubles Sierra Club chairman Michael McCloskey.

In an article in High Country News, McCloskey contends that local solu- tions disenfranchise urban and national constituencies, which are valid, if absentee, stakeholders. Additionally, he fears that local development interests

186 Brvant

will more frequently outmuscle grassroots opposition, if they haven’t the ben- efit of financial assistance and expertise from national group^.^

For an organization that isn’t local or civic and, as a consequence, might be viewed with wariness, Ecotrust has found that the most effective mode of operation is to forge local partnerships and operate in the capacity of catalyst and broker. Ecotrust gets things started. For example, in 1991 Ecotrust sent Orville Tice, an environmental mediator, to assess the situation at Willapa Bay and determine whether people were interested in a partnership solution to the problems of rural poverty and environmental preservation. When the answer came back affirmative, Ecotrust brokered $600,000 from the Northwest Area Foundation to launch the Willapa Bay project. Ecotrust then initiated capac- ity building by recruiting residents interested in conservation-based develop- ment. These individuals became the founding board of the Willapa Alliance, which now has a budget of $500,000 and a staff of seven. Their mission: to enhance the diversity, productivity, and health of Willapa’s unique environ- ment; to promote sustainable economic development; and to expand the choices available to the people who live there.

Ecotrust incorporates collaborative decision making while also laying groundwork for a third-generation approach that is characterized by sophisti- cated use of technology, a role trimmed to catalyst and broker, careful selec- tion of projects, and the extensive use of partnerships. Additionally, Ecotrust is mediating between its internally defined public interest mandate (conserva- tion) and an increasingly intense external pressure on nonprofits to become market-oriented. It has done this by building its own obsolescence into local partnerships. When local capacity comes on-line, Ecotrust can fade into the background, as it has at Willapa Bay where the Willapa Alliance, STTG, and others now occupy center stage.

Conclusion

Ecotrust, as you see, is writing a new story in which humans are one with nature again. This time, we’ve learned our lesson. We’re serious about this stewardship job. Ecotrust is writing this story on the coastal landscape of the Pacific Northwest from Northern California to Alaska so that people can see and hear a different way of doing things.

Mostly the reviews of Ecotrust are positive, but there have been criticisms . as well. Some environmentalists feel Ecotrust has sold out. Partnering with

Weyerhaeuser on projects hasn’t helped set the minds of purists at rest. Jim Sayce, who grew up in the Willapa Bay area and is now executive director of the Pacific County Council of Governments, feels that Ecotrust has been very successful in seeding the Willapa Alliance and moving financial resources into the resource service area with stream restoration and spartina control. How- ever, he believes that the mobility of the labor force undermines Ecotrust’s

Conservation, Community, and Rural Economic Development 187

approach because it severs local commitment to place. The less commitment to place, the less capacity for stewardship there is to build.

At the University of Arkansas, professor of rural sociology Donald E. Voth has studied Shorebanks rural initiatives in Arkansas. He sees the Ecotrust- Shorebank effort as “courageous” and commends the organizations for their focus on local capacity building. However, in Voth’s opinion, “it’s risky to rebuild local communities on the natural resource base because the potential for generating income is limited.” Voth also suggests that a model capitalized in the multimillions is not a widely reproducible model.

Stewart Brand, founder of Whole Earth Catalogue and member of Ecotrust’s advisory council, counters, “If Ecotrust tries to be a model, it fails. If it tries to save the rain forest and succeeds, it becomes a model. Successes are models. Attempts to be models are not models.”

Aside from potential design flaws in Ecotrustk compass, a more formida- ble obstacle (a societal design flaw) may be the short-term perspectives that drive decision making. Arthur Dye says, “Everything is geared toward the short term, whether it’s state or federal government. All the energy in local govern- ment goes to getting money for the community, like compensation for salmon fishermen. But short-term solutions don’t get to the basic problem of why fish have declined. We’re trying to build a longer-term effort-ten to twenty years- that will change the way government people look at these issues.” Dan’l Markham, executive director of Willapa Alliance, admits long-term strategies are “tough because the culture has short-term expectations and funders do too.”

Futurist Stewart Brand (now noted for his scenario-planning firm Global Business Network) would not advise Ecotrust to change its timetable. He learned from ecology long ago that the slowest moving parts are the most pow- erful. “The organization that takes the long view will succeed. Ecotrust is oper- ating on the same time frame as forests-many generations. That’s where the power is.”

Notes

opment Quarterly, 1996, 10, 104-109. 1. Falk. W. W “Soul Searching: At What Cost Rural Economic Development?” Economic Devel-

2. Wilson, E. 0. Address to Portland Arts and Lectures, Portland, Oreg., May 15, 1996. 3 . McCloskey. M. “The Skeptic: Collaboration Has Its Limits.” High Country News, May 13.

1996

Additional Resource New Bearings: Conservation-Based Development in the Rain Forests of Home. Portland, Oreg.:

Ecotrust. 1995.

Rebecca Bryant is a writer and planning consultant in Fayetteville, Arkansas.