| You Mean We
Have a Choice?
Alternative futures assessments help planners determine where they
want to be
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|
How
many futures can you imagine? Drs.
Scott Bassett, left, and David Mouat try to show the range
of possibilities stemming from various land use decisions.
- Photo by John Doherty |
Not sure what life has
in store for you? Need help making important decisions about your
future? An ancient Greek might have traveled to Delphi to consult
the resident Oracle, while these days you might just travel to the
phone to consult that network of supposedly psychic friends. But,
if you’re looking for something a bit more credible, and if
you’re particularly concerned with how society and the environment
will interact in a rapidly changing world, you might ask Drs. David
Mouat and Scott Bassett about an alternative futures assessment.
Far from being supernatural
or mystical, an alternative futures assessment combines hard physical
sciences like hydrology, ecology, and biology with a healthy dose
of sociology. The process is being increasingly recognized as a
valuable land-use planning tool—especially where competing
interests vie for increasingly limited space and resources.
An alternative futures
assessment provides a compelling framework for visualizing possible
future landscapes, leading to more effective planning and better-informed
decision-making. In this sense, an alternative futures assessment
is something like looking into a crystal ball, a crystal ball that
describes a range of possible future conditions based on the specific
issues that concern an area.
“We try,”
says Mouat, currently the principal investigator for an alternative
futures assessment at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton in
Southern California, “to present a reasonable array of likely
futures based on the expectations and values of those who live and
work in a place—the stakeholders—and the economic, physical,
and environmental realities of the region.”
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| “Water
is really the key issue” These
three maps show three alternative groundwater development scenarios
for Upper San Pedro River Basin likely results of three approaches
to land use planning, from heavy depletion of the local aquifer,
on the left, to minimal depletion on the right. |
Who those stakeholders
are and what they value and expect varies, of course, from place
to place. For instance, in the Upper San Pedro River Basin in southern
Arizona and Mexico where Mouat and Bassett recently helped complete
an alternative futures assessment, stakeholders include the United
States Army based at Fort Huachuca, the copper mining industry,
the farming and ranching communities, land developers, residents,
and environmental groups. Naturally, all of these stakeholders have
their own concerns and issues. Environmentalists want to protect
habitat for species like the southwestern willow flycatcher and
the pronghorn antelope. Farmers and ranchers want water for crops
and cattle. Developers want that same water for growing communities.
Residents want to maintain views and the aesthetic value of wide-open
spaces and living close to wilderness. Mining companies want to
stay in business, and the Army wants to quiet calls for closure
of the base by showing that its activities are not to blame for
declining species numbers and falling groundwater levels.
“In the San Pedro
area, water is really the key issue,” says Bassett. “It
drives everything. But that’s not necessarily going to be
the case everywhere.” The issues—whether they be water,
biodiversity, fire and flood protection, or air quality—have
to be identified individually for each area, and to do that, Bassett
says, you have to really get to know a place and its people.
“It’s a matter
of discovering what is really important to people, and they are
not always sure themselves. They may say it’s important to
them to see the cottonwoods from their window. But are they willing
to cut their water consumption by half to keep the trees alive?
Are they willing to pay more for that water? Are they willing to
limit development to specific areas? These are the kinds of things
we want to find out.”
The researchers do that
in a variety of ways, including combing local newspaper articles,
sending out questionnaires, conducting phone surveys, and holding
workshops. It is the first step in creating the alternative futures
scenarios, and, according to Bassett, it is a valuable process in
itself. “At the very least, a futures project helps a community
figure out its expectations for the future and exactly what it values.”
Next, the researchers
determine which factors, say growth rate and development patterns,
will be likely to affect those values and expectations and begin
designing the alternative futures. “Obviously,” explains
Mouat, “there are hundreds of options to work with, ranging
from ‘everybody moves out and nature takes over’ to
‘we pave over and build on every square inch.’ We try
to pick a range of realistic ones.”
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No
easy decisions: defining the boundaries within which possible
futures must lie
This diagram gives a hint of the many variables and value-weighted
choices land use planners must consider. Based on predictive
modeling and ecological and demographic data from a Geographic
Information System, it helps identify possible alternatives.
Graphic by Allan Shearer, Harvard Design School. |
Using a hypothetical
example, three different population projections—one based
on present trends, one based on lower-than-forecast growth, and
one based on higher-than-forecast growth—and three different
building scenarios—one concentrating development in a central
area, one allowing it to spread at random, and one creating satellite
communities in outlying areas—could be combined to create
nine reasonable future scenarios. “At the end,” explains
Mouat, “you have a series of alternative futures and a series
of impacts that each of those scenarios will have on the identified
issues (e.g., water availability, habitat).”
Finally, the researchers
hold public meetings where the alternative futures and their resultant
impacts are laid out in detail. While it marks the conclusion of
the researchers’ work, it is only the beginning for the stakeholders
who must then turn the data into action—planning, negotiating,
and decision-making. And that is really the ultimate goal. “At
its core,” says Mouat, “an alternative futures study
should be about giving people a conceptual framework to resolve
conflicts and plan for the future.”
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Animals
and plants also have alternative futures
These maps projecting possible future population densities for
the pronghorn antelope are an example of how native flora and
fauna factors calculated for land use planners. . The antelope
is a prominent native species and a key indicator of environmental
health as development increases in the Upper San Pedro River
Basin region. |
But that does not mean
it makes everyone happy. In fact, says Mouat, “the parties
at either end of the spectrum are often very unhappy. The developers
are mad at us, the environmentalists are mad at us. The futures
don’t favor their positions.” Often, too, the futures
show that negative impacts are unavoidable, as in the San Pedro
study where all scenarios resulted in a loss of groundwater storage,
affecting both wildlife habitat and municipal water supplies. “Truth
is,” says Bassett, “when everyone wants the same thing,
something’s got to give.” While an alternative futures
assessment can’t change that fact, it can present stakeholders
with a realistic set of expectations and alternatives and, perhaps
most important, a chance to look at the situation from another point
of view. “It opens people’s eyes,” says Bassett,
“and allows them to see possibilities they might otherwise
never have considered.”
Mouat and Bassett hope
to take their eye-opening assessments to other areas struggling
with tough decisions about the future. Recently, they made a presentation
on the technique to the Western Governors’ Environmental Summit
in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mouat has also traveled to Namibia where
communal farmers (the indigenous people), the eco-tourism industry,
environmental interests, the mining and diamond industries, and
ranchers create a complex web of competing needs, all dependent
upon the country’s very limited water supply. “The alternative
futures process is really most useful in a dynamic area like that,
where there are a lot of competing interests to consider and no
clear way to reconcile all their needs.”
In another current DRI
effort in the arid and semiarid parts of China, Mouat and Dr. Walter
Zachritz, director of DRI’s Center for Arid Lands Environmental
Management, are trying to seek solutions to the problem of land
degradation. Degradation has resulted in blowing dust, reducing
visibility, closing airports in China and South Korea, and causing
significant environmental and health hazards. Mouat points out that
determining how future patterns of land use might affect degradation
and the ensuing dust hazard will “go a long way toward reducing
that environmental and societal problem.”
In Mouat’s view,
helping resolve these kinds of dilemmas is a step forward for his
science. “There are many of us here who really hope that DRI
can have a greater role in societally based projects. We recognize
the need to apply our physical science principles to society’s
needs.” Bassett concurs. “What’s really attractive
to me about alternative futures is that it integrates science with
society, the natural world with humanity. And, as much as possible,
it serves them all.”
–Jackie Allen
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