You're on.
ELIZABETH COOPER: OK, good morning and welcome.
Thank you for agreeing to meet with me to serve
on this advisory group to develop a regional water
strategy for our metropolitan area.
I've called this meeting to give you my advice for how
to proceed in this process.
During this meeting, I will first clarify our goals
in this process.
Then I did devise some challenges that I see
and what we stand to lose if we don't
conduct this process wisely.
Next, I'll give my thoughts on the strategy
to follow to make a sound and politically viable
regional plan.
And I'll talk about what I think success in this process
would look like for you to keep in mind prospectively as you
carry out the planning process.
So our goal is to develop a strategy
for administering water that balances,
and to whatever extent possible, actually
meets the needs of the diverse stakeholders
from the industrial, residential, agricultural, and
conservation sectors, as well as our partners in government.
I also believe that a second, but still important
goal is to get through this process in a way
that this diverse group of stakeholders
feels good about the causes they took part in, has learned
from it, and thus is encouraged too
and has a skill set to collaborate again
in the future.
As you know, we face some challenges
to developing this plan.
With current distribution and used water supplies
are tight and are insufficient to meet
the needs of development that we hope will return to our region
with economic rebound.
If we don't develop a strategy to as far as possible
meet the needs of all the stakeholder groups involved,
we will see rising conflict that could really
strain the relationships in this community
and ultimately tear it apart.
I'm also concerned that if we don't act wisely and proceed
in a way that everyone is on board with,
our process could be undermined by parties
who feel disenfranchised or who don't want
to collaborate on a solution.
So how do we navigate this delicate task with our eyes
open to arrive at a sound solution?
I'm very confident in your abilities and those
of the experts that you talk to make sound difference
about a plan to share and distribute the water,
but I don't want to just rely on expertise to engineer the best
solution to this problem.
I want a plan that is developed to be the result of an informed
consensus that has the backing of everybody
needed to implement it.
Political viability is one key factor we need,
and an expert solution won't necessarily get us there.
You have been selected to be part
of this advisory group because of your expertise
and credibility to deal with this policy
and decision-making effort.
You have the authority to convene a credible process.
However, I think we will end up with a stronger and more
politically viable solution if we directly
involve stakeholders who we see as
likely to be in conflict over the decision-making effort.
I suggest you bring in a professional neutral
facilitator who can aid in involving stakeholders
in the proposal generating process
and who could help solidify participants
confidence and the neutrality of the process
since disagreements are likely to be politically charged.
Here's how I suggest you proceed.
Hire an experienced neutral as I said.
Begin by conducting situation assessment.
This means meeting with representatives of each
of the stakeholder groups.
I previously mentioned and anyone
else who thinks they should be included in the process
and discuss with them what their needs are for water, what
their interests are, and how they'd like
to see a regional plan develop.
After you've conducted that assessment,
distill down the results of your research
and communicate to the public the parameters of the problem
and what are some of the preliminary avenues that could
be pursued to reach a plan.
Ask stakeholders groups to select representatives
to participate in a formal consensus building process.
Conduct joint fact finding about uses of
and needs for water in the region and help participants
explore strategies that conceptualize water
as a flexible resource where it can meet multiple groups
needs simultaneously.
Here you can bring in your own expertise.
And by all means, we want everyone
to agree together on the facts that we're
going to use to make the recommendations together.
Invent options based on the results of the information
gathering.
Help participants in the process.
Find ways to add value to the resources you're dealing with
and invent mutually acceptable solutions.
If necessary, bring other issues besides water to the table.
These groups intersect and overlap
in a number of areas that affect our planning strategy.
And it might be that if we add in other ingredients,
we're able to package solutions that are
more acceptable to everyone.
Excuse me.
Help representatives caucus the various options
with their constituencies and clarify their interests
and needs and help them package options together in a way
that everyone can agree to and have them all endorse
an agreement for a strategy.
And then they will turn that recommendation over to you
to formalize and then that's what we would implement.
After we engage in this process, how will we
know that we've succeeded?
All groups can sign on to the agreement,
and all agree that it is a better arrangement than having
no agreement at all.
And participating groups will have
learned about each other's needs and each other in a way
that they can see that coming to consensus
is not necessarily a zero-sum game.
I think that this is the best strategy not only
because collaboration improves the quality of the decision,
but it also makes it more implementable.
It should help neutralize the process politically
if it has extremely widespread support.
Both the media and the state government,
who have been less than favorable about developing
a regional water plan would have a hard time criticizing it
if everyone really backs it up.
This has been a brief overview, and I'm
happy to address questions and discuss in more detail.
Thank you.
LAWRENCE SUSSKIND: Thank you.