Clarity about fundamental concepts such as what constitutes a crisis, when does a crisis originate, and how a crisis is expressed is needed to formulate meaningful public policy. Lack of clarity comes from incongruous referential frames concerning property rights among policymakers and the public. This paper presents the hope-crisis continuum, a framework for the advocacy of alternate property rule sets (institutions) and the temporal performance assessment of previously advocated sets. The framework provides a basis for a social change advocate to challenge established institutions by obligating status quo advocates to clarify the practical intent of their policy positions and thereby reveal obscured but desired outcomes. Adversarial points of view on issues as complex as natural resource use are thereby provided a common point of reference upon which to disagree. Furthermore, public policymakers are provided a vehicle to revisit historic policy debates and policy performance data for analysis of “what went wrong,” and “what was correct” for improved public administration.

Crisis

We sometimes hear, read, and use words that upon reflection have multiple context-specific meanings. “Crisis” is one of those words. It can be used appropriately to rally the public toward a just cause, but just as easily used to advance hidden agenda of private interests, thus placing society’s physical and financial resources at risk. Public administration practices would be advanced if that word had a more precise meaning.

America faces a post-September 11 intelligence crisis, as well as crises in education, healthcare, ecological sustainability, and urban infrastructure management. These and other crises will never be resolved with the financial resources currently available. However, there is no common frame of reference by which crisis-focused policies can be prioritized, and thereafter monitored, evaluated, policy change advocacy advanced, and post-change evaluation conducted within a logical loop of analysis. Some may argue that that referential frame is the project specific benefit-cost (BC) ratio, routinely used to justify and prioritize public projects. Upon analysis however, this default frame of reference is (necessarily) the status quo institutional arrangement. As hypothetical benefits are typically not monitored to validate BC ratios, the BC exercise becomes an administrative hurdle for ex ante justification of a politically popular course of action. Additionally, BC ratios are typically not required to take into account tangential social goals which, we are told, manifest magically through activities of Smithian self-interest in our nation’s market economy.

I developed the hope-crisis continuum to make the “crisis” word more precise. That development and descriptions of the four resource use outcomes described within the continuum are subsequently presented, followed by a discussion of three resource sustainability models. I conclude with examples of practical use of the continuum.

Hope-Crisis Continuum

I conceived of the hope-crisis continuum upon listening to concerns about the sustainability of withdrawals of groundwater from Louisiana’s four principal aquifers. Various experts expressed support or downplayed calls for regulation of groundwater withdrawals. Comments such as “…yes, this is a crisis and something needs to be done now to protect our groundwater supplies,” and “…no, it is not a crisis yet…we need more time to study the situation” were typical of the range of views.

Clearly, recognized experts using the same set of facts arrived at opposing conclusions. Until now, no analytical framework was available to make commensurable these opposing frames of reference. Knowing that the emotionally charged “crisis” word obligates a believer to action, non-believers are conveniently relieved of responsibility to act. If the opposing referential frames of these experts were depicted on a single diagram, agreement on a word definition is eliminated and dialogue on effective resource management policy enhanced. In the Figure 1 hope-crisis diagram, hope of effective resource management declines as crisis increases to a point of non-sustainable resource rate of use. Thereafter, crisis declines sharply as the resource is no longer recoverable to its previous state.

The expert that sees no crisis sees instead a wide gap between current resource use rates and the point of non-sustainable resource use rates. The expert that sees a crisis sees an accelerating rightward movement toward non-sustainability, with no measures in place to stop resource decline. Thus, it is no longer a problem of word definition, but a disagreement about the rate of resource decline . The importance of this is that that is a technical issue subject to measurement. So rather than a “no crisis” show stopper declaration, the resource management debate is subject to further evaluation and analysis.

Kaiser and Binion2 describe how the public typically responds to surface water shortages by first denying that a problem exists, then recognizing that there is a problem, then taking action to reconcile the problem. However, Kaiser and Binion are short of a complete description, in that they lack an appreciation for the peculiar institution of property that Bromley3 describes as a “benefit stream the State (i.e. , the government) is duty bound to protect” that I describe further below.

Four Resource Use Outcomes

Kaiser and Binion come close to identifying the full set of resource use outcomes, as their denial / recognition / reconciliation stages are the first three outcomes illustrated in Figures 2 and 3.

They did not anticipate, however, a transitional “vanquished victim” zone and a point of non-sustainable activity as illustrated in Figure 4. That zone and point are reached when the State fails to protect benefit streams that are owed protection, whether by law, ethics, or morals. A vanquished victim may be a resource system that could recover with sufficient commitment and care, but each day that probability declines. The point of non-sustainable activity is the fourth resource use outcome in which, at the extreme, the resource is exhausted and, at a minimum, the resource system is recoverable, but at a lower quality and lower rate than before. Should a decision to reverse non-sustainable activity be made once reaching this point, a new hope-crisis continuum is created with a new problem “reconciliation” starting point. Measures to reconcile a slide toward renewed non-sustainable activity would be required to promote a healthy leftward movement along the continuum.

Non-sustainable Resource Use Models

The two models of non-sustainable resource use are the corporate welfare model and the vanquished victim model. In the former, dominant players within a resource market deny the existence of problems as long as possible, long after the public recognize the problems and organize to reconcile them. These dominant players subsequently walk away, leaving the problem for others to solve. An example of this model is the petroleum consumer funding of the leaking underground fuel tank (UST) program.4 Leaking petroleum tanks contaminate groundwater and present a potential explosion hazard. State regulations require the removal of unsafe gasoline service station fuel tanks and their replacement with more leak-resistant tanks. A revenue stream generated by a present and future surcharge that consumers pay for gasoline funds the program. In this way, the polluter’s customers, not the polluter, pay for the problems related to vehicle fuel storage.

In the vanquished victim model, non-dominant players within a resource market are misled about their property rights and find that dominant players unknown to them caused those rights to end. The mothballing of a New Orleans Fire Department fireboat in 1999 is an exemplary case. The City of New Orleans rescinded its duty to fight yacht fires with that act. That duty was to protect the property (i.e. , the benefit stream of occasional pleasure) of yacht owners. The City did not respond to a fire on a motor yacht berthed in the New Orleans Municipal Yacht Harbor in 2002 and the yacht was a total loss.5 In this case the denial of a problem was the deletion of the budget for maintaining and operating the fireboat. The recognition of the problem probably occurred once the motor yacht was ablaze. Reconciliation options include private replacement of the yacht or compensation (via a negligence suit) by the financially strapped City. The latter option requires time and resources perhaps better spent on yacht replacement.

Sustainable Resource Use Model

The common pool resource management system6 exemplifies the sustainable resource use model. Two examples of this model include the formation of a new regional water management authority in the Tampa Bay region of Florida and the adjudication of water rights in western US States. In the Tampa Bay case, the three counties and two major urban centers that comprise the region’s principal watershed ended adversarial water rights litigation and began seeking new sources of water for the rapidly growing metropolitan area, rather than continuing to fight over a diminishing per capita supply. The new authority conformed to what E. Ostrom7 describes as common pool resource (CPR) management. In CPR management, operational rules concerning resource use, protection, and sustainability are developed and clearly delineated by the members of a collective organization, and strictly enforced by agents of the collective. The other example involves water rights adjudication in the western US States, in which a water master is selected according to the laws governing groundwater supplies. The water master establishes schedules and groundwater withdrawal rates for the various parties who share access to water bearing aquifers. In this manner, a water master establishes property rights that the State is duty bound to protect.

In the early days of each example, denial of a water supply crisis was expressed. In the Tampa Bay region, denial of water supply problems cycled with a normal annual rainfall of 55 inches. Recognition of a water supply crisis came during the extended droughts of the 1960s to early 1970s and again in the early 1990s. Reconciliation of the problem began with the 1998 formation of the new water authority that adopted CPR management principles. In the relatively drier western US, those with early claims (prior appropriation) denied having water problems because they had water property rights. Eventually, Los Angeles and San Francisco had to go hundreds of miles to secure additional supplies.8 Politically powerful interests in those cities recognized their water supply problems and took steps toward reconciliation. Described recently is the use of previously adjudicated water for critical wildlife habitat and natural surface water flows.9 Such alternations in water rights structures would broaden the field of view of hope-crisis continuum evaluation from single to multiple, interconnected watersheds and from anthropogenic centered to ecologically based uses. However, the use of the continuum device is the same.

Practical Use of the Hope-Crisis Continuum

I proposed the use of the hope-crisis continuum concept in the following manner:

1. Assemble people who recognize a resource use problem. The resources under scrutiny could range from the nation’s intelligence resources in the FBI and CIA, educational resources among parents, teachers, and school administrators, to the water resources. Local, State, and national legislators must be among the assemblage to provide linkages to political, legislative, and economic seats of power.
2. List all problems associated with resource use rates and develop a hierarchy of resource subsystems within the larger, macroscopic system. Unanimous agreement on the point that the resource system currently operates along the hope-crisis continuum is not required at this stage.
3. Set regional performance objectives, measure periodic performance, and appropriately discuss performance status in public meetings, establishing initial settings of resource systems on the hope-crisis continuum and making arguments for rightward or leftward movement along the continuum.
4. Develop corrective resource usage programs to address the identified problems on the lowest hierarchical level.
5. Set appropriate performance measures to be used in subsequent resource use evaluations.
6. Periodically assemble representatives of the several lower hierarchical groupings to discuss progress toward achieving local or regional, macroscopic objectives. Near unanimous agreement on the direction of movement of the resource system along the hope-crisis continuum is necessary at this stage.
7. Hold periodic public meetings to evaluate progress made toward performance objectives on all hierarchical levels.
8. Lobby elected representatives to advance the achievement of regional and local performance objectives for resource use, through the funding and implementation of enlightened programs directed to advance resource system sustainability and continued performance monitoring.

No meeting concerning the use of public resources ends without an explicit requirement to return with performance data at a later date that either supports or does not support the benefits of a status quo program. In this way, the non-dominant social critic’s call for social change has weight in subsequent discussions. But by the same token, when any program change advocated by such critics becomes status quo, there is the same requirement to perform and have measurement data presented and analyzed.

Conclusion

The hope-crisis continuum provides a means for opening dialogue among those with conflicting frames of reference concerning resource use. It provides voice for those advocating change to the status quo concerning the use of society’s resources and allows status quo advocates a forum to clarify the intent of their policies and programs. Its utility comes when performance monitoring suggests current policies and programs are failing to achieve a desirable rate of sustainable resource use. Rather than believe a declaration that everything is under control, that there is no crisis, the measurable basis for such declarations is demanded and expected. The hope-crisis continuum thereby democratizes decisions about resource stewardship and promotes transparency in the decision making process of how resource management problems associated with non-sustainable uses are reconciled.

References

Bromley, Daniel W. 1991. Environment and Economy; Property Rights and Public Policy. Cambridge, MA; Basil Blackwell Publishers.

De Buys, William. 2001. Navigating the River of Our Future; The Rio Poco-Grande. Natural Resources Journal 38 (Winter): 157-196.

Kaiser, Ronald A. and Shane Binion. 1998. Stakeholder Concerns Regarding Instream Flow. Natural Resources Journal 41 (Spring): 265-281.

Karhl, William L. 1982. Water and Power; The Conflict Over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in Owens Valley. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons; The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.

Rowland, Martin A. 2000. The Evolution of Two Water Resource Management Systems; Case Studies of Tampa Bay and the Middle East. Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 11 (Summer): 411-469.

Footnotes

1. Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tulane University, PO Box 29792, New Orleans, LA 70129. Dr. Rowland is a registered Civil and Environmental Engineer in the State of Louisiana (No. 19886) whose doctorate is in urban studies. His webpage is www.thirdlegconsultants.com

2. Kaiser and Binion 1998, 160-165.

3. Property is established by a set of rules, the enforcement of which maintains the value (i.e. , the benefit stream) of those objects. It is important to note that physical assets such as real estate provide the basis for many benefit streams. (Bromley 1991, 22)

4. Joan Lee of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (June 24, 2002) said that 0.8 cents per gallon of gasoline sold to consumers is he surcharge that funds the Louisiana UST trust fund. Ms. Lee works fro the agency’s Office of Management and Finance’s Financial Division. She said such surcharges are the typical source deductible for a cleanup that averages approximately $115,000.

5. Times-Picayune, New Orleans, June 19, 2002, B-1 to B-2.

6. Rowland 2000, 414.

7. Ostrom 1990, 13.

8. Kahrl 1982, 5.

9. De Buys 2001, 265-281.

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