To the pessimists who think ecological change is too complex and too slow to affect environmental policy-making, the federal government thinks you’re just not trying hard enough.
This is the message I heard Shelley Metzenbaum deliver to a group of environmental evaluators earlier this week. It was interesting to hear this and similar perspectives from the many agency people (mostly NOAA and EPA) who were at the gathering.
The message I came away with was that the OMB – and the federal government more generically – wants (and needs) help to meet the Obama Administration’s goals for transparency and accountability. There can never be too many people working to collect and analyze high-quality information.
The complexity and pace of ecological change are stumbling blocks for many – the government is not unique in this respect. Earnest, numbers-minded people hesitate to overly simplify the cause-and-effect relationships that drive ecosystem functioning (and degradation).
However, the fact that change often occurs more slowly than the pace of our policy-making decisions is not an excuse for giving up on measuring performance.
Metzenbaum, who reports to the nation’s first Chief Performance Officer, said there is plenty to measure and analyze (and learn) even very early on in any effort to address an environmental problem. One example: Take an early success, try to replicate it in another place with different circumstances and contextual factors, and see how the outcomes compare.
Some worthwhile analyses, of course, are simply beyond anyone’s ability to do. But the government should not be alone in confronting our society’s pervasive water and air quality problems.
The private sector, including private philanthropy, has a role to play. Even analyses that are within the government’s scope won’t be relevant without the credibility of non-government participation.
As an outsider looking in, I hope the government helps us help them by sharing the environmental problems they see, and the data that show them.
In the quest to prove the worth of efforts to protect and restore the environment, data collection, use, and analysis are shared tasks. After all, we’re all working to realize the same (shared) environmental benefits.
