Description:
Over the past three decades, governments at the local, state, and federal levels have undertaken a wide range of bold innovations, often in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and communities, to try to address their environmental and natural resource management tasks. Many of these efforts have failed. Innovations, by definition, are transitory. How, then, can we establish new practices that endure?
Toddi A. Steelman argues that the key to successful and long-lasting innovation must be a realistic understanding of the challenges that face it. She examines three case studies-land management in Colorado, watershed management in West Virginia, and timber management in New Mexico-and reveals specific patterns of implementation success and failure. Steelman challenges conventional wisdom about the role of individual entrepreneurs in innovative practice. She highlights the institutional obstacles that impede innovation and its longer term implementation, while offering practical insight in how enduring change might be achieved.
Review Quotes:
Steelman takes us to the next level in the study of innovative environmental practices. We know much about the promise of innovation, the barriers to innovation, and increasingly the performance of innovative practices. Steelman convincingly argues that we must now address the long-term sustainability of innovations. This book provides a clever yet simple way for academics and practitioners to think about the crucial role of institutions in sustaining innovative practices for managing natural resources and the environment.
--Craig Thomas, associate professor of public affairs, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington