Upstream Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest (1996) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Values and Institutions
5 Values and Institutions
Pages 115-144
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From page 115... ...
However, its anthropocentrism has long been challenged, as in Aldo Leopold's formulation of a more ecocentric "land ethic" (Leopold 1944) , in a sustained, highly diverse moral and political position that we now think of as "environmentalism." Environmental issues have been addressed through choices made within economic, political, and individual ethical frameworks; an important component of political choice has been planning, a concept that has substantially influenced federal actions in the Northwest.
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From page 116... ...
Some people hold the value that it is unnatural to transport salmon in barges, and thus oppose that option. Those with a more utilitarian value system argue that it is the cheapest and most effective way to get salmon through the system of Snake River dams.
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From page 117... ...
lIOW SALMON ARE VALUED Surveys estimate the range and depth of public opinion, which might or might not be well informed by scientific appraisals of the value of natural resources. From a scientific perspective, wild salmon populations are an example of an ecosystem's natural capital.
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From page 118... ...
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From page 119... ...
, and option value (e.g., the future contribution of wild salmon to fishing, future genetic diversity, or having wild populations in the future, or combinations of future alternativesJ. Wild salmon's existence value is the intrinsic value that people place on simply knowing that wild populations exist or on supporting stewardship of wild populations as a bequest to future generations (Pearce and Turner 1990, Pearce 19931.
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From page 120... ...
The direct economic value of 1993 recreational fisheries is 30% of the 1976- 1993 average (PFMC 19941. Indirect and option values, expressed in wild salmon's contribution to future harvest or to genetic diversity, often compete with direct values in resource
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From page 121... ...
West Coast salmon prices are not determined by catches in the Pacific Northwest but by quantities landed in Alaska and British Columbia or farmed in Norway and Chile. Commercial ocean landings in both Alaska and British Columbia are at historically high levels, and production of farmed salmon in Norway, Chile, and elsewhere reached 1 billion pounds in 1994, exceeding U.S.
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From page 122... ...
than in 1979-1988, when expectations for salmon's economic contribution to coastal economies were high. Total income generated by salmon fishing includes income to businesses that rely directly on salmon fishing for income (commercial fishers, and charter boats)
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From page 123... ...
Salmon have provided social continuity and heritage for many Americans the American Indian tribes and non-Indian fishing communities that depend on salmon fishing, the generations of sports anglers proud of their pursuits of steelhead and other salmon, the general public of the Northwest who have adopted salmon as a regional symbol, the airport shops that sell smoked salmon and salmon artifacts to tourists wanting souvenirs, and so on. Salmon are featured in art and song in the Pacific Northwest to an extent shared by few other fishes anywhere (Holm 1965, Stewart 1979, Williams 1980, Jay and Matsen 1994)
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From page 124... ...
To correct the discrepancy between social values and resource use, attempts can be made to design policies that reflect the full range of resource values. International environmental agreements concerned with accounting for the full costs of pollution call this the "polluter pays" principle.
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From page 125... ...
That tension is widespread in decisions concerning wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
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From page 126... ...
By institutions, we refer to cultural rules, conventions, norms, laws, and practices that define and play roles in regulating and giving meaning to individual and group behavior (Bromley 19891. Although courts, Congress, state legislatures, federal and state fish and wildlife agencies, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission might be thought of as particularly relevant "institutions" in the popular sense, it is useful to think about them instead as management organizations that derive their existence and forms from institutions.
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From page 127... ...
Their special, private interests are not always the same as the larger public interest (Johnson 1989~. Lords of yesterday that most directly affect salmon and their rivers are manifested in a long-held attitude that dams and water diversions are more important than salmon or the people who depend on them, including the American Indian tribes, and in an almost blind faith in technological solutions like hatcheries and fishways.
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From page 128... ...
A century later, the laws are complex, and jurisdictions overlap. Many dams thwart fish passage, and numerous irrigation ditches remain unscreened throughout the Columbia River Basin.
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From page 129... ...
and continuing with the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan (1976, see Platt and Dompier 1990) and the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program (NPPC 1982, 1991~.
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From page 130... ...
As salmon abundances have declined and American Indian treaty rights have gained legal standing, however, the inadequacy of the scientific record has become glaring and finally crippling (Salmon Technical Team 19931. Political Pluralism The lords of yesterday have also been defended within a political system organized around interests (Truman 19713.
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From page 131... ...
Some institutions are about allocation principles. A key example is the legal rulings concerning American Indian treaty rights to salmon.
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From page 132... ...
The Pacific Northwest River Basin Commission supplanted the CBIAC as the regional planning unit in the 1960s and was superseded by the Northwest Power Planning Council in 1981. Until the 1980s, planning in the Pacific Northwest emphasized domesticating the region's water resources for hydroelectric generation, irrigation, navigation, and flood control.
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From page 133... ...
The Federal Presence in Regional Stewardship: Changing Resource Values The prosperity of the Columbia River Basin has been tied to its dams. Like the salmon that were the mainstay of its American Indian culture, the annual harvest of water from snow and rain, collected and harnessed by the dams, became the lifeblood of the basin's industrial economy.
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From page 134... ...
. Underlying this venture is the value underwritten by the Pacific Northwest Electric Power and Planning Conservation Act of 1980 (Northwest Power Act)
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From page 135... ...
Instead of a financing mechanism to build new power plants, the Northwest Power Act became the blueprint for a laboratory of energy and environmental conservation. The regional stewardship framed by the act revolves about the Northwest Power Planning Council and the two plans it has promulgated.
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From page 136... ...
More specific guidance was formulated in the 1987 version of the Northwest Power Planning Council's Columbia River Basin program, which set out an ecosystem-scale approach. The invoking of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)
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From page 137... ...
The keystone of the Columbia River Basin program is an augmentation of the flow of the river called the water budget. Before the dams were built, flow was heavily concentrated in the spring, when mountain snow rapidly melts.
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From page 138... ...
American Indian treaty rights, ignored for more than a century, are widely accepted. More than 40,000 stream-miles in the Columbia River Basin have been put off limits to hydropower development.
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From page 139... ...
The regional management council system established by the MFCMA might have been a model for the Northwest Power Planning Council (Wilkinson and Conner 1983:56, footnote 212~. In recent years, the entire regional fishery management-council system has come under attack because of alleged "capture" by special interests in the fisheries (e.g., Safina 1994, see also discussion in NRC 19941.
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From page 140... ...
On April 2 1990, the Shoshone-Bannock tribe of Idaho petitioned NMFS to list Snake River sockeye as an endangered species; it was closely followed by environmental groups petitioning to list the spring, summer, and fall runs of chinook salmon in the Snake River and coho salmon in the lower Columbia River. In stating that economics may not play a role in the decision to list a species as endangered or threatened, the law reflects a social decision that preservation of species is a
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From page 141... ...
For example, what about irrigators in the upper Snake River Basin whose irrigation water is lost through flow augmentation? What about salmon fishers in the lower Columbia River whose boats, gill Economics can, however, be considered in (lesignating critical habitats (Hymen and Wernstedt 1991)
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From page 142... ...
. Among the strengths, and potential weaknesses, of science and engineering is the widely held value placed on rational, deductive thinking and discovery of truth by the testing and observation of highly simplified versions of the natural world.
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From page 143... ...
The idea of rebuilding the salmon runs of an industrialized ecosystem is heroically optimistic a hope that might not have occurred to anyone except those who had rehabilitated the Willamette River Basin in Oregon or Lake Washington near Seattle. Those environmental successes came through the disciplined execution of the planning paradigm that has been fitfully applied to the much larger Columbia River Basin.
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From page 144... ...
Chapter 13 explores this further and urges constructive change in institutions that include cooperative management, bioregional governance, and adaptive management.
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