October 2004
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Strengthening Environmental Policy Education Through Qualitative Research: Experience with Pennsylvania's Nutrient Management Act Regulatory ReviewAlyssa Dodd Charles Abdalla Penn State Cooperative Extension IntroductionEnvironmental protection is one of the most critical and complex issues our nation faces. Many audiences--farmers, local governmental officials, watershed organizations, and concerned citizens--have questions about rapidly changing environmental policies. Extension has the opportunity to provide timely issues-oriented policy education programs "where people learn about public issues, policy-making processes, and opportunities for involvement and influence" (Hahn, 1990). While educational opportunities exist, environmental policy education is challenging from both a content and educational process perspective. The issues are dynamic and complex. Educators are challenged with enhancing understanding and providing balanced information to diverse audiences. Additional challenges include transferring time-sensitive information and motivating individuals and groups to participate in decision-making. Through our experiences in Pennsylvania, we have identified several "ingredients" we believe are essential to a "recipe of success." These include:
A recently completed project documenting the views of Pennsylvania nutrient management policy stakeholders illustrates the importance of these "ingredients" in environmental policy education. This article introduces the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act and the window of opportunity that presented itself to provide timely and useful public policy information to key influential stakeholders and decision makers. It describes the qualitative research methods used to document stakeholder views, presents key findings, and summarizes the demand for and use of the report. Finally, the article concludes with practical advice for Extension educators working on environmental or related natural resources policy issues. BackgroundThe Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act (Act 6) was passed in 1993 and took effect in 1997. The Act requires all "concentrated animal operations" (CAOs) to develop and implement a state-approved nutrient management plan. A CAO is any animal production operation with more than 2,000 pounds of live weight per acre of land available to spread manure. The State Conservation Commission is responsible for implementing and enforcing Act 6. The Commission relies on the Nutrient Management Advisory Board, a 15-member board established under the Act, to review and comment on regulations (Beegle, Lanyon, & Lingenfelter, 2001). Almost all of the 67 county conservation districts have accepted local program implementation responsibilities. In 2002, the Commission began its required 5-year review of the density-based criteria for defining CAOs. The review has expanded to include an overall update of the regulations. Currently, policy discussions are underway, and changes to the Nutrient Management Act regulations are likely to occur in 2004. A decade after passage of the Nutrient Management, the regulatory revision process provides an opportunity to provide timely and useful public policy information to stakeholders and decision makers. The Nutrient Management Act revisions will affect almost 1,000 CAO and over 800 volunteer (non-CAO) livestock and poultry operations with approved Act 6 nutrient management plans. The changes will also provide environmental benefits for Pennsylvania citizens. Extension's RolePenn State Cooperative Extension is actively involved in nutrient and water policy education. Historically, Extension has focused on providing technical nutrient management expertise during the policy development process. Extension specialists trained in soil science, agricultural engineering, and animal production continue to contribute in this important role. However, Extension's role has expanded over time to include specialists trained in the social sciences, providing public policy information to stakeholders and decision makers beyond traditional agricultural audiences. Since late 2000, administrative leadership within Penn State Cooperative Extension has increased its capacity in this program area by hiring one full-time, fixed-term Extension associate (the lead author) for a period of 3 years to explore programming in this area. Additionally, one full-time, permanent Extension specialist (the co-author) devotes time to the agricultural environmental public policy programming area. Our commitment to maintain a presence within the state-level nutrient and water policy arena led to identifying the opportunity to provide timely public policy education. Extension was aware that the process to update the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act regulations was underway and was present during state-level policy discussions where diverse stakeholder perspectives were shared. Once the window of educational opportunity was identified, we organized quickly to document stakeholder perspectives, with the goal of providing a balanced educational resource that would lead to more informed policy discussions. MethodologyQualitative research methods were used to document diverse perspectives, issues, and solutions related to nutrient management policy in Pennsylvania. Data were gathered through key informant stakeholder interviews. Several documents were used to create a semi-structured interview survey: the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act and its rules, the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Program manual, and proceedings from legislative hearings held during the spring of 2001. All questions were open-ended. Extension's presence within the state-level nutrient and water policy arena made it possible to identify key informant interviewees. Key informants were identified on the basis of their involvement in current nutrient and water policy discussions or the stakeholder organization they represent. Additional interviewees were contacted through "snowball sampling," a technique where each key informant was asked to identify other knowledgeable individuals to interview. Snowball sampling is appropriate when a study is primarily explorative, qualitative and descriptive (Atkinson & Flint, 2001). Special emphasis was placed on documenting diverse interests in nutrient management policy to support a balanced educational approach. Individuals represented the perspectives of farmers, agribusiness, agricultural consultants, government agencies, environmental interest groups, public interest groups, and educators. Twenty-eight personal interviews (22 in person, 6 phone) were conducted in July and August of 2002. Interviews took no more than 90 minutes. Interviewees were assured that all responses would remain confidential and that no ideas or perspectives would be attributed to specific stakeholders. Because of the potentially controversial nature of the subject matter, responses were recorded in writing by the interviewer instead of with a tape-recorder. While there may have been some loss of data, we believe the approach created a more comfortable informal interview, allowing greater information exchange. In most cases, the authors interviewed respondents as a team, with one responsible for note-taking. We believe four major factors increased interviewee participation.
Stakeholder responses were assembled and analyzed. Steps in the time-intensive analysis included compiling all responses to specific questions; identifying key phrases, words, and concepts; and summarizing emerging themes. As themes emerged, the information or views obtained were not attributed to specific stakeholder groups. To ensure perspectives and ideas were appropriately documented and to emphasize the importance of each stakeholders view, all interviewees were asked to review the draft research findings. Several interviewees provided written comments on the draft report. Interviewees not responding in writing were contacted via e-mail and/or telephone to ensure the draft report was received and to document additional comments. Key FindingsKey informant interviewee responses provides insight into nutrient management policy challenges, identifies key indicators of program performance and success, offers broad conclusions about nutrient management policy-making in the state, and identifies future policy directions. While we strove to include representatives of stakeholders to nutrient management issues, we were not able to be exhaustive in terms of including all possible groups and individuals. However, due to the number and diversity of interviews, we believe the findings are comprehensive and balanced from a statewide perspective. Key findings include the following.
BenefitsHard copies of the report, Nutrient Management Policy: Pennsylvania Stakeholder Views About Progress, Challenges, and Future Directions (Abdalla & Dodd, 2002), were distributed to over 100 stakeholders. The publication was also made available on the Internet at Penn State Cooperative Extension's Nutrient and Water Policy Web site <http://agenvpolicy.aers.psu.edu>. A Web statistics program, WebTrends, provides detailed information on the number of people who access the Web site and download the publication. Between December 2002 and May 2003, the report was downloaded more than 2,000 times. State-level Extension educators have formally presented the qualitative research findings to the Nutrient Management Advisory Board, the State Conservation Commission, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Chesapeake Bay Advisory Committee. The project highlighted Extension's commitment to agricultural and environmental public policy education and increased visibility and political support. For example, the State Conservation Commission invited Extension to present the Stakeholders Views report at four Nutrient Management Planner meetings held around the state. More than 225 nutrient management planners, county conservation district staff, farmers, and government agency staff attended. Several key agency members provided unsolicited feedback on Extension's involvement and contribution to the meetings, demonstrating an increase in political support. As a result of impact from this project and other nutrient and water policy programming efforts, the Penn State Cooperative Extension administration has extended the Extension associate position to mid-2004. ConclusionPenn State Cooperative Extension's commitment to balanced public policy education approaches that meet the needs of diverse audiences, to maintain a presence within the state-level nutrient and water policy arena and to build trust between Extension and diverse stakeholders has proven useful in identifying and exploiting opportunities for timely public policy education. The use of qualitative research methods to document nutrient management stakeholder views was instrumental in creating a useful educational resource that resulted in more informed policy discussions. Our educational philosophy is that improvements in policy come about through exchange of facts and perspectives about issues and solutions and effective participation by all interested and affected parties and when public decision makers carefully consider this input. Extension, as demonstrated in Pennsylvania, has an opportunity to facilitate this exchange, participation, and informed decision-making. For Extension educators in other states looking to become involved in nutrient and water policy education we suggest the following.
ReferencesAbdalla, C., & Dodd, A. (2002). Nutrient management policy: Pennsylvania stakeholder views about progress, challenges, and future directions. Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Penn State University. Available at: http://agenvpolicy.aers.psu.edu/Documents/NMAstakeholderviews.pdf Atkinson, R., & Flint, J. (2001). Accessing hidden and hard-to-reach populations: Snowball research strategies. Social Research Update [On-line], 33. Available at: http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/SRU33.html Beegle, D., Lanyon L. E., & Lingenfelter, D. D. (2001). Agronomy facts #40: Nutrient management legislation in Pennsylvania: A summary of the regulations, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. Department of Crops and Soil Sciences, Penn State University. Available at: http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/uc111.pdf Barrows, R. (1993). Public policy education. North Central Regional Extension Publication No. 203. Favero, P., & Abdalla, C. W. (1997). Creating workable implementation rules to meet the complexities of manure management: Pennsylvania's nutrient management law. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 52(5), 320-322. Hahn, A. J. (1990). Issues-oriented public policy education. Journal of Extension [On-line], 28(1). Available at: http://www.joe.org/joe/1990spring/a3.html The Nutrient Management Act, title 3, Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, sections 1701-1717 (2002). This article is online at http://www.joe.org/joe/2004august/a2.shtml. Copyright © by Extension Journal, Inc. ISSN 1077-5315. Articles appearing in the Journal become the property of the Journal. Single copies of articles may be reproduced in electronic or print form for use in educational or training activities. Inclusion of articles in other publications, electronic sources, or systematic large-scale distribution may be done only with prior electronic or written permission of the Journal Editorial Office, joe-ed@joe.org. If you have difficulties viewing or printing this page, please contact JOE Technical Support. |