Upper
Mississippi Basin
Stakeholder Network
Enhancing Communication and Providing
Information for
Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholders
The Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder Network (UMBSN) is a St. Mary's
University of Minnesota project, supported in part, through a grant from the
McKnight Foundation. The project is
being implemented under the Department
of Resource Analysis. The UMBSN is
an information sharing process designed to connect farm, citizen action, and
environmental organizations, watershed management alliances, county land and
water conservation districts, landowners, Tribes, and Federal and State
Agencies. It has three major goals:
·
The first is to identify and create a connection with the multitude of
diverse stakeholders within the Upper Mississippi Basin. Stakeholders are those organizations that
have an interest in the Basin’s land conservation, the loss of sediment and
nutrients, and the related affects on water quality. Stakeholders are identified from the environmental, agriculture,
corporate, and citizen action sectors.
The initial group being contacted and asked to participate in the
Network by sharing project information, identifying problems, needed
information, government program constraints or opportunities, and to make
available to the Network their perspectives on needs, management priorities,
and implementation strategies. Then
participation is expected to grow through word of mouth and Internet
connectivity. Stakeholders will have
the opportunity to view Network information via the UMBSN website. The website provides information on
watershed projects, Upper Basin news, extensive organizational Links, and
provides information on topics pertinent to issues of land conservation,
sediment and nutrient management, and water quality. Stakeholder groups also have the opportunity to use the Network
as a forum to present management concerns, informational deficiencies, and
implementation strategies. The Network
views this service as a mechanism to provide all stakeholders with a better
understanding of issues, perspectives, and background for the differing
positions stakeholder groups have or are evolving. These are not considered the position of the Network, but a
communication service to facilitate clearer understanding of issues.
·
The second goal is to provide stakeholders with information pertinent to
understanding or addressing issues of land conservation, sediment and nutrient
management, and water quality. This
includes information on existing or developing watershed management projects
within the basin, with the purpose of creating corporate capacity to understand
lessons learned, successes, failures, and to create an active network of
individuals or sites to function as references for those struggling with
similar issues. In addition,
information of specific interest to stakeholders will be sought and presented
on the site. Stakeholders have the
opportunity to define informational gaps in their understanding of jargon,
management concepts, regulatory proposals, or other issues in which agency or
hosting organizations assume public understanding of ideas, terminology, and
concepts. Network staff expect to
respond to these requests for information by tapping into the existing network
of science organization or through their own research.
·
Finally, the Network is creating a dynamic communication mechanism to
share ideas on important, contemporary topics.
These discussions will operate via a web-based listserv process. An important difference between these type
of electronic discussion forum and others currently operating, is that these
discussions will be summarized on a bi weekly or monthly basis. Summary papers being posted on the website
so the content and value of each topical discussion is not lost over time. Any individual will be able to at any time,
go back and review past discussions, find participant names and email
addresses, etc. Topics will include a
variety of topics including watershed-based management, Mississippi River
management, water quality regulatory strategies, and a host of others
Stakeholder participants feel are important for group discussion and input. As part of this dynamic communication goal,
the Network will also summarize input on management issues, concerns, or
comments on informational deficiencies pertinent to government discussions on
these subjects. This information will
be regularly provided to specific State and Federal agencies tasked with these
responsibilities. The Network hopes
that this could, over time, become and important mechanism for public input to
government water quality, watershed, land, and River management processes.
The Network is built on a non political foundation that assumes better
coordination, communication, and sharing ideas will result in better citizen
involvement in the processes setting policy on issues of land conservation,
water quality, and sediment and nutrient management. The nonpolitical premise is important in maintaining the
Network’s credibility with all stakeholder groups. This does not mean that it cannot be a forum for presenting
conflicting ideas and points of view.
However, when this occurs Network managers will sincerely attempt to
present both sides of an argument. The
Network will not be a forum to advocate a specific stakeholder group’s
political agenda.
It is founded on the principle that without good information, informed discussion
and debate can not occur or it will occur in an awareness vacuum.
The UMBSN is developed as the stakeholder involvement and education component
of the Upper Mississippi Basin Stewardship Initiative. The Stewardship Initiative is a concept
developed at St. Mary's University of Minnesota, in partnership with numerous
other organizations like the Upper Mississippi River Summit, Corps of Engineers
Waterways Experiment Station, University of Minnesota’s Waseca Agriculture
Experiment Station, American Rivers, the Mississippi Basin Conservation
Alliance, U.S. Geological Survey, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and
individual farmers throughout the Upper Basin.
It is a voluntary, locally led, private land conservation program for
reducing the loss of soil and nutrients from agricultural and urban activities
in the basin. The Initiative was
developed with a clear understanding of the importance of stakeholder
involvement and stakeholder access to good information on key management
issues. Without this information and
engagement, the Initiative concepts of local governance, research and
monitoring, improved interagency coordination, and significant increases in
technical assistance cannot be successfully implemented.
For additional information please contact - Barry Drazkowski,
bdrazkow@smumn.edu