Year of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Name

Resource Conservation

Department or School/College

W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation

Committee Chair

Laurie Yung

Commitee Members

Martin Nie, Alex Metcalf, Shawn Johnson

Keywords

natural resources, National Forest, Alaska Native, indigenous, timber

Publisher

University of Montana

Subject Categories

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

Collaborative processes are increasingly being used to address complex natural resource management challenges, and trust between participants has been highlighted as a key component of successful collaboration. However, little research has focused on why collaboratives fail and the role of distrust in collaboration. This study examined trust and distrust in the Tongass Futures Roundtable, a collaborative group in Southeast Alaska that attempted to address timber, conservation, and Alaska Native land management issues, but was widely perceived to have failed. The history of conflict between timber and conservation interests as well as between Alaska Natives and other stakeholder groups meant that many people joined the Roundtable with preexisting distrust towards one another. This study employed semi-structured interviews with Roundtable participants to gain insight into participant experience and relationships as well as the process and outcomes of the collaboration. Several procedural components of the Roundtable were problematic--despite organizers using best practices--indicating that there may be tradeoffs between components like inclusivity and consensus-based decision-making. Historic and continuing inequity between stakeholder groups was also a significant problem. Along with failure to sufficiently acknowledge and address historical trauma, inequity was a barrier to building consensus and trust. While previous research suggests that trust may lay the groundwork for building agreement amongst diverse stakeholders in a collaborative process, for Roundtable participants, building trust was not enough to overcome barriers to collaboration. Further, some dimensions of distrust undermined certain types of trust that were built. Therefore, conceptualizing trust and distrust as multidimensional helps to illuminate that it is possible to have one type of trust and not have another, and that different types of trust are not fungible. While trust is very important in collaboration, it does not ensure that participants can bridge fundamental disagreements or that they will necessarily invest in collaboration over other venues for accomplishing their goals if they have better alternatives. For practitioners, it will be important to consider which types of trust are most important in collaboration and the trade-offs involved in different kinds of collaborative process designs.

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© Copyright 2020 Hannah M. Wilson