“Retooling” for the New West: Environmental NGOs, Planning, and Governance Regimes

Abstract

With rapid population growth in the American West, debates over the West's future have expanded from public lands to include threats to the region's private lands. Part of a broader trend in environmental governance, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), long an influence on public land policy, are shifting tactics to also shape the West's private land development. This case study examines the changing role of NGOs in land-use planning in Gallatin County, Montana, and asks: How are these NGOs attempting to gain influence? What influence have they gained? This study utilizes regime theory to examine the micro-scale politics between NGOs and local government. The study's findings include: (1) evidence of a coalition forming between some NGOs and local government through the provision of needed resources; (2) evidence of NGOs shifting from adversarial strategies to a cooperative planning approach; and (3) a constrained but growing influence of environmental NGOs on land-use planning.

Keywords:

• American West
• environmental governance
• environmental groups
• environmental NGOs
• Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
• planning
• regime theory

Notes

See Compas (2008) for a thorough treatment of this earlier history of NGO involvement in public lands.

Commissioners are required to document their decision making through a “Findings of Facts” document, which is often contested in court under the legal “arbitrary and capricious” standard if they deny a subdivision.