In the swamps of Louisiana in the Atchafalaya Basin, crawfishermen are pitted against oil companies; the local Cajun community against government agencies; and environmentalists against developers. In the middle of this stand off, students from the MIT School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P), including Tijs van Maasakkers, are working with the stakeholders, residents, groups, and agencies to facilitate a plan for the future of the Atchafalaya River Basin.

These SA+P students are earning their masters’ degrees in an MIT program in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning designed to train a new class of professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to bring together disparate stakeholders in environmental debates. Known as science impact coordinators, their goal is to craft a process that will enable a result all interested parties can support.

“We work on the ground with federal and state agencies in environmental conflicts over an extended period of time. We learn about actual environmental problems. We have the capacity to work constructively and creatively with the stakeholders on how to create a process, a decision-making process, that can lead them in the direction of a scientifically sound, politically plausible solution,” says van Maasakkers.

MIT, government partner to solve problems

A partnership between MIT and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is educating the next generation of professionals who can help resolve these conflicts. The MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (MUSIC) is based on the notion that public involvement in science-intensive policy-making can only be meaningful if:

• All stakeholders, regardless of their technical knowledge, are represented and involved in framing the relevant inquiries;
• the policy-making conversation is managed by a trained, impartial mediator; and
• scientists and technical experts take part in a face-to-face conversation aimed at informed political decisions.

MUSIC is a two-year graduate program headed by Lawrence Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, and Herman Karl, a senior scientist at the USGS who is on assignment at MIT. Founded in 2004, MUSIC promotes collaborative fact finding as a way of ensuring that science and politics are appropriately balanced.

“Out in the world at large, there are natural resource management problems — water, oceans, atmosphere, endangered species, forests, soil, you name it. Decisions need to be made regarding the management of these resources,” says Susskind. In the United States, the USGS is the premier federal agency working on these problems. Superbly trained scientists work for the USGS, as well as other federal, state, and local government agencies. But the science, which sometimes is not fully understood, is often hotly debated. “Even when the science is pretty well understood, it won’t have much of an impact on decisions if scientists, public officials, and stakeholder groups can’t talk to each other effectively,” he says.

The Atchafalaya Basin is an example of a situation where many competing agendas have to be reconciled, while ensuring scientific facts are included in the planning. The issue dates back to the building of a dam in 1973. The river basin is slowly filling with nitrogen-rich sediment. It is also an area with growing oil and gas development, which requires the digging of canals for transporting equipment and materials. The desire of some stakeholders to try and save the pristine nature of the cypress swamp is running up against the industries that want to search for oil and gas, the government agencies that maintain the river flow and flood control, timber companies that own nearby land, and local crawfishermen. Add in the effects of climate change, and a long-term solution that all stakeholders can willingly support is necessary for success.

“When the students are working on these projects, they get to see things no other students get to see. They see the inside political workings of these agencies as well as their sensitivities,” says Karl.

Other situations where MUSIC students have actively participated and worked to find viable solutions include:

• strip mining in West Virginia;
• management of groundwater in eastern Washington state;
• protection of coastal waters in Maine;
• offshore wind-farming on the U.S. coasts; and
• water flow in the Connecticut River Valley.

“With the expertise MUSIC brings, we have the capacity to come into a process, help competing groups reach agreement, and then work with them to carry out their recommendation in a meaningful way,” says van Maasakkers.

Fellowship support necessary

The success of the MUSIC program depends on graduate student fellowship support. As government funding of research continues to shrink, and as competition among universities for the best students intensifies, MIT and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning must take aggressive action to ensure graduate student support and to maintain the excellence of its graduate programs.

Graduate students make up 60 percent of MIT’s student population and 90 percent of the student population at SA+P. Through their research, teaching, and subsequent contributions to their fields and the world at large, graduate students are vital partners and participants in the Institute’s mission to advance knowledge, educate students and meet a range of public service objectives. The annual expenses, including tuition and living costs, for a typical MIT graduate student in 2006 totaled $56,540. Graduate students receive financial support primarily through research assistantships (RAs), internships and fellowships.

A gift of private support for graduate fellowships at MIT and SA+P is a commitment to ensuring this generation’s most experienced and knowledgeable faculty experts and practitioners prepare the next generation of leaders. It’s an investment in graduate student talent and innovation, which, when partnered with MIT faculty, expands the solution set well beyond what we can envision today. Specifically, support of fellowships for the MUSIC program will enable MIT students to have tremendous impact in finding solutions to environmental problems — solutions that include all stakeholders and thus have better chances of success.

Giving opportunities

• Endow a full fellowship (covering an academic year’s tuition and stipend for one student annually): $1 million
• Endow a partial fellowship: $250,000 minimum