The Politics of Accountability in National Forest Planning

Abstract

On December 6, 2002, the Forest Service published a proposed planning regulation that provides a framework for community-based collaborative planning for sustainability, alters the spatial and temporal scales of public involvement, and replaces postdecisional appeals of forest plans with a predecisional objection process. This article examines the potential effects of community-based collaborative planning on national environmental stakeholders and explores what it means to be accountable to a national constituency. The author argues that the focus on the community of place in collaborative planning, compounded by the loss of appeals, undermines the democratic accountability of the forest planning processes.