Organizing Louisiana's Future: Coastal Restoration Science and Policy from the NGO Perspective

G. Paul Kemp, Ph.D., Vice-President, Gulf Coast Initiative, National Audubon Society

Private, non-governmental environmental organizations (NGOs) that operate at national and international scales educate, encourage scientific research and organize popular support for sound environmental management at every level in government and industry where key decisions are made.  The National Audubon Society (NAS) was founded in 1905 with the goal of connecting people to nature through birds.  NAS has three chapters with thousands of members in Louisiana, and a number of refuges including the 26,000 acre Paul J. Rainey Sanctuary, one of the oldest private marsh sanctuaries anywhere in the United States.  Twenty years ago, members of the “Green Group” of 30 leading national environmental organizations – including NAS -- worked with local scientists and activists to help establish the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation as umbrellas to focus grass-roots efforts to get coastal restoration moving in Louisiana.  Since hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Green Group organizations like the NAS have been working with renewed interest at the nexus between global warming and coastal wetland loss.  Long-held Green Group support for more effectively protecting and restoring estuarine ecosystems has been increasingly linked to the urgent need to protect coastal human populations from storm flooding.  Intense competition for restoration and protection funds has caused many who previously were disengaged, both inside and outside of the environmental community, to question the maturity of restoration science and readiness of the Louisiana restoration initiative for a sustained, high-dollar investment.  The challenge of answering these questions has fallen, in large part, to the NGOs and the scientific and economics experts upon whom they rely, as was recently demonstrated in the debate over whether and how to close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.  The intensity of post-apocalyptic NGO engagement has caught some government agencies by surprise.  They are struggling, more or less effectively, to adapt.  Ultimately, agency personnel will find strategic ways to take advantage of added NGO attention and resources.