Imagination Works: Aligning Incentives for Clean Water
View photos from the event
View Tim Gieseke's presentation (pdf)
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Imagination Works: Highlighting innovative ideas to stretch our policy imagination |
Monday, November 15, 2010
Reception 5:30 p.m. | Program 6:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Aloft Minneapolis
900 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis 55415
Map, driving, and transit directions
Parking is available at meters on the street, and the Guthrie ramp is across the street
Registration:
$5 for Citizens League members, $10 for non-members
Registration includes appetizers
Not a member? Join today
The Citizens League's recent report, To the Source: Moving Minnesota's Water Governance Upstream (pdf), concluded that, in order to address the kinds of water pollution problems that we are facing today, we must set up environments where individuals, businesses, farms, and other organizations work together with government for clean water, because they meet their own interests in the process of doing so. (Read more from our policy blog.)
Join the Citizens League and Tim Gieseke of Ag Resource Strategies discuss one such model for the agricultural context.
Tim has developed an index that assesses a farm's impact on a variety of factors and gives them an overall "water quality score." This score opens up a way for the many people and entities working on a farm to communicate and helps them coordinate their efforts towards the goal of clean water.
We can set up conditions in which it's in everybody's interest to increase the score. For example:
- A business purchasing farms' products can require these suppliers to meet a certain minimum score in order to be recognized as a "sustainable" business.
- Conservation districts, with cost-share and other funding available for farmers who volunteer to implement certain "best management practices," can get a better idea of how to most effectively target these limited funds. Rather than distributing funding somewhat randomly to whomever volunteers, they can compile the assessments of multiple operations within their district to understand where funds will have the greatest impact to raise water quality scores, and hence to increase water quality.
- The Pollution Control Agency, responsible for eliminating a list of water quality "impairments" (2,575 across the state and growing), can compile assessments on a watershed-by-watershed basis to better understand what needs to be done to reduce these pollutants.
- These assessments arm farmers with a lot of information. Farmers make the decision to have their operation assessed, and they own the data generated as a result. Assessments can leave them with a greater understanding of the impact (both good and bad) of their practices and increased options to work with private and government partners.
You can find out more in the July-August issue of the Minnesota Journal.
Tim Gieseke is the founder and president of Ag Resource Strategies, LLC. The company was developed as a vehicle to assist in the development of an outcome-based resource management process for agriculture, agribusiness, and agri-industry, as well as to align these activities with the governmental and non-profit organizations that provide the necessary support for effective resource management to occur. Tim relies has experience as a farmer, soil and water conservation district staff, policy analyst, and a master's degree in environmental science. You can read his complete bio here.
The 2010 Imagination Works series is sponsored by Dean Phillips, Hubbard Broadcasting, Target, Twin Cities Business, and Win Wallin.
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