Left Coast Press will very shortly publish Consultation and Cultural Heritage: Let Us
Reason Together, by Claudia Nissley and me (See http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=504). The website says it will be available in
March, 2014; we’re hoping it’ll be out a bit sooner than that.
Innumerable environmental and cultural
resource/heritage laws, regulations, standards and guidelines, in the U.S. and
throughout the world, call for “consultation,” but few say much about what it’s
supposed to entail. As a result, there’s
a tendency to substitute things like formletters and public hearings for real
consultation.
Our book’s subtitle – from Isaiah 1:18 –
encapsulates our view that consultation is supposed to entail reasoning
together, to seek a mutually agreeable outcome to some sort of actual or
potential conflict or problem. As the
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) puts it:
Consultation
means the process of seeking, discussing,
and considering the views of other
participants, and, where feasible, seeking agreement with them …. (36 CFR
§800.16(f)).
Our book is built around the ACHP definition,
discussing what each of those called-for actions – “seeking,” “discussing,” “considering”
and “seeking agreement” – involves, suggesting effective ways of carrying out
each such action, and flagging ways of “consulting” that are, to put it
blandly, less then effective. It’s based
on our collective sixty-plus years of work in consultation under the National
Historic Preservation Act and other U.S. laws, but it’s designed for use not
only under U.S. law but wherever consultation about environmental and heritage
matters takes place. It would be nice to
think that it may help improve the quality and effectiveness of consultation
about such matters, but neither of us is holding breath.
And the cover art? Rock art in Baja California, showing people throwing up their hands, what else?
