• Collaboration: Prior to the alliance, the environmental management, coastal zone and wildlife agencies in the Gulf States had limited experience working collaboratively to address ecosystem-scale threats to the Gulf’s resources.
• Collaboration: The alliance developed the first-ever collaborative action plan for improving the health of the Gulf that includes consensus recommendations for addressing six priority issues.
• Scale: Problems such as the hypoxic dead zone and harmful algal blooms are addressed at an ecosystem scale.
• Complexity: The alliance is working on a suite of inter-related issues that affect this entire large marine ecosystem and uses science to inform management.

Specific goals and action steps for each issue can be found in two Governors Action Plans developed by the alliance.

Lead Organizations

Key Parties

State

Federal

• Council on Environmental Quality
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• National Science Foundation
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• U.S. Department of Agriculture: National Resources Conservation Service, Forest Service
• U.S. Department of Defense: U.S. Navy
• U.S. Department of Energy
• U.S Department of Interior: Minerals Management Service, National Parks Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• U.S. Department of State
• U.S. Department of Transportation

Other Key Organizations

• Gulf of Mexico Foundation
• Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies
• The Northern Gulf Institute
• The Dauphin Island Sea Lab
• Area universities

Bush’s proposal met with quick support from his fellow governors. The increasing media and public attention to problems like the “dead zone” and the loss of wetlands that protect the Gulf coast from storms made action a political necessity. The governors believed a state-led alliance held promise for securing federal resources.

The Ecosystem

The Gulf of Mexico is a large, shallow sea that extends from the Florida Keys to Corpus Christy, Texas. Its coastline runs along five American states, encompassing more than 47,000 miles.

It is the 9^th largest water body in the world, and drains 60 percent of the surface waters in the United States. The Mississippi River watershed alone carries 420 billion gallons a day to the Gulf of Mexico, creating one of the most productive estuaries in the world. Tidal flats, wetlands and marshes, barrier islands, and hard and soft wood forests are among the most common habitats along the Gulf Coast.

Coastal habitats provide refuge and sustenance for nesting waterfowl, water birds, sea turtles, and many kinds of fish and shellfish. Species listed on the Endangered Species Act include sperm whales, certain species of sea turtles, Gulf Sturgeon and smalltooth sawfish.

The Gulf of Mexico’s biological productivity creates economic wealth for local economies and the nation. Its shrimp fishery accounts for 83 percent of all U.S. shrimp landings. It hosts ports and shipping lanes that move billions of dollars of oil, gas and other goods each year. Tourism generated by its beauty and recreational assets sustain 600,000 jobs.

Threats

Many of the stressors that threaten the Gulf’s health result directly or indirectly from population growth and coastal development. Other stressors derive from anthropogenic activities far upstream in the Mississippi and other watersheds. The threats to the Gulf include:

• Degradation of Water Quality: Microbial pathogens from human and animal wastes contaminate near shore beaches and shellfish beds. Nutrient loading causes harmful algal blooms (such as red tides) that threaten fish and shellfish beds. Concentrations of mercury and other contaminants are of concern.
• Hypoxia: The large volume of nutrients entering the Gulf from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya watersheds is the primary cause of a large hypoxic (or oxygen–depleted) zone that forms on the continental shelf off Louisiana every spring through fall. In 2002, the so-called “dead zone” grew to encompass 8,500 square miles.
• Loss of Coastal Habitats: The loss of coastal wetlands from the combined effects of oil and gas drilling, coastal development and sea level rise has threatened food webs and made the coast far more vulnerable to storm surge. Many other habitats are also in decline.
• Overfishing: The depletion of fish stocks in the Gulf has been a serious concern since the 1970s. Four commercially and recreationally valuable species are considered over-fished -- red snapper, greater amberkack, grouper and bluefin tuna. Catch limits have become more restrictive, but some scientists think the regulatory changes will not be sufficient to ensure the long term viability of overfished species.
• Climate Change: While many of the potential impacts of climate change require greater study, rising sea levels will impact low-lying coastal regions and accelerate the loss of wetlands and other habitats. Increasing temperatures may also increase the flow of rivers, changing the salinity of productive near-shore areas.

The alliance is relatively new. A comprehensive effort to define and evaluate metrics of ecosystem health has not been conducted yet. However, the Ecosystem Integration and Assessment Team proposed developing a metric-based “dashboard” to help policy makers track the health of the Gulf.  

The Gulf of Mexico Alliance was facilitated by the following factors:

State Government Factors

• Taking a Targeted Approach: Many marine initiatives spend years studying their ecosystems before releasing priority-setting plans. In contrast, the alliance launched with five priority issues already defined, and produced an action plan to address them in just one year.
• Building Political Will at the Start: Focusing on well-defined issues that all five states supported and setting aside controversial issues enabled the alliance to launch with high-level support from state leaders.
• Setting Achievable Steps: The aggressive timeline compelled each team to recommend small, practical steps, such as producing interactive habitat maps. The achievability of the first plan enabled the alliance to build momentum with a series of small and swift successes, proving its value to the Gulf States and building deeper support to collaborate across state borders.
• Building a State Ownership into the Structure: Each state leads a “Priority Issue Team” on one of the alliance’s six priority issues. The organizational structure has built a sense of ownership in the initiative among key state leaders.
• Taking Advantage of Competition: A Gulf State governor or agency director does not want to be seen as lagging behind while other states in the same initiative are being praised for making progress.
• Creating Rewards for States: As states use their teams to leverage expertise and resources far beyond what they have within their own governments, they see how regional collaboration produces progress on issues they care about. They also see how their team’s accomplishments bring regional and even national recognition to state leaders. These rewards of leadership deepen their commitment.
• Cultivating Resolve to Act: In the first few years, the states kept their teams focused on exchanging scientific information and coordinating data collection. As their belief in the value of the alliance has grown, they have begun using their teams to put projects “on the ground.”  For example, Mississippi’s Nutrients Team is sponsoring pilot projects to test management strategies for reducing nutrient over-loading.
• Building Trust and Cooperation: The alliance has steadily gained the trust of its participants. Now team meetings are brimming over with people who want to contribute to its work. Decisions about how to bring stakeholders together explain this growing trust and cooperation, and confirm how important process is to the success ecosystem-based management.
• Convening Teams with the Right Expertise: Putting agency program managers at the same table with scientists, rather than putting them in separate technical and policy groups created a new level of cooperation in identifying scientific work that can directly guide resource management. Mixing federal and state scientists on the same teams has also been effective in breaking down mistrust and encouraging joint planning for new investigations.
• Paying Attention to Personalities: The Gulf States chose participants who have good interpersonal skills. Southern culture also helps to create civility that teams need to be productive even when there are disagreements.
• Providing Clear Direction: The Alliance Management and Coordination Teams were formed to provide direction to the six Priority Issue Teams and to formally vet and approve their recommendations. The structure has worked well to create clear expectations for teams, while avoiding over-prescribing their activity.
• Using Good Facilitators: The team leads have played a crucial role in creating the conditions for effective team work, such as fostering mutual respect and good listening skills among team members. The Gulf States selected individuals for these roles who were known for their facilitation skills.

Federal Agency Factors

• Strong Federal Involvement, Without Federal Dominance: From the outset, federal agencies decided to support this state-led initiative, and they carved out a new kind of role for themselves -- very different from their typical regulatory functions – to help it succeed.
• Organized and Streamlined Federal Participation: They formed the Gulf of Mexico Regional Federal Workgroup to coordinate the involvement of more than thirteen agencies in the Alliance’s work.
• Critical Start-up Funding: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency supplied seed funding for convening and staffing many alliance teams, and for undertaking the first rounds of projects.
• Supported Without Directing: Federal agencies are reliable behind-the-scenes partners. They aligned existing federal programs and resources to help the alliance implement its action plans. Even non-environmental agencies like NASA have helped, by doing projects such as collecting new remote sensing imagery of the Gulf floor. At the same time, they have deferred to the states on the overall direction of the alliance.

The Gulf of Mexico Alliance has encountered the following challenges:

• Achieving Robust Participation by the States: Even though the five Gulf State governors reached a unanimous decision to form a multi-state alliance in 2005, it took time before their agencies were fully invested in its success. Cooperation had been limited among the five states’ agencies. There was a prevailing distrust between federal and state agencies in the region. Steady support of federal agencies enabled the alliance to overcome the obstacles. They provided seed funding, pulled together a Federal Workgroup to coordinate assistance across agencies, and provided a consistent presence in early team meetings. Now state officials participate fully.
• Building Long-term Organizational Stability: As the alliance matured, its status as a collection of loose, voluntary teams with no formal institution made its future vulnerable. It had no access to funding sources for non-profits and it was vulnerable to future changes in state administrations. And it depended too much on significant contributions of leadership and time by agency managers who were stretched thin. The alliance is now transitioning from its loose network structure to a non-profit with an executive director and a budget of its own to increase its long-term sustainability. It is beginning to rotate leadership of the entire initiative across the five Gulf States.
• Securing Stable Funding: To survive, the alliance needs stable, predictable funding. Early on, the alliance relied heavily on start-up funding that NOAA and EPA tapped from existing budgets. The longevity of this funding is in question. Likewise, staff time that so many state and federal agencies have contributed may not always be available. The alliance is organizing its sister ocean partnerships in other parts of the U.S. to jointly lobby Congress for resources.
• Halting the Decline of Fisheries: The alliance did not select fisheries management as one of its six priority issues, although many key species are in steep decline. Its leaders reasoned that other organizations had responsibility for fisheries management. They also tried to steer clear of issues that could cause sharp conflicts among the states. But many in the region believe that federal and regional agencies responsible for regulating fisheries are not doing enough. The alliance may lose some of its support from stakeholders and funders if the health of key fisheries does not improve.
• Earning the Confidence of Environmentalists and Regulators: The alliance struggles to influence the regulation of Gulf resources. It tried to help the states work together on setting nutrient criteria for Gulf waters. But a lawsuit filed against Florida by a national non-profit has compelled swifter action, constraining the alliance’s ability to develop common methodologies. Collaborative, science-intensive processes take time. Sometimes those outside the process – such as regulators or key stakeholders – are not willing to wait. In the future, the alliance may need to cultivate greater support for its approach by involving stakeholders who are outside the process.

People involved with the Gulf of Mexico Alliance have learned the following lessons:

• Pursue High-Level Political Support: Governor Jeb Bush believed an initiative led by all five Gulf State governors would command attention across the region and in Congress, and lay a foundation for new sources of funding for the Gulf. The governors’ support sustained a robust regional collaboration with deep participation among federal and state agencies, and key non-profit organizations. It has also positioned the alliance to influence the distribution of billions of recovery dollars in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
• Stay Focused: The alliance avoided taking on too much at the start, sticking instead to a defined set of issues and recommending initial actions that were achievable with limited resources. A crisply defined agenda solidified political will among Gulf States. It also created a low bar for declaring victory early.
• Design a Process that Breeds Teamwork: Process really matters. The alliance made smart decisions about process that turned its teams into bevies of cooperation and productivity. Among the decisions were to use the teams as forums for establishing communication between scientists and policy-makers; making individual states accountable for their progress; and choosing team leads with facilitation skills.
• Produce Results Swiftly: The alliance successfully produced its first action plan just one year after its launch. It then worked on small steps for improving understanding f the Gulf ecosystem. Early momentum has been invaluable. When participants saw benefits unfold quickly, their commitment to the alliance deepened, even in a time of very scarce state resources.  
• Work at Multiple Scales: Some of the Gulf’s environmental problems originate in areas far removed from the Gulf coast. Alliance leaders understand that they must eventually work upstream, engaging other inland states whose cities and farms send nutrients and other pollutants into the Gulf’s waters. They must also work with Mexican states that contribute to the Gulf’s woes.
• Don’t Forget about Implementation. Early on, the alliance focused on building knowledge about the Gulf’s ecosystem processes and stressors. Now some of its teams are delving into on-the-ground projects, such as pilot-testing testing various nutrient reduction strategies. This evolution worked. Teams built trust slowly by sharing information, and are now pushing for actions that will produce measurable changes in ecosystem health and ensure long-term support and funding for the effort.
• Keep Thinking About Sustainability of the Initiative: The alliance’s initial organizational structure – a loose set of voluntary teams with no formal institutional home – worked in the beginning. As the alliance matured, an organizational identity and a cadre of professional staff became essential to ensuring it could sustain the work and navigate political transitions. Now the alliance has learned that it must keep adapting to support its developmental stages and has formed a non-profit organization.
• Expand “the Table” Over Time: The alliance’s work in a few areas has not been easy. A non-profit’s lawsuit against the state of Florida hindered the alliance’s efforts to inform nutrient criteria. Such challenges underscore the importance of involving stakeholders at the national scale, whether they are regulators or prominent national non-profits whose missions include protecting the Gulf.