Taber is an attorney and facilitator with a focus on building partnerships, collaboration on transportation issues, regulatory design, and legal and policy analysis.   She has worked with a range of public and private agencies and organizations to solve problems, reach decisions and resolve conflicts.  Taber’s work includes convening stakeholder groups, consensus-building and working with agencies and non-profit boards to improve decision-making processes, increase understanding and rebuild trust. Taber is adept at working across and between sectors with social entrepreneurs, activists, government, non-profits, and business leaders.

Taber earned a law degree from the Colorado Law School in Boulder and practiced public health and natural resource law for the State of Colorado. She also founded Mountain Flower Goat Dairy, a non-profit urban agriculture project with a mission to train the next generation of farmers while providing humanely produced dairy products to the community.  Additionally, Taber has previously worked with Boards of Directors and Executives, run business development teams and facilitated government affairs and policy efforts.

Taber is an integral part of the future of CDR, currently working on a variety of challenging and exciting transportation, wildlife and public involvement efforts.

In her free time, Taber can be found mucking around with goats or on a hike in the Colorado mountains and walking her dog.

If you would like to know more, find Taber’s contact information here.

“If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You Always Get What You’ve Always Gotten”

– Henry Ford

In May 2016, the City of Boulder charged the 14-member Public Participation Working Group (PPWG) with recommending improvements to the city’s engagement process and public participation. The City’s goal was to engage citizens in the decisions made by civic leaders. Other cities initiating similar public participation processes include Austin, TX; Portland, OR; Berkeley, CA and Minneapolis, MN.

CDR’s Jonathan Bartsch, Principal, and Taber Ward, Project Manager, facilitate and support PPWG meetings to ensure that the PPWG receives the necessary resources to develop, refine, prioritize and present Public Participation Recommendations to the City Council by June 2017.

At the time of this publication, the PPWG members are well underway with discussions and research.  Initial topics addressed and discussed by the PPWG include, but are not limited to: increasing the City’s outreach efforts; inclusivity and diversity in voices; case-studies; best practices and public participation principles; education; skill-building and cultures; and systems of public participation.  A City Council representative and three staff members from the City’s Communications, Neighborhood Services and Planning departments also attend PPWG meetings to provide guidance and support.

CDR’s role is to facilitate and assist the PPWG in fulfilling its charge to provide applicable, actionable, and thoughtful Recommendations to increase public participation in Boulder.  The ultimate goal of this project is to ensure that citizens have an increased voice, a space, and a place to safely and respectfully contribute to the bigger conversation and process of Boulder governance.

If you would like to know more, find Taber’s contact information here.

CDR has worked extensively with the extractive industry sector. We are driven by the desire to ensure that the social and political leverage of a company is used to benefit those directly impacted by its operations, and that the strategies employed to achieve value and well being for communities also generate economic value for the company and reduces its social risks.

In 2014, the corporate social performance manager from a global oil and gas company approached CDR Associates to help them devise a social performance management system, consistent with international standards, that would enable business units across its global operations to comply with its revised community-relations policy, new community-relations standard and associated requirements and commitments. The company was interested in developing a systematic approach that tied its social performance strategy to business objectives; ensured social risks were assessed, managed and monitored throughout the life cycle of an asset; integrated social performance into its organizational culture and broader business processes; and increased the company’s ability to operate on schedule and within budget, contributing to a positive bottom line.

Over the past three years, Susan Wildau, a Partner at CDR Associates and another colleague, partnered with the corporate team to develop a global community relations management framework, standard, and implementation strategy. They also created practical tools, templates and guidance to support compliance at the asset level.

An important insight gained early in the process was the need to place ownership and accountability for the system squarely on the shoulders of the CEOs for the business units rather than with the community relations department. Moreover, a shift in company culture was called for, whereby social risk was viewed as everyone’s business, and community relations considerations had a regular place at the decision-making table.

Accordingly, CDR Associates, in partnership with the company, provided support in the following areas:
• Capacity building and coaching of the corporate social performance team in social performance management systems.
• Development of the social performance global framework.
• Preparation of the company’s social performance standard and alignment with associated standards and policies.
• Development of the company’s practice in social opportunities management, including its social opportunities procedure.
• Preparation of a full set of social performance management plans consistent with the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) performance standards, for use by the business units.
o Plans were developed in the areas of local content, closure, involuntary resettlement and land acquisition, conflict management, contractor management, community health, safety and security, stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanism, and so forth.
• Design and implementation of an interactive Social Performance Management Workshop and corresponding Train the Trainers course to introduce the social management system across the company’s global operations.
o Deliverables included program design, workshop agendas, all materials including case studies and simulations, and the Training for Trainers Guide.
• Co-delivery of workshop with corporate social performance team to targeted business units in various regions of company operations.
• Continued support of the corporate team and business units in their efforts to establish positive and constructive relations with local communities, civil society and authorities; reduce social risk; and enhance social performance tied to business objectives.

For more information on CDR’s experience and projects designing and implementing social performance management systems, grievance mechanisms, strategic community engagement, and conflict management for the extractives sector, including resolution of contentious company-community disputes, find Susan’s contact information here.

The issue of multiple, large-scale wildfires was confronted by the Bureau of Land Management, through Oregon Consensus in Portland, Oregon in December of 2014.   CDR Associates was engaged to help Harney County, OR face the specter of mega-fires in sagebrush country.

With the help of a “Core Team” made up of Federal officials (from BLM and US Fish and Wildlife Service), scientists (USDA Agricultural Research Service), environmentalists (The Nature Conservancy), a County Commissioner, and ranchers, CDR began working on this project in February 2015.  First, CDR and the Core Team first worked  to create a larger group called the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative.  The Collaborative included members from Oregon Department of State Lands, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, members of six Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (the volunteer firefighters for the county), firefighters from federal agencies, members of two other environmental groups, as well as chiefs of tribal, city and county fire departments.

The Collaborative agreed to meet for a full day once a month in Burns.  Further, they agreed that the purpose of the Collaborative was to reach consensus on specific, achievable, tangible and measurable steps to be taken by all entities (both public and private) to reduce the potential for and impact of mega-fires in Harney County.

The first topic addressed by the Collaborative was suppression — defined as the communication, coordination and integration of actions taken to put fires out in both initial attack and extended attack.  The Collaborative will then tackle the issue of prevention – meaning, what has changed ecologically and administratively in addressing mega-fires.  The Collaborative identified where their energy could be focused to reduce both the instance of and the damage done by mega-fires.

The next tasks for CDR and the Collaborative are 1) to identify a pilot site and 2) Agree on the most effective tools to reduce the site’s vulnerability to mega-fire.

If you would like to know more, find Mary Margaret’s contact information here.

Estuary programs are multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives to protect and restore water quality and the ecological integrity of estuaries of significance. They commonly involve diverse Federal, State, and local government agencies and stakeholders from the private and non-profit sectors. See https://www.epa.gov/nep/overview-national-estuary-program for more information on EPA’s National Estuary Program.)

Stakeholders in the Brownsville area of Texas are in the process of establishing an estuary program for the Lower Laguna Madre, a long, shallow hypersaline lagoon along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Participating groups hope that in the future, the program will be recognized and supported by the U.S. Congress and incorporated into the national network of estuary programs.

CDR was asked by the local Laguna Madre Estuary Program coordinating committee – composed of representatives from multiple universities, counties, cities and EPA – to provide assistance in the design and facilitation of the Program’s first large public stakeholder engagement workshop.

The purposes of the workshop were to identify interested local partners, solicit their input on issues the Program should address and secure commitments for future participation.  CDR Partner Christopher Moore worked with the committee and EPA to design the workshop, facilitate it and prepare local facilitators to conduct topic-focused working sessions.

Close to 50 people attended the workshop, which has been followed up by numerous public education meetings and working groups.  For more information on the Lower Laguna Madre Estuary Program, contact:  Augusto Sánchez González, Director of Estuary, Environmental and Special Projects – Cameron County Region and Department of Civil Engineering, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. augusto.sanchezgonzalez@utrgv.edu or (956) 882-6605

For more information on CDR’s work in stakeholder engagement on development and environmental projects and programs, find Christopher Moore’s contact information here.

Liberia

The Liberian government’s new land policy involves new procedures for customary communities to secure legal ownership of community land, which previously has been considered public land owned by the Government. To secure community ownership, customary communities will be required to identify their members (including women and minorities who may have come from or be members of other ethnic communities), negotiate boundaries with adjoining communities, and establish broadly representative governance structures for community land management and administration.

During 2016, CDR Associates Partner, Christopher Moore, conducted research with its Liberian partner, Parley, and wrote a monograph on Harmonizing Boundaries: Effective Negotiation Procedures for Delimiting, Demarcating and Resolving Disputes over Boundaries. This monograph is available on CDR’s website at here.

To facilitate the implementation of boundary harmonization, Moore designed and conducted training programs for staff of Liberian government agencies and non-governmental organizations to prepare them to work with communities to collaboratively delimit and demarcate their boundaries. Subsequently, Parley conducted multiple joint boundary harmonization workshops for adjoining communities and provided coaching assistance as they negotiated and established their common boundaries.

CDR’s assistance has been provided directly for the Liberian Land Commission and through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Tetra Tech’s Land Dispute Resolution Project (LCRP) and Land Governance Support Project (LGSA).

Timor-Leste

In the fall of 2016, CDR Partner Christopher Moore conducted a speaking tour in Timor-Leste to discuss land issues and dispute resolution systems that could be implemented to effectively resolve them. During the week-long tour, Chris met with government agencies, non-governmental organizations and university faculty and students.  His presentations focused on systems and procedures developed in other countries that could be used to address the kinds of land disputes that will inevitably arise with the passage of the country’s new law.  Chris also made a presentation to print and electronic media reporters on approaches for fair and impartial reporting on land issues and the new law.  The goal of the presentation was to provide guidance and techniques for reporters that would help them to inform members of the public on the new law and mitigate problems and disputes related to its implementation.

For more information on a range of CDR’s international development, environmental, land and water projects, find Chris Moore’s contact information here.