In many other places, academic studies about controversial public policy issues have acquired an odious reputation. In many cases, politicians who intend to do nothing offer a study instead. Then there is the phenomenon of mercenary scholarship, which churns out to studies-to-order to lend pseudo-scientific support to political causes that are backed by special economic interests. In many places, particularly in the industrially developed countries, it is unrealistic to expect that any environmental impact study saying that the effects will be negligible would keep protesters away from a public hearing at which a toxic waste dump permit application is to be discussed. Our northern neighbors tend to be jaded about expert opinions and studies.

In Panama we have not seen the loss of public confidence in experts to the same extent as in, say, Germany or the United States. That's mostly because environmental impact studies, permit applications and land use plans are relatively new and underdeveloped phenomena here. Inadequate studies do get rejected from time to time by the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) or other agencies, but the Panamanian public has been relatively slow to catch on to the politics of expert studies.

In academia, however, Panamanian scholars are wrestling with the issue of what makes a proper study. On February 19 several dozen people gathered at the University of Panama's Vice-Rectory for Research and Post-Graduate Studies Auditorium to hear an Institute for National Studies (IEN) Society and Future Forum, with presentations on Panama Canal watershed research by the University of Panama sociologist José Lasso and USMA urban planner Carla López, with comments by Oscar Vallarino, the former leader of the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) who now works for the Panama Canal Authority as the executive secretary of the Inter-Institutional Commission on the Panama Canal Watershed (CICH, by its Spanish initials.

The two main presentations were on behalf of two small groups of young professionals, one from the Catholic Universidad Santa Maria la Antigua (USMA), the other from the public University of Panama.

Carla López spoke first, about her three-woman group's watershed management study. Starting from the proposition that a watershed is a complex ecosystem with many biological, social, economic and technological processes that interact with one another.

The USMA architect and urban planner noted in beginning that the canal watershed is not the same thing as the former Canal Zone --- a few pockets of the latter aren't in the watershed, which includes substantial parts of Panama and Colon provinces that were never part of the Canal Zone. From a planning perspective, López continued, wastershed management was easier when the Americans were in charge because the Canal Zone was forone basic purpose --- running the canal --- and now there are many competing interests.

López said that the current prevailing development model for the canal watershed "is not sustainable" because there are insuffient resources to carry out the plans and because many activities, objectives and cultural values that are being promoted are incompatible. Pointing to sometimes conflicting water uses like the 52 million gallons of water it takes to put a ship through the canal, hydroelectric generation, farmers' needs for irrigation and drinking water for their livestock, new aquiculture industries, human water consumption, industrial water demands, the recreation and tourism industries' needs and the disposal of sewage and wastes, López called for "an equitable participation by different social sectors."

The USMA study group posited sustainability, participation, coherence, diversity and integration as its prime planning principles, with a process that proceeds through the phases of diagnosis, definition of an optimal vision, an analysis of the "territorial order" and then the formulation of strategies and programs. Citing politics and institutions as "obstacles," López also said that concentration of wealth and insufficient technical data also tend to get in the way of good planning. A good watershed plan, from her point of view, is one that leads to improvements in the lives of the people who live there and which clearly defines uses that are permitted and assigns priorities to these activities.

López said that by a more systematic approach to planning, Panama can improve upon the present situation, which she characterized as one of "confusion, conflicting agendas, dispersed information and instability."

José Lasso's group at the University of Panama has been looking into "that which is social, as an environmental management problem." The point of departure for their presentation is that different social actors behave the ways that they do because of different internal logics. Workers, farmers, business owners and the Panama Canal Authority, Lasso noted, have their respective particular interests, powers and rights.

The University of Panama sociologist said that it's necessary to analyze social questions on at least two levels, that of daily life and that of systemic needs. Systems, he argued, are based on daily life but take on lives of their own. He pointed out that in capitalist society things tend to get valued as merchandise, and that by looking at questions this way one can learn a lot about power relationships in society.

For Lasso, the way to make an effective plan is to identify the actors who will be in play, identify the powers that those actors have, and then work out a plan based upon the power relationships.

Oscar Vallarino, who is in an environmental hotseat with respect to the controversial proposal to expand the Panama Canal watershed to the west, noted that "we don't have much time" before decisions and actions are due. "We're developing a watershed land use plan, and we have much preliminary information," he explained. The western watershed project has met strong opposition from some of the farmers whose lands in western Colon and northern Cocle provinces would be affected, and from some environmentalist groups and community and religious leaders. The competing interest groups have made his life "much more difficult," Vallarino said.

"We're living in a new reality," Vallarino argued. "The Canal Authority has a new mandate, which is different from the PCC's." He reminded the audience that international forces are now part of the equation, and said that debates have been "very hard," with arguments among technical experts that are "excessively political."

Commenting on Vallarino's point about international players, forum moderater Guillermo Castro, an administrator with the City of Knowledge, said that this factor can get carried to extremes and become a problem when planners "know the shipping executives in London but not the representante of Escobal."

Former Panama Canal deputy administrator Fernando Manfredo, who was part of the team that formulated ARI's master land use plan, was in the audience and addressed the forum during the question and answer period. He noted that there have been many studies, "some good, some not so good, many incomplete," about the canal watershed, "but none have been implemented." Manfredo identified the planner's main problem as a question: "Who has the final word?"

Also participating in the discussion from the floor were sociologists Carmen Miró, who argued that any worthy watershed plan must first be "consonant with the survival of the residents;" and Marco Gandásegui hijo, who noted that natural resources have "symbolic value" that can be estimated in economic terms and used to create jobs when they are properly managed.

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