Stakeholder Engagement and the Community
Stakeholder engagement is key to the success of any plan or project that impacts the community, whether that community is the size of a neighborhood or metropolis.
Including stakeholders (especially those traditionally disadvantaged or marginalized) upfront and throughout the process of planning and project implementation can ensure greater support and improved outcomes. Meaningful community involvement relies on an engaged and informed public. Outreach and education efforts should aim to increase awareness and understanding of local water resources and economic issues and foster a connection to and stewardship of the natural environment.
Community involvement is a primary objective of planning. Meaningful involvement allows stakeholders to shape a plan’s vision and goals for their own community and builds project support.
The planning process should identify and address issues of great importance to stakeholders, including those impacting quality of life. Neighborhood concerns are valid considerations.
Stakeholder involvement should be diverse, representative (in composition and number), and impactful, leading to equitable plan outcomes and implementation.
Diversity, representation, and impact should be fostered through an inclusive process that specifies equity is a planning priority and recognizes the expertise of community leaders and representatives. The planning process should work to provide multiple opportunities for and methods of participation.
Key stakeholders that can change attitudes and influence decisions within their organizations or communities should be identified through stakeholder analysis.
Outreach and education plans should engage key stakeholders representing industry, development, and local government, as well as respected community leaders, particularly those that represent underserved and underrepresented communities. Involving these influential stakeholders from the beginning will help secure buy-in from those that control budgets and create policy.
Establishing trust among stakeholders, especially with underrepresented groups and between groups seemingly at odds, is vital to the planning process and ultimately to a project’s success. Trust building should be intentional, thoughtful, and built into the planning process.
Transparency and communication should be maintained, building upon trust and sustaining excitement and momentum.
Planning should permit ongoing community involvement before, during, and after implementation.
Key stakeholders should be provided with regular updates.
For plans to capitalize on successes and limit what does not work an annual review process should be implemented. The process should include criteria for the consideration of amendments and involve community organizations or leaders.
The planning process should establish relationships between influential and impacted stakeholders and the mechanisms required to implement plan objectives.
Key stakeholders and the community at large should come to recognize water resources as important to the region’s health and economy and that protecting these resources requires action.
Public sector budgets and expenditures reflect established water resources management priorities.
Investments are made up front, in things like integrated infrastructure systems, that take a proactive approach to known issues such as localized drought, urban flooding, lead pipes, and the like.
Policies reflect an understanding of the consequences of issue avoidance.
Communities are empowered through outreach and education to make decisions with the most accurate and relevant information available.
Community and environmental goals should augment each other.
Planning and implementation should include clear avenues for stakeholders to take steps to help realize community and environmental goals.
Outreach
Outreach efforts should focus on local impacts and implications and make a case for why these issues are of importance to each particular audience based on that audience’s values and concerns. Northwest Illinois is not homogenous and should not be treated as one audience. A survey conducted across the region was used to assess environmental concerns and values by audience and can be used to tailor outreach.
Community outreach efforts should aim to have a broad reach. However, this often necessitates that the communicated content be less comprehensive. Such efforts should simply introduce people to the issue at hand, make a case for why the issue is personally relevant, inspire simple actions to address the issue, and provide a gateway for more extensive involvement. Such efforts may take the form of distributed content (via mailers, Internet, radio, etc.) and/or capitalize on existing programs and events.
Education
Education efforts tend to be more resource intensive and therefore often do not have broad reach. However, curriculum can be far more comprehensive and have a large and lasting impact on learners. Therefore, these efforts should be deployed strategically and aim to reach people with a significant sphere of influence, including children who tend to have large social spheres of family and friends, and impacted communities that lack access to nature or have been under-engaged in environmental issues. Educational experiences may be passive (attending a lecture) or active (fieldtrips, citizen science) and be self-guided or instructor-led.
Experiential, hands-on learning are by far the most effective and impactful educational experiences for children and adults. This might include aquatic invertebrate sampling, water quality testing (citizen science), wastewater treatment plant tours, green infrastructure demonstrations, volunteer opportunities at wetland or prairie preserves, etc.
Tours of demonstration projects or farm fields employing best management practices are experiential and the most direct and effective means of reaching the agricultural community, which includes producers, landowners, children, and suppliers. These experiences illustrate how various practices affect field productivity, while protecting soil and water quality, and provide an understanding of what is required to adopt these practices.
An underlying goal of all environmental education programs should be to foster a personal connection between each student and the local natural environment. Such personal connections inspire lifelong environmental stewardship. For communities where children have not historically had access to ideal natural environments, self-guided programs are not enough to create meaningful connections. Programming (supported through USEPA https://www.epa.gov/education/grants and other grant programs) should initially focus on an introduction to nature that builds comfort, interest in, and enthusiasm for the outdoors.
Education efforts might strategically grow their reach through collaboration with organizations that are already engaged in programing, including youth organizations (4-H, Future Farmers of America, scouts, etc.), community and fraternal clubs (Lions, Rotary, local farmer groups, churches, etc.) and chambers of commerce.
Curriculum can be designed to meet local school and state learning standards while also addressing water resource issues. Classroom materials and fieldtrips of this sort will be attractive to teachers and school administrators and can considerably increase the reach of education efforts.