2 Chapter 1: “Engaging Stakeholders for More Equitable Outcomes” by Macon Thompson

Introduction

The field of environmental communications intersects with environmental justice. Their overlap stresses how speaking with others matters, why the power of active listening is essential, and that intentionality goes a very long way when entering into communities as an outsider. For those considering an environmental communication-focused profession, the following provides tips and insights from a practitioner that can help you when engaging with communities, and for those seeking to study or analyze environmental justice frames it provides specific tools and vocabularies for engaging with stakeholders.

The Importance of Stakeholder Engagement in Environmental Communications Work

At the root of environmental advocacy is the reality that we are often promoting environmental ideas and solutions and hoping to change people’s behavior and actions by resonating with their values and beliefs. However, according to Jasinski and Jasinski (2021), “effective environmental communication is not always convincing people to care about an issue for reasons that are important to you. It’s about convincing them to care about an issue for reasons that are important to them (p. 6).” This understanding may seem like there is an ulterior motive at first, but the reality is that people can have different motivations and reasons to care about a particular issue. Specifically, the economy, public health and safety, infrastructure and maintenance, and education are competing priorities that people often consider alongside environmental protection concerns.

Once you engage with an audience and learn about what their motivation is, you can use it as an opportunity to be transparent and explain why asking them to do x, y, or z action benefits them as well as how it works towards a larger goal they may not care directly about. A real-world example comes from my work speaking with boots-on-the-ground conservation practitioners. When asked how they engage with landowners in their community to install a nature-based solution, like a living shoreline, they do not lead with scientific jargon and politicized words like climate change, sea level rise, or saltwater intrusion. Instead, practitioners educate landowners about the benefits a living shoreline would provide to their property. They talk and share stories with landowners and learn about how the landowner noticed a loss in their shoreline over the past twelve years. They will describe how the marsh is getting smaller and how they are concerned about impacts on their property. Both parties can agree on the problem and work towards solutions together. The conservation expert can then take the next step and teach the landowner what resources or funding are available to help them prevent further losses and restore their property to its prime condition. In these instances, nobody has to agree about our changing climate, its causes, or the realities of sea level rise and their impacts. When people come together and work towards solutions that benefit both parties, much like a symbiotic relationship, it builds a mutual understanding and respect.

 

What are stakeholders, why do they matter?

According to the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Network of Conservation Educators & Practitioners, “Stakeholders are defined as the people and organizations who are involved in or affected by an action or policy and can be directly or indirectly included in the decision making process. In environmental and conservation planning, stakeholders typically include government representatives, businesses, scientists, landowners, and local users of natural resources (Vogler, Macey, & Sigouin, 2017, p. 5).” I would expand that definition to include grassroots organizations and nongovernmental organizations and to be inclusive of traditionally excluded voices, specifically within Indigenous communities, knowledge and tradition bearers, and Black, Brown, and People of Color.

With any stakeholder engagement process, it is critical to understand who will be directly and indirectly impacted by decisions. You should consider leveraging stakeholder engagement processes to be timely, transparent, equitable, and actionable – especially for traditionally excluded and silenced community voices. Failure to engage with audiences with these parameters in mind can leave your audience angry or like their voice doesn’t matter. Sometimes, people will speak out against a cause they would fully support if community engagement processes had accounted for their perspective at a time when they could have been included in decision-making processes.

The Significance of the Environmental Justice Movement

The rise of the modern environmental movement, inspired by events like the release of Rachel Caron’s Silent Spring (1962) that highlighted the dangers of toxic chemicals, namely the bioaccumulation and biomagnification of DDT on human and environmental health, the hazardous Cuyahoga River fire (1969) which signaled the need to regulate the release of pollutants into our waterways, and the celebration of the first nationwide Earth Day (1970), all brought major environmental concerns to the attention of the public. Starting around the 1970s, critics spoke out against the shortcomings of the environmental movement. Specifically, this brought to light the harsh reality that the modern movement was rooted in racist and classist structures (Pezzullo & Sandler, 2007).

As a result, the rise of a movement rooted in equity, justice, and activism surrounding social, political, and environmental concerns gained traction as a way to counteract the whiteness of modern environmentalism: the environmental justice movement was born (Gottlieb, 2005; Pezzullo & Sandler, 2007). One of the pillars of the environmental justice movement is that it honors the importance of storytelling as a way to share information and learn and as a way of building trust, lasting relationships, and resonating with diverse audiences (Krauss, 1994). Ultimately, harnessing the potential of stories, from engaging with diverse stakeholders, is essential for environmental practitioners to advance Environmental Justice goals because it builds informed and inclusive decision-making spaces, provides opportunities to include historically erased and disenfranchised voices and learn from their lived experiences, and inspires action and communities that hold one another accountable to environmental outcomes that are achievable and resonate with communities.

Obstacles to Effective Engagement

As an environmental advocate and practitioner who works at the intersection of environmental management, conservation, restoration, and education and outreach, I regularly work with people who do not have the time, capacity, or understanding of how to effectively engage their audience. Scientific training often fails to teach the value and importance of communication. Instead, this reality has created generations of well-intentioned experts who know how to speak to other experts in expert terms about topics that everyday audiences should be able to understand. These knowledge gaps and the failure to account for community voices and perspectives when communicating science have real implications in terms of policy and impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods. Additionally, humans are imperfect and have their own experiences, assumptions, and biases that can get in the way of making informed decisions that reflect the reality of the communities they work with.

Here is a hypothetical example: An environmental group has conducted water quality testing and understands that a local waterway and bass population is affected by a toxin that makes it unsafe to eat. They may post a water quality warning to alert the community. If experts never talk to impacted residents, they may not recognize that a minority community not only depends on the impaired waterway to fish but also that bass is a significant source of protein for community members. This gap in knowledge from experts could result in people getting sick from consuming contaminated fish or exposing themselves to an avoidable toxin. We can imagine a different reality where community voices are heard and considered during outreach campaigns. In this situation, experts adequately understand the level of risk to the demographic and can respond accordingly, protecting people from getting sick in the first place. Ultimately, this example highlights a few of the many obstacles to effective engagement. The following list highlights additional obstacles that commonly impact our ability to engage stakeholders effectively including capacity failures, a lack of technical support or funding, a lack of trust and accountability, and conflicting stakeholder interests.

Tips Best Practices for Engaging Communities – Lessons Learned

To be an environmental advocate, you must engage directly with diverse communities. Stakeholder engagement provides the opportunity to meet people, learn their stories, and create informed deliverables that are understandable, relatable, and most importantly useful. Here’s some advice that will help:

Engage early and often. All stakeholder groups are different. If you want to build relationships and trust with stakeholders, then you need to be present and put in the effort so that people understand who you are, why you are there, and why they need to take the time to share their knowledge and experiences with you.

The importance of “breaking bread” and becoming a trusted source with your audiences cannot be understated. Once you have built rapport with your audience, it is easier for you to engage with them. Then you can ask questions, and hopefully gain support and buy-in with your work.

There is no one-size-fits-all message that will resonate with your audiences.

Once you learn about the positions and interests of your audiences, you can tailor communications efforts and preferences to match what the stakeholders are receptive to. When working with stakeholders, you must also consider that not every community or community member has the same lived experiences.

“Equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances (NACE, 2023).” For example, when interviewing stakeholders over a Zoom call some people can hear a question and give an immediate response, others may need a few minutes to consider their reply, and still others may need to see the questions written out ahead of time to be able to understand and respond accordingly. Further, some audiences may have a language barrier and need a translator available to be able to participate and give their insights. Considering differences like these can be challenging, but by taking the time to think through obstacles and consider how to meaningfully involve your audiences you are being equitable.

Be careful to avoid generalizations. For example, if you’ve worked with farmers in Shenandoah County, you shouldn’t assume that farmers in Delmarva share the same views because they’re all farmers in Virginia. While they may have similarities, you should always talk with stakeholders from each region to compare. A farmer in Shenandoah County may have different values and priorities than a farmer in Delmarva. While reaching restoration goals may be important to both, the farmer in Delmarva may care a lot about what is happening with Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts, while a farmer in Shenandoah County may be more focused on the water quality and drought impacts on the headwaters.

Tools for Equitable Outreach

Here is a list of tools that will improve your stakeholder engagement efforts and help you become more equitable when engaging with diverse audiences.

● Stakeholder Mapping: This allows you to visually map out stakeholders on a position and interest spectrum. This tool shows who, on a scale, has a high/low level of influence on a given environmental issue, and a high/low level of interest, and will show you how relationships may influence one another.

Resource for further learning:https://simplystakeholders.com/stakeholder-mapping-template/

● Audience Segmentation: A marketing approach that uses demographic information (i.e., age, gender, race, geographic location, etc.). You can use this information to develop profiles, which act as examples, where you can tailor messages based on shared characteristics or beliefs and help you develop stronger messages that resonate with your audience.

Resource for further learning:https://www.linkedin.com/advice/3/how-can-you-use-audience-segmentation-xmx6e

● Participatory Planning: Explore facilitation options for engaging stakeholders differently. From focus groups to one-on-one interviews, workshops, and community mapping exercises, all of these types of participatory techniques can help you engage audiences creatively and co-create knowledge and solutions.

Resource for further learning:https://civicplan.ca/what-is-participatory-planning/

● Survey Tools: Capacity and time constraints can sometimes limit our ability to engage with audiences face-to-face. Survey tools allow us to gather insights from community members and incorporate them into decisions and plans.

Resource for further learning:https://survey123.arcgis.com/

Conclusion

Environmental Justice is rooted in justice, self-determination, equity, and a shared understanding that people should have a choice and a voice in decisions that impact them and their environment. People need to know that their voice matters and that they can use their voice to inform policies and decisions in their communities. This understanding is supported by participating in meaningful stakeholder engagement processes. It is timely and costly to seek out these voices and perspectives, especially those who, for generations, were not allowed to participate in this nation’s democratic processes and those who have been actively suppressed and erased from being able to have a voice or a seat at the table. This reality highlights why now it is monumentally important to use your privilege to create space and opportunities for the voices of those disenfranchised throughout American history. To truly advance Environmental Justice goals, stakeholder engagement must be central to environmental decision-making processes. Whether it be a small grant that supports Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals or a large federal policy that advances climate change solutions, by actively working to include disenfranchised voices, you can be part of the growing community of environmental advocates that leverage human stories and lived experiences to bring people together under a shared understanding and create just systems that encourage and empower the communities most impacted by environmental issues and policies.

References

Gottlieb, Robert. “Introduction: Where We Live, Work, and Play,” and “Resources and Recreation: The Limits of the Traditional Debate.” Introduction and Chapter 1 in Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Rev. and updated ed. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005. First published 1993. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/3607.

Jasinski, P., & Jasinski, D. (2021). Speaking of the environment: What your science classes didn’t teach you about effective communication. New Degree Press.

National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2023). Equity definition. https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/equity-definition/

Pezzullo, P. C., & Sandler, R. (Eds.). (2007). Environmental justice and environmentalism: The social justice challenge to the environmental movement. MIT Press.

Vogler, D., Macey, S., & Sigouin, A. (2017). Stakeholder analysis in environmental and conservation planning. Lessons in Conservation, 7, 5–16. Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History. https://ncep.amnh.org/linc/