Engaging private citizens to implement adaptation measures
Successful implementation of EbA sometimes necessitates the involvement and support of private actors in cases where the measures are to take place on their land. This can create a challenge as the process of convincing individual stakeholders to participate in implementation activities often requires significant time investments, financial resources, and public outreach efforts. In the case of Kamen, it was necessary to determine the value of decoupling private citizens’ rainwater from the sewage system and then to convey this information in a convincing manner to those involved. Two public information meetings were followed by one-on-one planning sessions in which a technician visited individual homes and drafted catered solutions for disconnection that met the needs of each citizen. Furthermore, financial incentives were provided to the residents in the form of expenses per decoupled square meter to motivate participation.
The project’s success can be credited to the participation and engagement of private citizens. Their support for decoupling rainwater from the sewage system emerged from a combination of several factors: outreach and awareness raising activities, public funding, voluntariness, provision of targeted and bilateral on-site expert advice, and a reduction in fees for disconnected households.
Given the high importance of citizen support and participation in the project, significant efforts and resources were invested in motivating participation. The approaches taken underscore the value of investing time in one-on-one sessions, in which information and arguments for participation are tailored to each stakeholder. As a consequence of these efforts, most of the property owners in the area were aware of the project of the need to adapt to climate change, and understood the value of their contribution as single actor. This has led the residents to be highly accepting of the implemented EbA measures and develop a sense of ownership, as well as to be open towards and even encourage the pursuit of further adaptation initiatives in the future in order to reach climate change adaptation goals and produce additional co-benefits for themselves and the environment.
Communication strategy to increase understanding and support on flood prevention
From 2007 to 2010, severe flash floods occurred in different cities in the Emscher- and Lipperegion due to extreme rainfall events. In the public discussion that followed, the question of responsibility came up. Citizens formulated the demand that the public bodies, particularly the municipalities and water boards, had to guarantee a full protection against future flood events. In further developing this demand, it quickly became clear that this would not be possible without paying a high price. Questions arose like: How high should the dikes be, and how big should the waste water sewers be dimensioned to protect people against any extreme event? How much energy and money would that cost? This would speak against all efforts regarding climate protection and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A communication strategy was thus necessary to change citizen perspectives and develop support for a reasonable solution. The goals was to convince the population that there is no solution by public authorities which can offer 100% protection against the impacts of climate change, and that there will always remain a degree of personal responsibility. This was the starting point when people began to ask the question: What can I do?
The fact that people were concerned about their wellbeing supported the communication strategy. Without the extreme rainfall events. It would have been much more difficult to come into a mutual dialogue with people about possible approaches on how to face the impacts of climate change. Talking about climate, there is no “polluter-pays-principle”, but rather open discussions about “who can do what” were needed.
Communication strategies built around stories intended to scare the audience are not successful. Neither policy makers nor people like to act on the assumption that their world will be flooded and damaged. However, informing citizens in an open and factual way, complemented by highlighting the potential positive impacts of adaptation measures can be a strong and successful approach. Here, highlighting the benefits of an enhanced living quality, improved recreation facilities and a sound ecosystem convinced stakeholders and citizens to start taking acting themselves and support the planned EbA measures.
Securing sufficient funds for a multi-purpose EbA solution
As this solution serves various goals and meets several objectives, it was possible to secure sufficient funding from diverse parties, domains and funding bodies to cover the entire implementation of the project. Innovative financing approaches can also act as ‘self-sustaining’ and generate funds during the course of the project to fund some of the foreseen activities.
Given that the solution serves various goals, funding was able to be secured from a range of parties, sectors and sources. In the case of the creation of Lake Phoenix this included funding for water management from the water board; funding for ecology from the ecological funding program by the federal state; funding for urban development from etc. The water board, for instance, provided the amount of money that was already budgeted for the construction of a flood retention basin.
Establishing the diverse benefits provided by a solution is an important step in the planning process, as it highlights the various sectors and stakeholders who can potentially be involved in and benefit from the solution. Drawing attention to the potential benefits, and underlying this with a sound scientific evidence base with which to approach these parties, can facilitate the successful generation of funds from a range of sources.
Population trend and environmental influence model
This building block is very useful to understand the population trend and how environmental factors take a part and influence this tendency. Modification and adaptation of existing population models which describe trends as well as the relationship between the parental stock size and newborns make it possible to understand how the environment influences sea lion population growth rates and abundance. These model approach helps to understand whether a given sea lion population is influenced or not by environmental variables. The approach ultimately allows deciding if one or several sea lion populations could be good indicators of environmental change.
1. Information about population: total number of individuals; numbers of pups; numbers of females. 2. Availability of environmental variables. All the time series of environmental variables were fetched from internet specialized public sites.
Developing these models helped me to understand that population trend is a very complex phenomenon: -It could be not directly related with the population trend but could work in synergy with other events. -El Niño event isn’t the only or main event that influences the population trend and recruitment process. - Not all the colonies are influenced by the same environmental change; a few are not responsive of the variables tested. - The environmental conditions seem to influence more the survival rates than fecundity. It is very important to have sufficient information about population and apply the rates of other similar animals just in extreme necessity because these trends are very specific for species.
Formative Research
During the planning phase extensive formative research informs the Social Marketing, as well as the Technical Assistance components of a campaign. Research sets the baselines that allow the assessment of social and conservation impacts following a campaign. Qualitative research (e.g. focus groups, observation, in-depth interviews) is geared towards understanding target audience opinions, feelings, concerns and perceived benefits of current as well as desired management practices. Qualitative research is about creating a casual conversation with and between participants to establish a comfortable relationship, and to reveal underlying information unobtainable through quantitative research. Quantitative research surveys capture specific answers to specific questions to describe demography, identify media preferences, and assess the current state of knowledge, attitude, communication and readiness of target audiences regarding a certain behavior change. Both components ultimately inform campaign decisions like objectives, respective activities, materials, and messages for both Social Marketing and Technical Assistance.
• Training on qualitative and quantitative research methods. • Generic qualitative research guide/procedure to support researcher in preparing and during research rounds. • Templates to facilitate qualitative research analyses. • Quantitative research (i.e. survey), following best practices for survey question design to avoid bias in respondent answers. • Committed base of volunteers to support survey implementation. • Software to process and analyze quantitative data.
Qualitative research techniques (e.g., focus group and in-depth interviews) geared towards understanding the target audience opinions, feelings and concerns regarding a certain behavior change are essential to create casual conversations for participants. This enables creating an environment of trust in which fishers feel comfortable expressing what they really think instead of expressing what others want to hear. The latter would make data barely reliable. Surveys that are built on qualitative research results tend to better inform campaign strategies, making them more aligned with campaign goals and objectives. It is essential to avoid setbacks when it comes to survey implementation, and detailed planning based on sample sizes and human resources is necessary. In that sense, building strong relationships with a committed group of campaign volunteers to support this task is essential.
Climate adaptation scenarios
Climate impact hypotheses were translated into quantitative relationships and data layers for use in the InVEST ecosystem service models. Adaptation strategies were selected based on outcomes for ecosystem service provisioning with a set of four climate adaptation scenarios tested. In selecting the most appropriate adaptation strategies, we drew on existing research with stakeholders in Belize that identified the ‘best options’ for sustainable development, adaptation, and mitigation of climate change in Belize, and looked at these under three management scenarios.
• Existing strategies from climate development-partner funded efforts were the basis for discussion. The strategies had a focus on linkages between climate adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development (triple-wins) in the coastal zone. • Literature review and focus group discussions were used to refine the list of strategies, to identify measures that are: feasible for Placencia to undertake; to map and value; and clearly responsive to climate impacts.
In some cases, there were insufficient data or understanding of the nature of the relationships between the climate change variable and ecosystem service to model robustly. As a result, we were only able to model climate impacts for two out of the four service models: lobster fishery and coastal protection. Limited time and human capacity restricted our ability to model sea level rise impacts on coastline retreat at a fine scale (e.g. more precise modeling of mangrove distribution and land loss needs finer resolution bathymetry data). The resolution of existing bathymetry data for Belize is quite poor, as it is for much of the region, and the limited timeframe of this work (10 months) precluded the pre-processing of bathymetry data. We got spatial results about changes in ecosystem services from climate change and development factors but we could not identify particular groups most vulnerable to these changes due to data gaps.
Insertion in the community
Building trust between MarViva and the Community Councils of each community has taken more than four years before the development of the Communication Collective. Creating an association between the Collective and the Foundation has been based on the respect for the interests, decisions and role of the Community Councils. This partnership has allowed the insertion of the Foundation in the communities where it is positively seen as a strategic partner. This integration has been strengthened by successful previous processes where communities have perceived the benefits of partnership and the "fair play" by the Foundation.
Establish personal relationships with community leaders to meet and discuss one to one the vision of these community leaders. Create participatory methods in making decisions that develop an acceptance and identification with the decisions taken.
Invest time to create a strong partnership with communities is essential before achieving successful experiences. This relationship requires time and constant interactions with community leaders. It is important to establish clear rules for this interaction from the very beginning. The respect by the Foundation for community decisions and the avoidance of taking the leading role were elements that helped create that trust.
Awareness Raising
The importance of nature conservation is brought out to the local community - including the tourist sector. Awareness raising campaigns are conducted to transform knowledge, values, skills and attitudes towards sustainable tourism development. Information is disseminated via videos, brochures, press releases and organised flash mobs.
Community participation of the community, resources for public relations in the alliances, formulation of clear messages.
Because the efforts have been achieved with the participation of very diverse sectors and institutions it is necessary that all the members have similar understanding regarding the terms used; all the messages communicated have to contain the same information, no matter who is communicating.
Monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are vital components of every Pride campaign, without which assessment of the effectiveness of the intervention cannot be conducted. M&E takes place in every component of the Theory of Change (please refer to the building block 'Theory of Change' for a brief description of each component). Monitoring keeps score on how effectively capacities are built, how effectively social marketing efforts lead to changes in behavior, and if those behavior changes lead to desired conservation outcomes. Monitoring basically tracks every component of the ToC. M&E of knowledge, attitude, interpersonal communications and behavior change is based on pre and post campaign surveys of the fishers, while threat reduction and conservation results use specific protocols validated by experts.
• Having a local monitoring partner or consultant is key to develop timely baseline data and monitor threat reduction and conservation results. • As with any project or program, having adequate and sufficient funding is key. Teams may rely on existing human, equipment, facilities, and financial capacities to reduce costs. • Sites with long term tradition of monitoring are better suited to produce a solid baseline of biological monitoring indicators.
An important lesson related to biological monitoring is when there is the possibility of having a two person team for each campaign, a Campaign Manager (CM) and a Fisheries Fellow (FF). This arrangement allows for one person to concentrate on the fisheries technical aspects, including the necessary time for biological monitoring. The level of involvement of the FF in the monitoring component depends on his/her personal inclination towards science. There are examples where the FF devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to conducting monitoring and analyzing data, while others did not participate at all. This could improve with a clearer definition of the FF’s role in regards to biological monitoring. Having a person dedicated to monitoring in Rare’s team ensured all fisheries campaigns had baseline and post campaign impact data.
Informed behavior change
After the first full year of data gathering, Trident Systems, the company that developed the observation tool, was asked to produce data sets based on the SNA1 Agreement including how many vessels moved on because they were catching undersized snapper and what volumes of small snapper were being caught by each fishing method. Specific information is confidential to each fisher, but an overall analysis is made public. This is the first time in New Zealand that inshore fin fishers can see the effect of their fishing practices on collective industry catching allocations. They start to recognize how they personally can contribute to sustainability of the snapper stock by changing their practices. New Zealand fisheries are data rich yet it is rarely used to build awareness and facilitate discussions between fishers to bring about change. Fishers involved in science projects are keener to understand the results of the work, are reviewing data and asking questions in a way that scientists are not used to. This review process is challenging and most often face-to-face. Scientists are reporting data to other scientists, but they are also bringing together fishers and providing advice and learnings on how to change fishing practices.
• the government supported this initiative by being open to considering cameras as a cost effective substitute to human observers • local fisher leaders were willing to support and defend decisions such as installing cameras on vessels • both the scientists and the software innovators were prepared to look at what fishers wanted rather than just improving the products already available
Maintaining the confidentiality of fisher’s information and data is crucial.