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This is the opportunity to extend their interest, by asking open-ended questions and considering ways to apply this interest to other options within the environment. Include the spark, the teachable moment and what you did next. Download now. Matt Arnerich Matt Arnerich is Famly's Head of Content, in charge of telling stories to more than 1M readers to make outstanding early years care achievable for everyone.
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Sign up now. Blog home. Sign up for our newsletter. Recent posts. The overlooked virtue of the wiggly child November 10, Why you should explore the wonder of woodwork in the Early Years November 10, The people charged with setting up and managing CAM processes typically have backgrounds in the biophysical sciences and natural resource management and have had little training in how to set up an effective collaborative process.
They lack experience with the social part of the systems they manage. Resource managers typically learn through trial and error what works and what is counterproductive, as well as which actions and attitudes contribute to productive engagement by partners and stakeholders and which might shift a project in less productive directions. Over time, effective practitioners amass a considerable amount of practical how-to knowledge that they can apply in future projects.
We therefore decided to conduct a knowledge transfer project focusing on the process through which CAM projects are planned and implemented. This narrow focus allowed us to elicit information that could be compared among different project scales, focal issues, and participant roles.
It is important to note that this work was not intended as a formal case study done for the purpose of research into AM-related theory. Instead, we sought a practical strategy for capturing and transferring experiential knowledge. Our approach and methodology were drawn from diverse literatures that touch on transfer of experiential knowledge in problem-solving settings, e. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted by the authors via telephone.
We used a qualitative narrative inquiry study design Mishler , Kothari et al. Our open-ended questions were designed to elicit stories about the early development of projects the interviewees had been involved with. Storytelling has been found to be the most effective way to elicit implicit, contextual how-to knowledge in complex situations.
Narrative stories provide explanations of how the world works Stone ; they show and explain the connections between people, places, events, and things that are significant in a given context Beratan Our approach is similar to that used by Hopkinson et al. These three interviews lead to suggestions of additional interviewees who then also suggested additional interviewees.
As the interviews proceeded we added to the list to arrive at the final 10 interviewees and projects. After each interviewee had spent time thinking about and describing the planning process and outcomes of a particular project, we asked what recommendations they had for practitioners just getting started with organizing an AM project. These recommendations are narrative summaries of the lessons the interviewees learned through their own experiences.
We recruited interviewees representing a range of training and work experience Table 2. The projects they described ranged from small to extremely large and included a variety of ecosystems and issues being addressed. Ten themes Table 3 emerged when we grouped recommendations into topic categories. This section includes a summary description of each theme, listed in order of decreasing importance to the interviewees, along with illustrative excerpts from the interview responses.
Recommendations for each theme, transcribed verbatim from the interviews, are presented in Appendix 2; we strongly recommend reading these recommendations along with the following theme summaries. Natural resource management is fundamentally about how people interact and make decisions.
This means that the most critical part of setting up a CAM effort is getting the key people and organizations working together to identify and work toward common goals. Benson and Stone noted the potential disconnect between adaptive management theory and practice relative to legal requirements and processes in the United States, which makes it difficult to successfully implement CAM.
The authors acknowledge these constraints and believe our work indicates that design of approaches for the future may need to address these institutional and legal constraints for CAM. Attention to building trust is essential; facilitation can help with this.
Theme 1 was by far the most commonly emphasized recommendation. Projects need to address real and acknowledged problems. This information is not only essential for gaining community buy-in and support for the project, it also can provide important information about critical social dynamics within the community, the knowledge of which can potentially benefit the ability of the natural resource managers to achieve their natural system goals.
Community engagement is critical to the ultimate success of a CAM project. Not only is it important for the community to buy into whatever solution strategy is selected, local knowledge about the community and about the interactions between the community and the natural resource is essential in identifying a plausible solution strategy. Collective identification of problems and potential solutions lends credibility and legitimacy to CAM efforts and can increase chances of progress, success, and development of durable solutions.
Once the problem is appropriately framed, a focus by the project on identifying practical solution strategies will foster productive community engagement. A key component of the community engagement process is building working and personal relationships and leveraging already established relationships.
There are of course instances in which not all stakeholders are participating in good faith. This can result in obfuscation and obstruction to solving the problems at hand, especially when those who want to obstruct have greater power than others in the process. Our respondents did not articulate such a problem during their interviews.
Active engagement at all levels is needed to achieve success for both agencies and communities. A robust engagement process that connects the natural resource managers and the relevant local communities should be a planning priority.
An initial problem assessment is needed to identify who needs to be involved, and the assessment process needs to be vetted by the involved communities. It is hard to get collaborative adaptive management started where there is existing polarization around contentious issues, and sustainable progress cannot result from trying to avoid conflict by simply picking participants who are in favor of the project.
Projects thus can benefit from upfront inclusion in planning of social scientists and facilitators with conflict resolution experience. Communicating in a way that is understandable to and accepted by both the natural resource management and local community cultures is important in the development of an initial understanding between these groups.
An initial focus on common goals and interests can set a productive tone from the start, and early successes, even small ones, can validate the choice to participate and lead to expanded collaboration in the future. Different types of actions are needed at different geographic scales and governance levels. This means that scale is an important consideration when planning a CAM project and should shape project design. Collaboration and direct action are easier to achieve in small-scale efforts with a limited number of key stakeholders; smaller scale efforts need to fit within the context of the larger scale program to achieve resource-wide goals.
CAM projects are more likely to succeed if they have a leader who is a strong champion of the work Howell and Higgins , Gattiker and Carter They understand that leadership largely depends on inspiring others and are able to earn the trust of the diverse participants and manage with a light touch. They need to be good communicators. Short-term successes are critical to maintaining flows of resources and support from decision makers and funders, who typically need to show progress within temporal cycles that are short relative to rates of change in the natural resource.
Unavoidable knowledge gaps and changing conditions mean that the project needs to be structured in a way that provides long-term stability yet is nimble and flexible enough to allow the project to take advantage of identified opportunities and to quickly recognize and address developing problems.
Project leaders need to communicate the concept that adaptation can be an opportunity rather than a threat. CAM requires both organizational and cultural change in response to lessons learned: adjustments in natural resource management approaches, in the organizational cultures of natural resource management agencies, and in community expectations. It takes time for these changes to take root and get established.
This type of long-sighted strategy will be most effective if the decision process is collaboratively developed by the natural resource managers and local communities so that expectations are clear and appropriate and the process is perceived as legitimate by all participants.
Capacity building should be a primary target for CAM projects. An increase in the capacity of communities and organizations to act together in productive ways is in and of itself a positive project outcome as well as being a leading indicator of positive changes in the natural resource being managed. Capacity has many components, including the capacity to respond nimbly when new information surfaces and adaptation is needed, to be resilient in the face of setbacks, to be able to develop problem solutions that are both creative and practical, and to have the resources needed to act and achieve goals.
Focusing from the beginning on actively engaging with and integrating communities into efforts to resolve natural resource management problems is essential to the development of practical solutions.
Our interviewees articulated that investing time and resources up front can provide large payoffs down the road; in fact, such investment is critical to actually getting anything done. We found that in our sample of 10 projects, the most effective projects emerged from up-front work in which the project team sincerely demonstrated that they care about community values and concerns, the project team found ways for the project to fit in with and build on what is going on in the community, and trust-based relationships were built.
Trust and mutual respect are critically important for successful collaboration Dale and Armitage , and it takes considerable time and focused effort to build trust-based working relationships. Our interviewees suggested that the first thing a project manager should do when starting a project is to take time to listen to and learn about the local communities. Critical information includes how the communities view the resource of interest, what they value and are concerned about, which local organizations are doing related activities and might be potential partners, and which other groups need to be involved in decision making.
They fail to recognize that such activities make it possible for a process to get to positive outcomes more quickly or at all , thus more than justifying the investment. In practice, communities tend to get only limited attention when AM projects are planned. These assumptions and priorities may be highly appropriate for an engineering project like building a bridge but are a poor fit for designing and implementing a collaborative AM effort.
The project template USACE project teams follow includes a community engagement component, but the team members rarely have the necessary skills or organizational support to implement it. Typically, they come in with little information about the relevant communities and do not spend adequate time and effort to get additional information that could serve as a guide for project planning. As a consequence, USACE builds distrust with people in affected communities, who may engage in political end runs in an effort to be heard and resist actions by the USACE that they view as being against the community interests.
This approach to project management is not unique to the USACE; many federal and state agencies exhibit similar tendencies. Our interviewees suggested that the best way to begin project planning is to quickly set up opportunities for interaction among decision makers, scientists, and communities, with each participant given opportunities to describe what they do and talk about their issues, goals, and capabilities Themes 4 and 5.
The focus in these interactions should be on listening, with every participant demonstrating an honest interest in learning about the other participants. Transparency and effective communication are important considerations in project planning.
One key to long-term project success is to structure a project so as to match assigned organizational responsibilities with organizational strengths and resources. The project team should apply what they learn about the priorities and capabilities of project partners, including engaged communities, to set up a project structure that takes advantage of the fact that each partner has things that they can do more effectively than any other group can.
Smaller, more local organizations and local governments can contribute nuanced knowledge about the specific social-ecological systems of interest as well as local experts and volunteers who are passionate about the resource and can get things done on the ground.
These groups have an intimate understanding of local conditions and opportunities and can act in ways that can alter local attitudes and behaviors to effect real and positive improvements in the resource conditions of concern.
Larger organizations such as federal and state agencies and national non-governmental organizations can provide general scientific knowledge and analysis capabilities, managerial experience, and relatively stable resources. This type of structure applied to a multi-organizational collaborative context puts the larger organizations in a more facilitative or supportive role than in a dominant actor role. This is different from the way projects have tended to be organized and may require a real change in organizational cultures.
A particular place dealing with a specific problem may not be ready for a full CAM process. However, resource managers who think strategically and long-term can take advantage of opportunities to move things forward by making incremental progress in a productive direction Theme Such people are important for project sustainability because they will stick with the project for the long haul and will not let the project die when setbacks are encountered.
We found this to be true for multiple projects in this study. Such people provide leadership in developing a shared vision and build motivation to achieve that vision. In addition to being important in getting a project off the ground, champions are essential for keeping projects going over the long term. Among the core behaviors of champions summarized from the literature by Shaw et al. Different champion roles come into play at different project governance levels Taylor et al.
Our interviewees indicated that one of the important tasks for champions is to gain and maintain the strong organizational support required for a CAM project to succeed over the long term, e. The main limitation of this qualitative pilot study is the small number of interviews conducted. Many more interviews would be desirable, along with inclusion of multiple people from each project where possible.
Caution is therefore advised in generalizing these findings. Ten interviews were sufficient for us to see repetition of several main points, which lends credibility to the observations; however, each interview produced useful insights so more interviews would have added richness and worthwhile recommendations. A second limitation is that all the interviewees are from the United States and discussed natural resource management projects conducted in the United States.
Their insights and recommendations may be largely transferable to other contexts, but that still needs to be demonstrated. The interviewees emphasized that spending significant time and resources at the very start of a project to really listen to the community and build trust-based relationships can pay big dividends in real and positive outcomes over the life of the project.
Affected communities need to be active participants for natural resource management problem-solving efforts to be successful.
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