“There was an overlap and a way to reframe the message from ‘save the wetlands’ to basically ‘save the community.” |
|
| Skip Stiles, Wetlands Watch | |
With the highest rate of sea level rise on the Atlantic coast, the message to protect wetlands from climate change impacts was a priority to Virginia resource managers. But it wasn’t until they changed their message to include infrastructure and public safety that local managers and planners began not only to listen—but to talk.
“Changing our message changed the game,” says Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, a statewide nonprofit environmental group. “The conversations we’re now having are helping to stimulate early adaptation work.”
Wetlands Watch has worked for about five years to initiate local government sea level rise adaptation planning and to see those plans implemented through land use and other regulatory decisions.
Stiles says it was when they shifted their focus from wetlands to protecting homes and jobs from higher storm surges resulting from sea level rise that their efforts began to get traction.
“Skip’s done an amazing job of engaging with and listening to a diverse group of stakeholders,” says Troy Hartley, director of Virginia Sea Grant, which is a partner organization of Wetlands Watch. “The key to his communication strategy has really been listening and focusing on what his audience cares about.”
Rising Tides
Coastal communities in Virginia are some of the most vulnerable in the U.S. when it comes to sea level rise. With a relative increase of 1.45 feet over the last century, the City of Norfolk is already experiencing flooding whenever there is a full moon during high tide.
Future projections for rates of sea level change in the Chesapeake Bay region show anywhere from an additional 2.3 to 5.2 feet of rise in the coming century.
Both natural ecosystems and developed areas are at risk, Hartley says. “Virginia coastal communities face multiple challenges in their efforts to adapt to sea level rise, including increased beach erosion, inundation and migration of wetlands, and flooding from heavy rain events and storm surges.”
Significant community assets, such as ports, railways, utilities, roads, military installations, and other critical infrastructure, are vulnerable.
Staggering Realization
Stiles and Wetlands Watch determined that potential tidal wetland losses in the next century could be 50 to 80 percent, depending on the type of wetland and shoreline development and erosion control decisions that are made primarily at the local level.
“We realized that all our efforts to save postage-size pieces of wetlands paled in comparison to the loss of wetlands we would experience from 3 feet of sea level rise,” Stiles says. “It was staggering.”
The group determined, he says, that in order to achieve its goal of “keeping the shoreline open, resilient, and non-hardened,” they were going to have to address sea level rise.
Doom and Gloom
In 2007, Wetlands Watch began work at the local level in Virginia to initiate sea level adaptation strategy development. Early social marketing and outreach efforts focused on protecting the tidal ecosystem from climate change impacts.
“I bummed out more Kiwanis Club meetings,” admits Stiles. “It was like having Dr. Doom for breakfast.”
Wetlands Watch staff members spent a year speaking to civic and other local groups and “just getting blistered at rural meetings where we encountered severe climate skeptics,” he says. “It became apparent we weren’t getting any traction that we needed to make a difference.”
Stopping to Listen
“Part of the problem,” says Hartley, “is that people don’t know what wetlands are good for, and they’re not inclined to take the time to figure that out. I’m sure Skip didn’t want to hear that, but he did, and he began asking, ‘What do these guys care about?’”
The answer, he says, is that “they care about their communities, their homes, their jobs, recreation, their kids’ schools, and the future of their community for their kids. Skip was then able to start connecting how wetlands advance those interests and frame it that way.”
Stiles says he realized that jobs, communities, and public safety would all be impacted by sea level rise, and often part of the solution would be wetlands protection.
“There was an overlap,” he says, “and a way to reframe the message from ‘save the wetlands’ to basically ‘save the community.’”
Conversation Starter
In 2008, Wetlands Watch changed its message to the need to protect communities and jobs from higher storm surges resulting from sea level rise.
General social marketing information provided the group with some guidance and emphasized the need to put the issues into a local context, make the impacts personal and real, and show the immediate impact of the threat and the cost of inaction.
“When we went back out with the reframed message, back into these same communities, instead of arguing with us, people in the audience began sharing the changes they were observing,” Stiles says. “They started sharing how they used to hunt ducks in wetlands that aren’t there anymore, or how they’re having trouble with inundation and flooding, and are having their insurance withdrawn.”
He adds, “It was really quite a stunning change. We began engaging people and bringing an abstract distant issue to concrete focus in the present.”
Planning Progress
Since 2008, Wetlands Watch staff members have spoken at public meetings, testified and appeared before government bodies, consulted with local and regional planning professionals, and offered comments on government land use and regulatory decisions. They’ve also engaged with nontraditional partners, especially those in the private sector, and floodplain and emergency managers.
Sea level rise and other climate change impacts are starting to be addressed in communities’ comprehensive and long-range land use plans, and Stiles served on the Virginia Commission on Climate Change in 2008, which developed an outline of a state-level adaptation action plan.
With funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Wetlands Watch is cataloguing numerous planning efforts at the local and regional levels that serve as effective planning tools for climate change impacts, and are developing these tools into a toolkit for local government policy makers.
They’re also participating in a Sea Grant Climate Adaptation program that will result in best practices for adapting to sea level rise and other climate challenges for coastal communities and other partner programs.
Broader Impact
Wetlands Watch’s constant listening and targeting of its message has reinforced Virginia Sea Grant’s communication strategies, Hartley says. “We are watching and learning from their efforts.”
He adds, “We’re finding across the board that nongovernment organizations, Sea Grant, and other coastal managers are all getting much more sophisticated in understanding our audience and using words that make sense to our listener, not words that just make sense to us.”
“You have to start where the public is,” agrees Stiles. “What do they care about? Putting these issues into terms that people can relate to is critical, whether it’s localized data or using storm events.”
The key, he says, is looking for opportunities. “You have to focus on the silver lining in the dark cloud. If your message is all about restricting the future, that sets stakeholders up to fight. Our message is about finding new opportunities while adapting to these challenges and spurring innovation. That’s an exciting message that everyone can get behind.”
Stiles notes, “You always have to leave hope on the table, and provide a path forward.”
For more information on how Wetlands Watch is communicating about climate change, contact Skip Stiles at (757) 623-4835 or skip.stiles@wetlandswatch.org. For information on broader climate communication efforts in Virginia, you may contact Troy Hartley at (804) 684-7248 or thartley@vims.edu.
