From The Communication Initiative Network - where communication and media are central to social and economic development.

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This issue of The Drum Beat features the use and support of communication in natural resource management (NRM). It includes tools and strategies for information exchange; sources of statistics and surveys for resource management; strategies for messages and marketing; and project experiences and projects-in-process in diverse regions of the world.

If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on The CI websites and in The Drum Beat newsletters, please contact Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com

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Please make sure to visit our Natural Resource Management Theme Site, where communication and media are central to natural resource management.

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NRM ACTION

1. A Mine of Information?
This Panos London Illuminating Voices report discusses differences in understanding about Rio Tinto's ilmenite mine in the Fort Dauphin area of southern Madagascar, which, as stated in the report, have led to mistrust and social conflict. It examines the debates, grievances, consultations, and negotiations that have taken place between the mining company, QIT Madagascar Mining S.A. (QMM), the Government of Madagascar (GoM), and the many different stakeholders affected by the project, including members of the local community. The report intends to reveal the gaps in consultation and communication, and to assess the consequences. It raises questions to be considered by all stakeholders, making recommendations for improvements in communication.

2. LEISA Magazine, Vol. 22, Issue 1
This magazine focuses on small-scale farming. Its contents attempt to present technical and social options for farmers who seek to improve productivity and income in an ecologically sound way. This issue has a focus on documentation as a knowledge building process. According to its editors: "The articles in this issue show that the purpose of documentation is not only descriptive: the process needs to examine closely what results and impacts are achieved in a given case, and why. Going through this process is an opportunity to learn and to discover interesting and useful links, opinions and learning points."

3. Participatory Wetlands Management in the Caribbean
This policy brief of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) summarises key findings of a project entitled "Policies and Institutions for Wetlands Management: Training for Managers from the Insular Caribbean" implemented by the institute in 2006 in Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad & Tobago. The briefing describes Caribbean wetlands, participatory wetlands management, and challenges to the effective management of wetlands. The research component focused on analysing the actual and potential contribution of the international Convention on Wetlands (the Ramsar Convention) in facilitating participatory approaches to and integrated management of wetlands.

4. Education and Communication For Biodiversity Conservation in Nepal
by Neelima Shrestha
This paper, written for the Education for a Sustainable Future Conference in January of 2005, presents ways in which the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Nepal programme implements conservation education. The paper examines case studies intending to show the role of the Conservation Education and Communication (CEC) programme of WWF Nepal in bringing about positive changes in the attitude and behaviour of schoolteachers, students, and community members in support of conservation and sustainable development. "...[S]uch efforts have been helpful in enhancing the capacities of community members to improve their livelihoods by conserving and sustainably managing Nepal's biological diversity."

5. Seeds of Hope - Global
Seeds of Hope works towards cooperative global action for women. The effort is community-based in one sense, but global in another. It involves creating gardens, throughout the city of Hamilton, Canada, comprised of horticultural seeds donated from women's support centres and groups from around the world. To facilitate this process, the Women's Centre of Hamilton invited other women's centres around the world to contact them - via email - to express an interest in participating. A certified horticulturist will then request a packet of seeds specific to each centre's region that is safe to the eco-environment. The "Gardens of Hope" that result are designed to commemorate International Women's Day and to represent the solidarity of women and their ability for growth, renewal, and peace.
Contact: Kelly Hilton kellyhilton74@hotmail.com OR womenscentre@on.aibn.com

6. Great Communities for People and Nature - United States
Implemented by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Biodiversity Project in the summer of 2003, this research and public outreach initiative centred around the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to get the word out about innovative community-based solutions to the biodiversity crisis in the United States. Core goals of the project were to: raise public awareness about the connections between habitat protection and community quality of life; encourage individuals to support actions, policies, and initiatives that will institutionalise biodiversity protection at the local level; and promote innovative and responsible approaches to local biodiversity protection. In order to collect stories that could serve as models for how individuals can make a meaningful difference for biodiversity in their communities, the Biodiversity Project solicited nominations via the internet (a nomination form) and through its network of smart growth and local conservation allies. The goal was to identify stories that the Biodiversity Project could pitch to national and regional lifestyle media to raise the profile of the good things people are doing to protect nature at the community level.
Contact: project@biodiverse.org

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Please Vote in our newest NRM POLL:

Faced with a significant and serious local natural resource management issue, what would be your top priority action?:

• Bring in technical experts to review.
• Convene a stakeholders' conference.
• Facilitate negotiation of local rules.
• Publicise the issue as widely as possible.
• Seek government legislation.
• Support advocacy by local people.
• Other [please VOTE and then explain your choice in the Comments box provided below (SUBMIT)]

VOTE AND COMMENT [Top Right Side bar - see "Poll"].

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NRM MARKETING/MESSAGES

7. The Case for Marketing Sanitation
This field note analyses the social marketing of sanitation - the hygienic disposal of human excreta - as an approach to stimulate the market for private sector suppliers. The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) Field Notes describe and analyse projects and activities in water and sanitation that provide lessons for sector leaders, administrators, and individuals tackling the water and sanitation challenges in urban and rural areas. According to WSP research, "most progress in access has been achieved by the market - private suppliers supplying individual households. Marketing has been more successful than anything else in changing the behaviour of people when they can see direct personal benefits. The purpose of this field note is to explain the marketing."

8. Environmentalist or Conservationist, and Does it Matter?
by Jane Elder
This article discusses the terms "environmentalist" and "conservationist" and what they mean to the public (rather than the internal debate in the field) and how that affects their use in communication. The author suggests that the public does see a difference in the two and gives a cursory overview via a chart, which lists some of the following contrasts:

Environmentalist:
• driven by ideology.
• wishes to preserve environment.
• outsider.
• radical.
• watchdog.
• superior/righteous.
• stereotyped as political activist.

Conservationist:

• looking for a practical solution to a particular problem.
• wishes to conserve the environment for current and future use.
• local.
• balanced and practical.
• pragmatic and solution-oriented.
• contributor to the community.
• stereotyped as a local duck hunter.




9. Communicating Biodiversity to Private Forest Owners
by Frits Hesselink
This slide presentation, prepared for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/the World Conservation Union (IUCN)/the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) Workshop in Zamardi, Hungary, in September 2004, discusses government communication, NGO communication, and how to create synergies through communication that result in biodiversity conservation. The author introduces the potential for NGOs to function as intermediaries between government and citizens groups because they can use informal communication, associate more closely with citizens' groups, and appear as credible sources of information. He also examines how to carry messages to forest owners on biodiversity conservation through mass media.



10. The Green Line: Environmental Journalists Ponder Service to Public
by Talli Nauman
On the occasion of a meeting of the Mexican Environmental Journalists Network, this article considers the conventional journalistic ethic purporting that informing - not educating - is the job of media, and argues that environmental journalists must be more than simple informers to provide better coverage of development issues. The author discusses the "vast border zone" between the two ethics and suggests that the current code is a "condition of a structural relationship between the newsroom on one hand, and major advertisers and investors, on the other. The latter holds sway since it sustains and assures the economic survival of profit-motivated media."



11. Breakthrough Strategies for Engaging the Public: Emerging Trends in Communications and Social Science
by Marian Ferrior
This document explains the consensus of a meeting of international biodiversity specialists on ways that biodiversity can be communicated in the media and to the public, including not only framing biodiversity as a species loss issue, but also placing biodiversity in a broader sustainability context, which includes lifestyle and over-consumption issues. It examines communication campaigning models and the challenges inherent in implementing them. The conceptual frameworks and models of communication campaigns are presented, along with theories of behaviour and social change, as a context for analysing the following strategies: values-based communication, used to raise awareness and motivate action (whether personal or policy-related); strategic framing, used to redefine an issue in order to redirect public attention to social systems and policy change; and social marketing, focusing specifically on individual behaviour change. In addition, two emerging fields, conservation psychology and conservation sociology, are described as concepts that can enhance these strategies.



NRM TOOLS



12. Communication, Education and Public Awareness (CEPA): A Toolkit for NBSAP Coordinators
by Frits Hesselink, Wendy Goldstein, Peter Paul van Kempen, Jinie Dela, Tommy Garnett, and Andy Alm
This toolkit is intended to provide the link from science and ecology to people's social and economic reality. It comprises a range of social instruments including information exchange, dialogue, education, and marketing. According to its authors, this resource "supplies the oil for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. CEPA deals with the processes that motivate and mobilize individual and collective action." The toolkit consists of 4 sections that contain guidance and tools for CEPA interventions by National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAP) coordinators.



13. Learning From Experience: A Manual for Organising, Analysing, and Documenting Field-based Information
by Jorge Chavez-Tafur, with Karen Hampson, Anita Ingevall, and Rik Thijssen
This manual by ILEIA, the Centre for Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture, is intended to help small-scale farmers organise and document their experiences for publication in the magazine LEISA [Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture], focused on field-based information about improving agricultural production in an environmentally sound manner. This is a step-by-step methodology for documentation/systematisation of experiences, which enables NGOs, farmers, extension workers, or anyone who is interested, to learn to document their experience in order to analyse it, to learn from it, and then to share it.



14. Climate Change: A Guide to the Information and Disinformation
This online document is a journalists' resource guide devoted to climate. It is a collection of links, which are at this time (January 2008) primarily United States (US)-based, to various resources on climate from a wide range of sources, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, National Academies' National Research Council, American Bird Conservancy and National Wildlife Federation, Evangelical Environmental Network, Sierra Club, and the Pew Center, among many other individuals and groups. Chapters group the links according to their field of expertise, and, in some cases, give tips, such as: "50+ Really Serious Scientist Sources on Climate (who would probably be glad to talk to a journalist)."



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Reminder: please visit our Natural Resource Management Theme Site, where communication and media are central to natural resource management.



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This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Julie Levy.



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The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.



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