An Academic Workshop with Sustainable Northwest

The Pacific Northwest hosts a multitude of different types of people, with their own views, experiences, and values. It is no different than the United States as a whole, where beliefs can be largely separated into what is known as The Six Hidden Tribes of America. Across divisions of class, race, gender, religion, education level, political affiliation, and more, successful engagement looks to create an environment where everyone can both speak and listen to others in a search for commonality. In this environment, open communication is encouraged so that one can both educate others on their opinions and experiences, along with learning from others. Engagement is truly successful when a group or individual who is affected by the issue at hand, known as a stakeholder (Luyet et. al 2012), is not left out of the conversation.

For Sustainable Northwest, including stakeholders in the conversation is a key element in how their organization operates. With a goal of including local interests in conversations surrounding natural resource management, the “who” of Environmental Engagement is especially crucial. This inclusion is on trend with the growing tendency of environmental groups in the western United States to believe it is important to try to find consensus on issues at a local level instead of searching for it through going to court (Ellsworth 2001). The majority of stakeholders that Sustainable Northwest communicates and collaborates with tend to be from rural areas, and a part of local economies that depend on industries such as timber, agriculture, and ranching. This large representation of rural communities in Sustainable Northwest comes from the fact that they tend to focus on groups in the natural resource sectors, where people in urban areas tend to be less involved with. The higher proportion of rural stakeholders, while having the benefit of being more involved in natural resource management, also leads to little representation of groups that are more congregated in nonrural areas. 

A group our team recognized as underrepresented in the “who” of Sustainable Northwest, as mentioned in a previous post, is the younger demographic. While this is largely because there is simply a lower proportion of younger people in rural areas, we do think that young people have things to both learn and teach about their perspectives on a field that they will soon have to take over. Because of this, our team decided to choose young people, aged 16-25, as the “who” of our engagement partnership with Sustainable Northwest. Specifically, we would seek to include older high school students, undergraduate students, and graduate students with an interest in environmental issues. With environmental education being everchanging, current students are learning about natural resource management in a vastly different way than their predecessors currently in the field (Maestas 2002). As the field of natural resource management gains more and more postgraduate students, the way that it operates will evolve as new ideas and practices are implemented. Our team believes it is important for young people interested in getting involved in the field, and for current employees in natural resource management, to start communication as early as possible so younger generations can get involved in something they will soon be in charge of. To ensure a more diverse range of viewpoints, we aim to seek out students from a range of urban to rural schools, as well as students who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and those who grew up outside of it. The student demographic is diverse, hosting a range of political viewpoints, gender, socioeconomic status, race, et cetera. We aim to include a range of students that would represent the Oregon student demographic. By including young people, we believe that they can learn valuable lessons about natural resource management and important tools in how to get more involved, as well as being able to express their own ideas that may differ from the current majority seen.

When thinking about an engagement project that we might start with Sustainable Northwest, our team wanted to build upon their existing infrastructure and philosophy rather than begin anew. The current infrastructure includes programs covering forests, water, energy, and rangelands, with their mission being to function at the intersection of these natural resource programs and groups of people involved in each. These are essentially the organization’s “what” and “who”; the who being those in which Sustainable Northwest engages with, and the what being the conversations and projects they help facilitate. When analyzing the “who” of Sustainable Northwest – especially in the context of the unexotic underclass – we spoke in length about who the organization leaves out of the equation; that is, who they do not include in their development initiatives and the decisions they make. Sustainable Northwest’s projects have been exclusive to established groups within natural resource sectors and as a consequence of that, their initiatives may lack input from younger generations or those living outside of their rural bubble. This brings us to the purpose of this post — the “how” of our engagement project. How might we be able to bridge this gap between those already operating with the realm of Sustainable Northwest’s initiatives and those who are not?

To foreground our understanding of how we might go about engagement, we began by looking at the different models of environmental engagement, which outlines three models of engagement: the classical (deficit) model, the framing model, and the contemporary (dialogic) model. While the first two models leave little room for communication and rely almost solely on the dissemination of information, the dialogic model involves both speaking and listening in an effort to reach an understanding. Because of how crucial it is to Sustainable Northwest, our team has decided to ground our proposal in the dialogic model in hopes that it can breed fruitful results. After all, engagement might only be considered truly prosperous when those who are affected by the issue at hand are not left out of the conversation (Luyet et. al 2012).

Another key aspect, along with our discussion of these models, was our examination of a particularly interesting article written by David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, titled “Durably Reducing Transphobia: A Field Experiment on Door-to-Door Canvassing.” The article is interesting in that it demonstrates the effectiveness of using something like the dialogic model when attempting to engage with others. It indicates, above all else, that through continued and worthwhile communication, bias and prejudice can be alleviated (Brookman, Kalla 2016).

Over the course of our proposed workshop, Sustainable Northwest could perhaps share how they have found success in using multi-party engagement in what they call the “radial middle,” a philosophy that sees them trying to produce community-driven solutions in the face of change and conflict. It is our hope that this workshop – using the dialogic mode of communication – can inspire the possibility of Sustainable Northwest working with / partnering with organizations whose main participants are outside of their bubble of operation, bridging the gap between the organization and the people who may not be involved with their current projects. Across divisions of class, race, gender, religion, political affiliation, education, and more, we hope that opportunities for a workshop – and perhaps even a few partnerships – might create an environment where everyone can speak and listen to each other in search for commonality and understanding, doing so in a manner that was not possible before. By implementing this approach, listening will provide important background context prior to communicating with so many different actors, or even provide important follow-up information on how the topics were received or acted upon.

Turning this project proposal into a reality for Sustainable Northwest is no easy feat! Perhaps the greatest reason why lies in the fact that there exists an urban-rural divide in Oregon; that is, nearly sixty percent of Oregon’s population lives in and around the Portland metropolitan area. This means that with an organization like Sustainable Northwest, whose work is situated in rural Oregon, more than half of the state’s population is not having their concerns taken into account. Consequently, this can also lead to an environment where opinions differ greatly. In situations like this, which may be a reality were our proposal to be acted upon, dialogic approaches to communication may be the best way to engage and facilitate conversation towards action (Dickinson 2005). Using this model, Sustainable Northwest can put an even larger emphasis on involvement, ensuring project understanding and input during decision making. 

Our project is, of course, contingent upon Greg Block and the whole organization being excited and willing to participate in such a thing. In communicating with Sustainable Northwest, we hope to ensure that our project is a worthwhile commitment with ample opportunity for fruitful results!

• Broockman, David, and Joshua Kalla. 2016. “Durably Reducing Transphobia: A Field Experiment on Door-to-Door Canvassing.” Science 352 (6282): 220–24.
• Dickson, David. 2005. “The case for a ‘deficit model’ of science communication.” SciDev.Net. June 27, 2005.
• Ebbin et al. 2010. “Community Natural Resource Management: Promise, Rhetoric, and Reality, Society & Natural Resources,” 13:8, 705-715
• Edsall, Thomas B. 2020. “Trump Is Waiting and He Is Ready.” New York Times. (link)
• Ellsworth, Peter, and Judith Ellsworth. 2001. “Involving Students in Natural Resource Decision-Making Groups.” Clearing House 74 (3): 137–40. 
• Jasanoff, Sheila, ed. 2004. States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge.
• Luyet et al. 2012. “A Framework to Implement Stakeholder Participation in Environmental Projects.” Journal of Environmental Management 11: 213-19. (link)
• Maestas, Jeremy D. 2002. “Natural Resource Management for a New Generation.” Wildlife Society Bulletin (1973-2006) 30, no. 1: 278–79.