Communicating Community Values

We can all agree that communities are greatly diverse in values and it is often a difficult task to to find collective agreements among such diversity. However, if we all try to focus on what we all do have in common and share- our universal “human needs,” the potential for finding a middle-ground, making decisions and implementing actions can become easier found.

adapted from The Natural Step

By drawing attention to the common thread that binds us all together- our human needs we can focus on those commonalities and find a middle ground to make decisions from. We can also create the space to agree to disagree on other differences and know that it is OK to think differently while working towards the betterment of our families, community and even world. After all, we are people who generally want the same things, we just easily get lost in the rhetoric trying to communicate these needs and wants.

Here I list the nine universal, fundamental human needs from Human Scale Development established by Chilean Sociologist Manfred Max Neef (recipient of the Right Livelihood Award):

• Subsistence (food, shelter, clothing)
• Protection (safety)
• Participation (our social nature of wanting to “belong” and have relationships with others
• Idleness (the ability to rest and recuperate)
• Affection (experiencing care, love and nurture)
• Understanding (being understood and understanding the world around us)
• Creation (to be creative and exploring the ability to create things)
• Identity (identifying with people and the world around)
• Freedom (being able to act and live with independently with ease

I started thinking a lot about these fundamental human needs after the recent wave of public input period forums for the La Plata Climate and Energy Action Plan (CEAP), which took place from November 11^th to the 18^th in Durango, Bayfield and Ignacio. This first wave of public input forums were to introduce the community to the finalized draft of the CEAP- the GHG emission reduction targets, strategies and actions that aim to enhance our community, local environment and support a new energy economy and invite community feedback for incorporation into the community document.

At these forums, we were reminded that some people sometimes do not respond well to certain weighted words like “sustainability,” “climate,” and “green.” This is understandable, as these are the new buzzwords that carry a multitude of varying definitions and sometimes scare people because of blurry context and misunderstanding.

This same consideration was recently discussed in on one of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s three-part webcast series on how state and local governments can develop and build support for community-wide strategies to adapt to climate change and communicate the impacts effectively to communities.The webinar Climate Impacts & Risk Communication paralleled our CEAP public input period experience in that three experts discussed the importance of effectively communicating climate change to communities through focusing on the positive and basically, human needs, as discussed above.

Instead of focusing on difficult terms, ideas and theories, it may be more effective to focus on supporting “strong economy,” “thriving and healthy community”, “community self-reliance”, a “healthy and productive environment”, “clean water” and “healthy people.” Notice the word healthy repeats a few times. These may be a little easier to hear and understand because we all want these things and they come across as straight forward, not weighted with mysterious political agendas. The CEAP does aim to communicate these importance’s, yet we are still harvesting feedback that helps the document speak to all necessities, concerns and considerations.

visual from the CEAP

Overall...

We all want the same things for ourselves, our families, our community and hopefully the world. We just often get caught up on the verbiage, the rhetoric and linguistics in trying to communicate these needs and avenues to obtain and retain them. Trying to define and communicate the importance of climate change, adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development is difficult. However, if we can identify and simplify the things we all cherish in life, it becomes a little easier to find our commonalities and agree to disagree on all other things.

picture by Tom Lane

Want to know more about the La Plata Climate and Energy Action Plan? Visit the CEAP homepage, and feel free to contact us by emailing or calling (970-259-1916 x 122).



About the Author...
Elsa Jagniecki began working for 4CORE last month and since has enjoyed working on the La Plata Climate and Energy Action Plan (CEAP).

Elsa has recently returned from Sweden where she studied her Master's in Sustainable Development and researched Sustainable Community Renewable Energy for her thesis with two other classmates, where they toured Sweden, Denmark, and Germany and from their research designed The SCRE Tool.