Understand the dynamics of the community: Local communities are not homogeneous and within the same community there are conflicting ideas and values. People derive many different benefits and livelihoods from the same area and the ways people value mangroves is not the same across regions or communities. To successfully accomplish the projects goals you must meet people where they are. An important lesson is learning how to listen! You can do this by conducting listening surveys and facilitating town meetings. Ask what is your life like, what is easy in your village, what is the social context, do you need support, how can we support you? Project success is improved by sustainable management and secure livelihoods. Taking the time to listen also helps you understand the ways that people value and use the mangroves at their location, the community knows and understands their world better than you ever can. Listening can also determine the level of understanding of mangrove Ecosystem Services (ES) of the community. In some projects the community understands the ES of mangroves but are lacking financial security and need assistance in capacity building to work with the government or implementing management strategies to improve these ES. In other locations, understanding and connecting how loss of mangroves correlates to loss of fisheries is lacking. Meet the community where they are and then approach the project so it addresses both their needs and achieves the environmental change you are trying for.

 

Empower communities: Give communities the right context to enact informed management. Engage and give responsibility to core communities from the beginning in a real way. Involve them in the development, implementation and monitoring of the project. Summarize the values and threats to mangroves in the past, happening now, and moving forward in time. Work with the community to educate and make possible taking the best actions to address these threats and improve these values. This allows the community to take in the whole picture and see what they can do, how they can be involved. When new policies and laws are put in place to implement national GHG targets or to comply with a national strategy it can adversely impact community behavior. Recognize that even good laws will negatively impact someone and try to mitigate those impacts. Be inclusive and bring enough people together and familiar with the projects intended goals, methods and outcomes to encourage buy-in and adoption of new habits.

 

Make outcomes tangible: Many concepts such as carbon markets to combat global climate change are not tangible to people. Trading fish or harvesting timber with someone in your village is a clear value trade. It is harder to understand the value of carbon stored in soil for a person or company living or based across the globe. It is also difficult for some to make the connection that soil cores and the calculation of carbon stocks will translate to the restoration of the local mangrove fishery in five years. To improve understanding between local and global action, as well as the different timeframes involved, formulate your project to have benefits you can touch and see. Ensure your benefit-sharing schemes includes the use of carbon finance to also fund schools, water pipes, and providing access to doctors, beyond other obligations and project costs. These tangible benefits will help people see the value of the project and the work you are doing. By providing these benefits you incentivize local participation in the project and improve long-term sustainability. Non-carbon ecosystem services usually benefit the local community more directly. Enhancing these ecosystem services will automatically support and benefit the carbon management and financing aspect. Communicating these benefits can make the carbon pathway more tangible.

 

Identify and support a local champion: Create the opportunity to build local capacity in different fields, from data collection to project management and organization. Find your local champion, and encourage that leadership. The local champion can liaise between the community, government and the science and technical community. They can help create transparency from the beginning. The local champion will inspire people to attend meetings, workshops and engage in meaningful conversation around the project. Allocate the resources to develop this person, get them through the full cycle of mangrove management, community mobilization, and carbon monitoring. This increased community engagement will help your project gain local buy in and improve the local level of understanding of mangrove ecosystem services.

 

Give opportunities to people: If your project eliminates a livelihood, help train and build the environment to support alternative livelihoods. For example, if your project limits the harvesting of mangroves to improve carbon stocks, help the person whose livelihood depends on harvesting access alternative resources (e.g. alternative fuels) and/or – where the activity had a commercial character –develop a new skill. Perhaps working as forest patrol ensuring the mangroves are not illegally harvested or in data collection monitoring the carbon stocks in soil. Help develop a new alternative industry to replace the lost one, for example, improving market links for increasing distribution of honey from beekeeping or infrastructure improvement to develop ecotourism in the region.

 

Make the intervention their own: When replicating or scaling up a project, make a point of branding with the individual communities. If you use a brand from another location it can be interpreted as another village or outside organization coming to manage them. Giving the community project a name and a brand will allow people to take pride in the project. When you take pride in something this will increase the accountability and the buy-in from the local community. When this is done successfully, they will take ownership of the project and this will increase long-term success. This success will spread across the region and the next project will be welcomed because neighboring communities will want to participate.​

 

Increase capacities, supported by local knowledge from communities living near mangroves: Consult communities that live with mangroves, seagrass or tidal marsh areas, by asking them and getting them involved in the conversation, trainings and exchange of information. Unified communities with strong visionary leadership in which common strengths are identified in order to create networks of knowledge exchange. These networks at the local level can be integrated or feed into global networks such as UNFCC. Create spaces and opportunities for exchange and dialogue, for which the barriers that have to be overcome are language and the loss of revenue opportunity in local communities. Empower communities while addressing mistrust and skepticism regarding blue carbon projects, in order to increase the level of understanding surrounding possible interventions and enable advocacy where locals can act as agents of communication.

 

Identify the population that use the blue forests: hotels, people who depend on subsistence fishing, and others, and analyze their access to existing community networks in order to then make a further analysis regarding existing mechanisms for community participation, if there are any. After these important factors have been identified, the linkages between networks must be done with the appropriate language, finding common ground or a boundary object such as the concept of ecosystem services: one where there can be common understanding between two parts even when talking at two different levels. Once the link has been established several areas must be approached in order for local community, such as access to knowledge to help them understand benefits, opportunities and rights regarding blue forest, as well as access to diverse income generating actions.

 

Link information with the corresponding organizations and seek the necessary technical assistance: In addition to looking for other economic alternatives besides the sale of blue carbon, to control over-exploitation and teach communities that there are other means of income without the need to clear the forests. For this, it is essential to maintain a constant link and dialogue with the community networks and thus provide a correct training and application of capabilities in resource use.

 

Frame messages in a positive way: Talk about the dependence of communities and populations on the ecosystems, while at the same time providing concrete numbers, giving value to the services that blue forests provide. A clear way to to this is with the occurrence of natural disasters and their effects on communities, as well as providing examples of how fisheries that are dependent on mangroves can be affected by deforestation. By giving value to coastal ecosystems that goes beyond and economic model, there are more opportunities to integrate the blue carbon projects into public policies and planning.

 

Listen. Then communicate: Listening early and listening often is critical to addressing the needs of communities and decision-makers. Take information and give it back to them to make sure it is in a format they want and can use. Taking into account information people provide and showing that you are hearing them and addressing their needs and concerns will go a long way in generating support and sustainability of the project from the beginning.

 

Create a plan for communication across scales: Topics of discussion at the national level are quite often different than topics of discussion at the local level. When working with the government and decision-makers you might be introducing the concept of ecosystem services and blue carbon or providing national or international context. When working with the community you will need to address the on-the-ground goals of the project and how the project will improve or impact their lives. These communication materials are not the same. Develop a baseline of communication strategies and goals for all scales.

 

Develop communication materials early, often and in many forms: There is no one way to communicate the values associated with mangroves and there are many paths to make the message land. In some locations the best way to communicate is via a community board in the center of the village. So, engage a local leader to help keep that community board up to date with a calendar of events and to communicate project progress. Share when the next meeting is and what the opportunities are for people to get involved. If you make a video of people dancing in the mangroves expressing their spiritual connection to this environment share it! Make an edible postcard that is unique and will stick in people’s minds. If there is an opportunity to put on a puppet show in a local community put on the puppet show, then share pictures on your website and blog. Pictures are a powerful form of communication, and the money hiring a photographer and capturing the story behind the photos will be worthwhile. Create lots of infographics, postcards, meetings, and allow for peer review by stakeholders. Showing all the ways people connect to mangroves can later help to translate the benefits of mangroves into funding and conservation support.

 

Have a funded stream for communications: Infographics, flyers, postcards, reports take time to craft and produce. Having a dedicated person to help make and update these materials will keep people engaged. If you are part of an international organization and are relying on communications assistance from headquarters you can face bottlenecks in getting materials. If your project is targeted to decision-makers at the national level communication to the local community will fall to the end of the project. This will create missed opportunities. Conversely if you focus on communicating locally and need to approach the national government or a coastal planner you might not have the time to create appropriate materials. Having a dedicated person that can strategize and manage your communication materials across scales and across the project timeline will improve the project outcome on multiple levels.

 

Convey information in a way people need it, and can relate to: Information needs to be accessible. Target the audience. Talking points change by audience and taking the time to craft your communication strategy for each audience will help the message be heard. Once you establish the geography of the project, bring in all the stakeholders from across different sectors (fisherman, rangers, hotels, investors, and data providers) and convey information in way people need. When choosing the right communication product, it is important to take into account the target audience benefiting from your intervention, including the metrics that are the most suitable for this audience. It is also vital to take into consideration the current awareness and understanding of the assessed blue forest ecosystem service. Ideally, decision-makers should be engaged in as many stages of the ecosystem service assessment result production and interpretation. Come to decision-makers with solutions. This can help them support the decisions that support the project. Language translating can be a costly issue but if you give government materials not in their language, they don’t embrace it. If you are working with scientists and universities English is the standard.

 

Communication takes time: Many of the concepts translating the values of mangroves are complex. The first, second or third time people hear it they might not understand. However, over time this can evolve from understanding basic concepts to knowing information to taking information to the next level. It will take time to educate and get information into useful language. There is also a lot of time when you work with agencies and many different stakeholders spent on review. It takes time to respond to questions and address concerns. It is important when developing your communication strategy to create enough communication opportunities and allow enough time to find success. Projects found success within both decision-makers and communities knowing and expecting ecosystem services and blue carbon and mangroves to be a part of the conversation by continuing to show up and to reach out and communicate.

 

Take a field trip, bring a decision-maker: When determining how to best use your time there are often tradeoffs. For example, you can spend an entire day trying to get a 15-minute meeting with a minister or official or you can spend an entire day gathering data in the field. It can be hard to determine which use of time will have the most impact. However, there are some uses of time that can be guaranteed to communicate both the threats and the benefits of mangroves. Getting out into mangroves can do more to communicate with a decision-maker than meetings and presentations. Taking the officials into the field can show the impact of deforestation or connect them with the community that lives and benefits from these mangroves. This tangible connection to the threats and values of mangroves can communicate the project structure and goals better than any presentation or meeting.

 

Make the most of networks: Once results have been effectively synthetized, these need to be shared with the wider marine and coastal community, for example using online databases. It is also critical for any communication efforts to consider windows of opportunity. These include the current political motivations, such as impending legislation and investment decisions. Results can be disseminated using various options, including websites, social and other media, launch events, workshops and other meetings. Engage with and s share experiences with networks of experts and stakeholders at local, regional and international levels, as needed. Support the development of networks within the project, for example gathering women to discuss their role in mangroves and create alliances. International networks and dialogues can create combined solutions. International communities and networks for the blue carbon community can be powerful allies for building capacity, upscaling and replicating project impacts.

 

Integrate local communities: Long-term sustainability will always require close integration of local communities. Communities can act as stewards and guardians of the ecosystems, and interventions are most resilient if communities are enabled to manage nature-based solutions from conceptualization to implementation. Local business should be included and/or build depending on the needs and capacities of the project.