Green Infrastructure

COMMUNICATION TOOLS FOR VISUALIZATION OF FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS: A clear and compelling takeaway message is that communities need annual budgets to tackle the Riparian Deficit along streams

March 9, 2023 - Posted in EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, is a BC Strategy for Community Investment in Stream Systems (Natural Commons), Graphics are Communication Tools that Help Audiences Visualize Foundational Concepts

Note to Reader:

How concepts are explained is crucial to creating awareness, building understanding, and inspiring action through a commitment to shared responsibility to make things right. In this case, restoring riparian integrity in streamside protection zones.

If we know how to do a much better job of protecting ecological features and stream systems in our communities and on our landscape, then why aren’t we doing a better job? Why are streams still degrading? This is the reason the Partnership for Water Sustainability developed a set of six graphics to bring to life foundational concepts. These graphics are communication tools.

Each graphic in the set is introduced below and a link provided to the stand-alone story about each one in the set.

Asset Management is a Continuum of Steps

“The ultimate vision for fully integrated Sustainability Service Delivery is that communities would protect, preserve, restore and manage natural assets in the same way that they manage their engineered assets. A watershed, and the ecosystem services that it provides, is a fundamental and integral part of a community’s infrastructure. This is not to suggest that all ecosystem services provide a municipal function. But trees, soil, green spaces and water do contribute a valuable municipal function in maintaining the hydrologic integrity of a healthy watershed system,” explains Glen Brown.

Nested Concepts

“The idea that nature provides “ecological services” is not intuitively understood by the public, elected representatives and asset managers. Because the concept is abstract, it requires a leap of faith for buy-in at an operational level in local government where numbers matter. This challenge accentuates the need for effective communication tools. The Nested Concepts graphic helps local governments move past the rhetoric and focus their attention on achieving desired outcomes through a sustained and affordable investment in restoration of streamside protection zones,” emphasizes Kim Stephens.

Cascading Concepts

“It is amazing that we have been able to produce a methodology that defines what a stream is, can find the value of the stream using impartial BC Assessment data, and add to that a riparian assessment that looks at the 30m zone and a further 200m upland area to evaluate the water balance condition and what is happening to water pathways,” states Tim Pringle. “How concepts are explained is crucial. What is easily understood and measured gets implemented. The use of cascading concepts as a mind map helps us cut through the rhetoric to provide audiences with meaningful context and content.”

Twin Pillars of Stream System Integrity

“We figured out that you can do all you want with stormwater runoff to restore the water balance, but you still are not going to restore the aquatic resources to where they need to be unless you actually jump into the streams and riparian areas and do restoration there. So that is what I did. My position as Director at Kitsap County allowed me to put science into practice. We learned through experience that you cannot do just stormwater or restoration. You have to do both. Also, working at multiple scales and multiple levels is really key,” stated Chris May.

Cascading Levels of Understanding

“The context for EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, is protection and restoration of stream systems. Two questions set the stage for EAP. First, what is the stream worth to the community? Secondly, how would a municipality operationalize EAP to pay for stream maintenance and management (M&M)? Everything comes down to one question: What is the number for the line item in a local government annual budget? The use of ‘cascading levels of understanding’ as a mind map helps us cut through the rhetoric and jargon to provide meaningful context and content for EAP,” states Kim Stephens.

Three Types of Commons

Natural, constructed and institutional – communities rely on three types of commons for services that support quality of life and property enjoyment.

“Communities rely on a range of services such as roads, underground utilities and parks to support life-style and property enjoyment. Through taxation, these constructed commons are maintained and managed in order to ensure their availability. Institutional services such as fire protection and schools are a related kind of constructed commons. As defined by EAP, a natural commons is an ecological system that provides ecological services used by nature and the community. But the commons word means little to the average person. So, we created a visual aid to help audiences grasp the concept,” explains Tim Pringle.

EAP is a BC Strategy for Community Investment in Stream Systems

The Synthesis Report is a distillation of over 1000 pages of case study documentation into a storyline that is conversational and written for a continuum of audiences that includes land use practitioners, asset managers, stream stewards, and local government decision-makers.

To Learn More:

Download and read a copy of the entire Synthesis Report on EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, A B.C. Strategy for Community Investment in Stream Systems (2022), the 4^th in the Beyond the Guidebook series of guidance documents.