The first step to engaging community partners is identifying stakeholders who may be involved with or affected by prescribed burns. Further along in this toolkit, we present a Stakeholder Map of relevant groups who you can consider engaging when conducting a prescribed burn or strategizing how to share burn messaging. Stakeholder identification can be conducted on an ongoing basis by asking questions such as:
Which community groups are already engaging with prescribed burns, and which are disengaged?
Which groups may be difficult to reach but have the potential to be greatly affected by burns?
Stakeholders who are already engaging with prescribed burns might include groups conducting burns, regulating entities, or community organizations who do not participate in burn activities or regulation but are simply interested in burns because they might be impacted. Disengaged stakeholders, on the other hand, may not be aware of the technical details of prescribed burning and therefore not seeking burn-specific information. Disengaged stakeholders can also be individuals or groups who have barriers (i.e., location, education, language) that prevent them from learning more about prescribed burns.
For meaningful engagement, the level and type of engagement should be tailored to each community partner, and you should set realistic goals for what you expect to achieve in engaging with each of them. Not all stakeholders share the same interests or “stakes” when it comes to prescribed burns.
- Fire Learning Networks and Prescribed Fire Councils may be interested in making sure that prescribed burns are being planned and executed according to specific standards and regulations.
- Organizations representing high-risk groups such as children and the unhoused may be more interested in knowing what the potential health impacts are if they are exposed to smoke from a prescribed burn.
- Community partners involved in research like nonprofits or academia will likely want to know technical details about burns and how they affect the environment.
Each stakeholder requires a different level of engagement depending on their interest. Our Stakeholder Map below gives some examples of relevant organizations and how they are connected to prescribed burns.
The International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) developed a Spectrum of Public Participation[1] to help select the appropriate level of community engagement. The spectrum shows how community engagement activities can range from “Inform” all the way to “Empower” depending on the public participation goals. It also describes what “promise” is being made to the public for each activity. In summary:
- If the goal is to inform the public, activities include providing balanced and objective information to help them understand the problem, opportunities, and possible solutions. The promise to the public for these types of activities is to keep them informed.
- If the goal is to consult the public, activities include obtaining public feedback on analysis, alternatives, and decisions. The promise to the public for these types of activities is that they will be informed, and their concerns and aspirations will be acknowledged, and their feedback will be considered in drafts or proposals.
- If the goal is to involve the public, activities include working directly with them throughout your planning process to incorporate their feedback. The promise to the public for these types of activities is to ensure that their concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the plans that are developed and that they will understand how their feedback was incorporated.
- If the goal is to collaborate with the public, activities include involving the public directly in identifying the problem and solutions, as well as involving the public in the process of developing plans. The promise to the public for these activities is that their feedback will be incorporated into proposed solutions to the maximum extent possible.
- If the goal is to empower the public, the final decision-making power is placed in the hands of the public. The goal for this approach is that their decisions determine what will be implemented.
The IAP2 Spectrum can be a useful tool to determine what type of engagement you will conduct depending on what your goals are for involving each stakeholder. You may not be ready to promise that the public will have direct decision-making power in how you communicate prescribed burn health risk, for example. However, you may want to work directly with some partners and incorporate their advice and concerns into your planning and communication efforts. For other groups, you may just want to keep them regularly informed of burning events that may affect them or host a workshop or meeting on the benefits of burns, for example. If you determine the right level of engagement for each partner, you will be better positioned to keep your “promise” of either informing, consulting, involving, collaborating, or empowering leading to higher levels of trust and understanding of prescribed burns throughout the community.[OJ(1]
After you’ve identified relevant community partners and agreed on how you will engage them, you now have the beginning of an engagement plan—a roadmap for how you will conduct and measure your community engagement efforts. The next part of your plan should focus on what format and tools you will use to engage with community partners. Surveys and public meetings are useful if your goal is to solicit feedback or ideas about prescribed burns from a large group of people, but you may not have the resources for sending out and collecting responses or promoting a public meeting. School visits, small meetings, and participating in an ongoing event (i.e., community fair) for example, offer a chance to focus your engagement on a specific population and may require less resources. Whichever format you choose, make sure to consider if the format is appropriate for the audience (e.g., community partners are able to participate at the chosen location and time, the information or exchanging of ideas is presented in the appropriate reading level and language).
Evaluation is an important last step after community engagement activities and helps ensure your efforts are achieving their intended aims and, if not, alert you to what improvements can be made. Evaluation can be done through an informal discussion or in a structured way through surveying those involved. Whichever you choose, this step should not be skipped. Evaluating community engagement can help make future efforts more tailored to the needs of partners. Specific questions you can use to guide evaluation efforts include the following:
- Were the goals of this community engagement effort met?
- What barriers or obstacles did we encounter when trying to engage with community partners?
- What next steps resulted from the engagement activity?
- Who is responsible for executing those?
- How does communication planning fit into your existing processes?
- What are the barriers and facilitators to communicating about prescribed burns?
[1] https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/pillars/Spectrum_8.5x11_Print.pdf
[OJ(1] EPA’s Public Participation Guide (https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/public-participation-guide-view-and-print-versions)