Welcome to Salmonpeople

Citizen Stewardship Campaign

The Salmonpeople story catalyzes grassroots coalition building, Engaged in a shared purpose and guided by common working principles, community-based coalitions learn how to cultivate, chronicle and measure citizen stewardship behavior. Here is a plan for how to make this happen.

Measuring Citizen Stewardship to Cause More of it to Happen

“At the end of winter, in the spawning stream, three-thousand salmon eggs have eyed-up.”

Summary

What if we could measure stewardship behavior in such a way that common citizens became authentically engaged in causing more of it to happen? Habitat restoration is on-going and crucial, but do we know if we are changing the knowledge and behavior of the populace at large? This is where the ultimate transformation must take place, among the citizens of each watershed community, a transformation that restores the relationship between Salmon and People and by extension, a robust economy linked to ecological integrity.

The Salmonpeople Campaign partners with a given watershed community for three years to design and implement a stewardship report card based on the current assets and collective vision unique to each community.

Community participants follow a design process with five simple steps: community commitment, coalition building, community asset mapping, a seasonal rhythm of town meetings or “confluences,” and report card design.

The report card process is central to this effort. It grounds community development work in measurable outcomes, outcomes the community members themselves have selected as desirable and worth measuring. Indicators for the report card are drawn from a menu of indicators that are themselves nested inside the most promising bioregional assessment criteria currently available. The backbone for the whole is the ethical framework of the Earth Charter, which several northwest cities including Seattle have now endorsed.

Success will be determined, in part, by the degree to which stewardship principles are becoming embedded in policy, program, budget and staffing priorities across all sectors of community life, from town hall to the family unit.

From inception through replication the project is guided by the principle that empowered people take responsibility for their own experience. As measurable stewardship behaviors manifest and organizational priorities align, funding shifts from catalytic external sources to sustainable internal practice.

“In the meantime, fingerling salmon release themselves to their downstream migration, memorizing the distinct olfactory sensation of each tributary.”

The Challenge

The goal is to measure citizen stewardship behavior to cause more of it to happen. The report card process, within a framework of the four stewardship principles, helps us to clarify criteria as we create the conditions for social transformation.

Four Principles of Citizen Stewardship Behavior

“Tending the triple bottom line on behalf of future generations.”

Interdependence: Citizen stewards recognize that all of life, including nature’s ecology, human society and the economies we participate in, is interdependent.

Stewardship: Citizen stewards recognize that with the unparalleled success of our species comes the responsibility to steward Earth’s resources and life systems.

Citizenship: Citizen stewards participate in the democratic process to ensure an open and civil society with justice and sustainable prosperity for all.

Legacy: Citizen stewards work to secure Earth’s bounty and beauty recognizing that the freedom of action of each generation is qualified by the needs of future generations.

(Adapted from the Earth Charter. Visit Earth Charter US)

“Schools of smolt are congregating in the eelgrass of the estuary adapting their body chemistry from fresh to saltwater.”

Six Steps Toward Solutions

1. Community Self-Selection Criteria: Communities self-select participation based on a set of “readiness” criteria. An informal baseline of current perceptions, knowledge and behaviors is established. Through this self-reflective process commitment arises naturally. With the commitment of one or several local lead entities, the steps in the process begin to unfold.

2. Coalition Building: Local lead entities build a coalition of diverse alliances. Diversity of participation insures integrity and equity, shared leadership builds leadership skills and the amplification of collaborative action reaches toward a tipping point of communal behavioral change. The aim of the coalition is to amplify the good work that each participating member is already doing, aligning missions and overlapping strategic objectives towards a synergistic benefit to all.

3. Community Asset Mapping: Concurrent with coalition building and spreading the word about stewardship principles and the community report car project, a team of local youth are guided in mapping current ecological, economic and social assets of the community. A protocol for interviewing fellow citizens across sectors of community life is based on appreciating what’s working and identifying themes of a shared vision for the future. Youth are engaged in this part of the process to accomplish three things; reinforce intergenerational learning, apply academic excellence in service to community, and generate a statistically significant amount of data. Students are also engaged in synthesizing the data, identifying themes and reporting back to the community.

4. Seasonal Rhythm of Confluences: The confluence in a watershed is where tributaries join the mainstem river. As a metaphor for social organization, it points to the many tributary streams of thought, currents of energy, and diversity of projects that create a river of change. A confluence transcends the traditional public meeting format in that all participants bring expertise, practice leadership and share responsibility for what happens. This process embraces the discipline of democracy over regulation by bureaucracy. The confluence meets seasonally for three reasons; to maintain relationships, benchmark progress, and to remind ourselves of the patterns of nature.

5. Report Card Design and Implementation: Through the Confluence process, the design for a Citizen Stewardship Report Card emerges. Criteria for the report card are drawn from a menu of indicators aligned with existing frameworks.

Northwest Environment Watch; 7 Indicators of Sustainable Prosperity
Action Plan for a Sustainable Washington
The Earth Charter; An Ethical Framework for Global Sustainability

The creation of the report card meets the following criteria:

1. elegant and simple in design
2. selection of indicators limited to what’s perceived as doable
3. relevant to the current vision of the community
4. based on reliable data acquired at reasonable cost
5. easy to explain and has emotional impact so people will pay attention
6. measurable change can be assessed seasonally or annually

Summative assessments are offered back to the community as actionable reports. Root causes are revealed and reforms made evident. The emerging story of collective learning is chronicled and communicated via all media and to the widest possible local and regional audience. Youth are immersed in this process to re-establish methods of appropriately initiating the next generation into the adult world of responsible citizenship and responsible stewardship.

At the end of the three-year design and development phase, each participating community re-examines the initial “readiness” criteria as a benchmark for what has been achieved, what is in process and where new leverage is useful.

“In the ocean, intermingled species of silver sided salmon navigate by way of magnetic fields, sweeping currents and celestial bodies.”

Leadership Teams

Leadership teams will be of two kinds each with their own focus. Project Stewards will be comprised of a small group of associates committed to facilitating the process across three communities. Local Coalition Teams will be comprised of open groups of local leaders within each community who possess the skills and commitment necessary to solve the stated problem: “Measure citizen stewardship to cause more of it to happen.”

Shared Cost Strategy

The funding path for this work requires initial external funding support with a local match in talent, time or cash. Over the course of three years, funding shifts to local responsibility, ideally without new expense or additional layers of bureaucracy. One measure of citizen stewardship is the degree to which aligned behaviors have been internalized in the policy, program, budget and staffing priorities across sectors of community life, from chamber of commerce to congregation, from gardener to golfer, from schools full of children to schools of returning salmon.

Sister Watershed Learning Exchange

Beyond the three-year design and development phase, new communities are invited into the circle of learning. Local coalition leaders have the opportunity to communicate directly with their peers to exchange lessons learned, adapt templates, refine protocols, and swap stories. New bioregional relationships will emerge as we work together to apply success strategies to communities with diverse ecological, economic and social conditions. School curricula will evolve to take advantage of these same interdependent learning opportunities peer-to-peer thereby initiating a new generation of citizen stewards.

“One day, the salmon turn for home trusting that home will be there when they arrive.”