Stakeholder Engagement & Partnerships
Stakeholder engagement and partnerships are critical for local governments to successfully and efficiently implement adaptation projects. Local governments may achieve community buy-in by increasing public understanding of the variety of climate change impacts and risks, the need for resilience-building strategies, and the uncertainties associated with climate impacts as well as possible solutions. Building and sustaining support requires engagement with a wide swath of the community, especially with disadvantaged communities, who may experience greater climate impacts. Integrating voices from citizens, businesses, faith groups, and industry groups into the planning process can enhance community ownership of adaptation activities, contribute to political support for action, and increase the ability of the community to adjust to changing circumstances.
In addition to building local community member engagement, local governments can avoid conflicting adaptation efforts, engage in shared legal considerations, and even gain efficiencies from collaboration with external partner entities who may be able to provide sector-specific expertise, shared resources, or regional scale perspective. Such partnerships may include regional agencies, neighboring municipalities, non-profit organizations, private sector companies, academia, and the science community. Collaborating with external entities allows for information sharing, coordination of activities, and leveraging of limited resources to conduct joint projects.
This section of the guidebook is designed to help local governments achieve robust and consistent coordination with and response to community stakeholders (both community members, other local governments, and outside experts) with respect to adaptation activities.
Initiation
Develop basic understanding of climate impacts and adaptation, and invest in adaptation champions to build expertise and empower them to integrate adaptation into their project work.
| Begin sharing climate change risks with the community. | |
| Use publicly available resources to compile a basic climate risk profile, including key regional climate impacts and implications, for the community. Ensure that the climate risk profile is based on the best-available science. Identify potential adaptation options to address these risks.
Share climate change information, risks, and opportunities with community members on an ad-hoc basis such as through existing newsletters or web pages. Focus on impacts and opportunities that are relevant to community members’ lives such as heat and flooding. |
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| Engage with community members on climate risks and adaptation on an ad-hoc basis. | |
| Internally discuss and identify potential hot button issues (e.g. extreme heat, displacement) around climate change and assess how to frame climate change in outreach and education efforts.
Participate in or share resources with existing community outreach events and connect messaging around climate change impacts to the topic of the event (e.g., public health, community safety). Seek to integrate climate risk profile information into events throughout the community, particularly in disadvantaged communities, to build the groundwork for equitable adaptation. Focus communications on being responsive to community members’ concerns about climate and adaptation interests and needs. |
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| Begin identifying climate impacts that are of most concern to the community. | |
| Review existing plans and programs to pull out climate related concerns (e.g. safety, health, flooding) that the community has already expressed. Plans and projects may be sensitive to climate impacts even if they are not directly focused on addressing climate change impacts.
Identify the community’s priorities (e.g., clean air, safety), and services and assets that are highly valuable to the community (e.g., public park, local library). Build messaging that connects climate impacts and resiliency strategies to these priorities and use these as a starting point for discussions with communities. |
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| Identify the status of regional adaptation policies. | |
Build a basic understanding of how others in the region are addressing climate risks and resilience to provide a foundation for coordination on policies such as by
Follow up with the governing bodies as needed to clarify or get additional details. |
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| Take ad hoc opportunities to integrate adaptation activities into projects and activities. | |
| Create a contact list of potential adaptation collaborators at different levels of government, private companies, academics and/or NGOs. Consider reviewing the agency’s past and current climate-sensitive projects to identify potential collaborators for partnerships (e.g. organizing by sector expertise, scale, risks, or other factors). Develop a brief document that illustrates the value of collaboration on adaptation efforts.
Using existing network channels (working groups, coalitions, meetings, projects, etc.), build an understanding of adaptation projects and potential collaborators in the region such as by
Use this engagement to learn about adaptation projects taking place in the jurisdiction or region, and to foster strong relations with potential external stakeholders for future collaboration. |
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Development
Identify key audiences and community leaders (champions) and begin to integrate adaptation into conversations as appropriate; allocate resources to conduct a review of external expertise needs and available resources.
| Regularly compile and share climate risk information and resiliency strategies/resources with established community networks and the general public. | |
Create a process to regularly update and share climate risk information and make it available to community members via existing local government channels (website, newsletters, etc.). Include information on
Links to additional resources for the public to learn more about climate impacts and adaptation |
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| Deliberately bring adaptation needs and planning efforts to the attention of key stakeholders and audiences. | |
| Review best practices on communicating about climate change. For consistency of messaging across the community, consider utilizing language developed by neighboring jurisdictions and regional agencies (e.g. councils of government, regional climate collaboratives, metropolitan planning organizations).
Conduct an initial assessment of potential engagement challenges and conflicts that may arise. Prepare for climate skepticism and myth busting, including both social and scientific myths. Ensure that this is done in a respectful way that doesn’t alienate the community. Identify relevant community engagement events across departments (hearings, town-halls, public events). Prepare department-specific information about climate adaptation issues (e.g. flooding information for public works versus habitat information for parks and recreation) so they can more easily integrate climate adaptation information into existing outreach and engagement activities. Engage department leaders to foster top-down support for adaptation. As applicable, seek opportunities to deliberately integrate adaptation information into department-specific events that may not be obviously climate related (e.g. public works meetings on new infrastructure). Identify key community events (e.g. fairs, holiday events) where sharing adaptation information may be relevant and seek opportunities to participate so as to support community adaptation conversations and information sharing. |
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| Identify key audiences and community leaders to garner interest within the community for engaging in climate change adaptation planning processes. | |
| Use an existing committee of stakeholders (e.g., committees on the environment, public health, safety) to discuss climate concerns.
See if an existing committee can add a standing adaptation agenda item to its scope, or create an informal committee or stakeholder group to continue engaging interested organizations and community members. Meet with community groups actively working on climate change issues to understand their mission, activities, resources, and interest in engaging in local government adaptation planning and implementation efforts. Work with key audiences and community leaders to elicit community members’ adaptation understanding, needs, and priorities such as by conducting a preliminary survey on awareness of varied climate risks and adaptation concerns. Ensure that underrepresented and disadvantaged communities are engaged in any needs and understanding processes so outcomes reflect the full range of voices. |
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| Map out landscape for regional policy coordination. | |
| Identify key internal policy strengths and gaps related to adaptation as part of understanding the landscape of adaptation in the region. Identify key external adaptation policy opportunities to identify where to leverage or target influences (e.g., counties, air districts).
Occasionally meet with other governing bodies and stakeholders engaged in policy development or advocacy within the region to discuss and coordinate on adaptation policies. Communicate the value of collaborating to leverage combined assets, skills, and resources to maximize results. Discuss climate considerations with other governing bodies and stakeholders when new regional policies are proposed. Identify and meet with parties that may be interested in collaborating on regional adaptation policies. Participating in local, regional, state, and national climate networks can help identify active and engaged players in the adaptation policy space. Coordinate with a broad range of external stakeholders at different levels and with different roles and responsibilities. Key state agencies include Office of Planning and Research (OPR), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Emergency Services (OES), California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA), Strategic Growth Council (SGC), Caltrans, Department of Water Resources (DWR), and CALFIRE. Key federal agencies include EPA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Transportation (DOT), United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). |
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| Seek opportunities to engage external collaborators in targeted adaptation projects and activities. | |
Using risk profiles, identify ongoing or upcoming projects and activities that may have specific climate risks within the agency. Consider gaps in internal skills, expertise and/or knowledge of teams undertaking these projects and activities to identify what sector or disciplinary expertise (e.g., water, transportation, energy, legal, climate science) and types of organizations (e.g., private sector, nonprofits, community groups, academia) could enhance the ability of the agency to ensure the project or activity is climate resilient. Use this information to increase potential collaborations through actions such as:
Regularly participate in external stakeholders’ requests to coordinate and collaborate on adaptation projects as a means to stay up to date on adaptation projects in the region. |
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Standardization
Refine community engagement practices (e.g., committee structures and feedback lops) to include adaptation goals, activities, and reporting; and ensure that appropriate external collaboration is clearly defined in climate programs.
| Develop a platform or campaign to provide information to the community on climate change impacts and adaptation activities on a consistent basis. | |
| Develop an online platform (by expanding existing outlets or creating new ones as needed) to share climate change information such as through social media, newsletters, and a dedicated page on the agency’s website. Use this platform to regularly update the community on changing climate risks, adaptation progress across departments and sectors, and provide concrete opportunities for community members to provide input through newsletters, social media, website updates, and list serves.
Establish mechanism to send alerts for extreme heat, extreme weather events, flooding, and other climate impacts through multiple channels (e.g. email, text, and phone). When sharing information about emergent climate risks, also include an update on how the agency is responding (e.g. fire risk reduction, flood management), as well as strategies that individuals can undertake to prepare for and build resilience to these risks (e.g. cooling strategies, flood preparation). Develop a process to regularly inform community members about voluntary actions that can be taken by residents, businesses, and community-based organizations and, if possible, provide incentives in the form of recognition, awards, and small grants. For example, provide property owners with information about preparing for specific risks, encourage businesses to assess their vulnerability, and encourage community centers to serve as cooling centers during extreme heat events. |
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| Regularly engage stakeholders in dialogue about adaptation. | |
| Develop a community engagement plan based on high priority climate risks facing the community and an understanding of community needs and goals. Ensure the plan has a process for updates as new risk information emerges). Provide multiple tools, formats, and channels for engagement in this plan. Include a conflict resolution process for community engagement. To engage the community in an equitable manner, ensure that the plan includes clear processes for effectively engaging disadvantaged communities.
Use information about needs and priority risks to broaden understanding of adaptation and build relationships with trusted community groups and organizations to reach out to and engage as many community members as possible on potential risks and specific adaptation strategies, especially leading up to and during extreme weather events (e.g. access to cooling centers, flood response plans). Work to incorporate understanding of uncertainty into engagement to facilitate awareness of the changing nature of climate adaptation. Ensure that relationships with disadvantaged communities are cultivated by clearly addressing community concerns related to climate impacts (e.g. displacement, retreat). Hold regular public meetings with these groups to engage the community on adaptation and what they envision for community engagement moving forward. To better reach disadvantaged communities and those who do not typically show up to public meetings, hold meetings within the community, partner with community-based organizations, bring translators or staff who speak the language(s) predominantly spoken within the community, and/or provide childcare at meetings. Make sure to provide mechanisms for feedback about community understanding of specific risks and adaptation strategies that enhance the agency’s ability to address community concerns in planning and responding to climate risks especially as they change over time. |
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| Integrate community stakeholders into formal adaptation planning processes. | |
Develop a formal process for gathering community stakeholder input on adaptation related actions and integrating into agency processes for general plan updates, climate action plan updates, and other major visioning and planning activities such as:
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| Create formal mechanisms and roles to engage in external policymaking to better integrate climate risks and adaptation. | |
Develop or participate in a committee with other governing bodies and stakeholders engaged in policy development, legal framework coordination, or regional advocacy that aims to: assess and document regional risks (e.g. through shared research, common assessments, or collaborative legal review); collaborate on efforts to keep informed about changes in scientific information about climate risks and emerging practices; integrate climate change adaptation into regional policies (e.g. through coordinated planning with MPOs, Air Districts, etc.), as well as identify important local policies (e.g . flood, fire standards) that relate to regional conditions and could be adopted by individual jurisdictions. Scoping activities for such a committee could include activities such as:
Collecting, reviewing and highlighting specific community activities or external stakeholder activities to document best practices (or challenges) in order to ensure that agency actions are aligned and not counterproductive. |
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| Proactively identify and plan for collaboration opportunities on adaptation projects and activities. | |
Work within departments to apply risk profiles and community concerns to assess climate change planning and project needs 2-3 years in advance (e.g. applying heat projections in review of building codes). Use this process to:
Regularly update other external stakeholders (e.g. neighbor jurisdictions, regional agencies) on adaptation activities and progress on projects to build a cohort of relevant technical experts, ensure alignment of activities, and potentially identify opportunities for shared action. |
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Optimization
Ensure that community input is central to adaptation goal setting and that community and expert input are tracked and reported comprehensively.
| Continually update public facing information platform on climate change impacts and activities. Connect communication engagement platform with key performance indicators to inform the community of action and success. | |
| Facilitate ongoing and fluid community engagement by continually updating community-facing communication platforms with new climate change findings and relevant local government policies, programs, and initiatives. Undertake creative strategies (e.g. art and technology) to share information about climate change impacts and adaptation efforts to reach a broader audience (e.g. youth).
Incorporate climate impacts and activities into other communication efforts to mainstream climate change discourse. Ensure that key climate performance indicators and metrics are connected to the community engagement platform, that indicators include measures of agency success in sharing local climate risks and adaptation strategies with community members, and that indicators are updated regularly to reflect current conditions and responses. |
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| Systematically adjust and broaden the community engagement plan based on changing conditions and input from community (e.g., expand outreach to the general population, widen the range of forms of engagement). | |
| Regularly refine engagement plan (using qualitative and quantitative indicators and metrics) to assess how well and how equitably community input is being addressed and how well responses are addressing community needs and concerns.
Include processes in the engagement plan to identify organizations and community groups that are not yet engaged in the agency’s formal community engagement process. Seek opportunities to engage these groups by expanding the reach of notices and opportunities for public input. Make announcements and related information easily accessible, and consider different venues (cultural centers, businesses, etc.) and platforms (online, in-person, etc.) to reach new audiences. |
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| Formalize processes to track integration of stakeholder input. | |
| Formalize processes to track stakeholder input and agency responses (e.g. incorporated into plan, needs further input, etc.).
Design assessments to evaluate stakeholder input such as by looking at:
Comparative level of engagement in other local government efforts. |
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| Participate in fully developed regional coordination activities so policies are as aligned as possible and resources are shared effectively | |
| Establish formal processes to engage with other governing bodies and stakeholders on a regional adaptation pathway. Engagement activities may include policy development (e.g. targets, strategies, etc.); coordination on shared regional, state, or federal legislative advocacy efforts (e.g. funding, legal frameworks, codes); and shared investment in research, program development, and implementation among others.
Effective regional engagement is likely to include:
Measures of effectiveness in terms of shared policies, collaborative program results, organizational engagement and transparency. |
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| Establish ongoing partnership agreements or contracts with external stakeholders on adaptation efforts. | |
| Use regularly updated risk profiles and sector-specific projections to regularly review alignment of in-house adaptation needs and the capabilities of technical experts to fill identified gaps.
Ensure that the ongoing partnership agreements for adaptation, which may outline roles, duties, and expectations, are sufficiently flexible to incorporate new partners, allow for innovation, and adapt to new circumstances. Incorporate performance metrics to measure results. Schedule regular meetings with external stakeholders to ensure staff are well informed about both changing conditions and response strategies, to share specific adaptation initiatives, and, where appropriate, collaborate with them to implement adaptation projects and programs. |
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