How can we boost citizen engagement around urban nature-based solutions and promote nature stewardship?

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are actions to protect, restore and sustainably manage ecosystems to address socio-economic and environmental challenges. Providing benefits to nature and people is a core principle of NbS and human well-being is at the centre of the approach. So it important to engage people as designers, beneficiaries and stewards of NbS if these solutions are to be successful.

Engaging citizens around NbS and nature stewardship can be extremely valuable and rewarding, but it can also be challenging. Citizens can bring a wide range of local knowledge, skills and expertise to benefit NbS projects. The challenges being addressed by NbS are often complex and involve trade-offs between different socio-economic and environmental factors, all of which requires careful consideration, dialogue, consensus-building, and stakeholder buy-in if outcomes are to achieve real impact. Citizen engagement can be a powerful tool to help facilitate NbS implementation and in some cases, it can also help to gain the political support needed to make change happen. Without citizen engagement, solutions are ‘imposed’ on society with no sense of ownership or purpose; and opportunities are missed to empower people in making positive changes to their environment, through their own actions.

The benefits of citizen engagement are well-documented, yet the process of engagement can sometimes appear difficult to organisations embarking on their first project with the general public. Who should be involved? What methods should be used? How best to capture people’s attention and get them interested – and beyond that, get them involved? How can sometimes technical and scientific concepts be communicated? How much will it cost? And what happens if people disagree?

These and other questions formed the starting point for the INTERLACE Engagement Programme: a series of linked activities designed to test and learn from methods of citizen engagement in a range of contexts across Europe and Latin America. The programme sought to help remove some of the common barriers to citizen engagement and give city authorities the confidence to work with the public in creative, productive and importantly fun and interesting ways – through community art, citizen science, outdoor learning and digital gaming. The outputs of the programme and the lessons learned are summarised in this section of the City NbS Toolkit as a starting point for others wishing to reach out and engage citizens in their work.

Recommendations for citizens engagement

• Citizens can be much more than just beneficiaries of NbS. They can be designers, implementors and stewards too. When engaging citizens, it's important to provide opportunities for them to become better informed about NbS and the value of nature in cities. By becoming informed, people gain a better understanding of NbS, the challenges being addressed and the impacts on them and their community – and this can motivate people to take action. So as well as opportunities for learning, it’s also important to provide opportunities for ‘doing’ and enabling people to get involved: transforming citizens from passive beneficiaries of NbS to active participants in their design, implementation and stewardship. Try to involve citizens from the start of your project and plan out their engagement journey step-by-step, so that people who are motivated can become progressively more involved if they wish. One way to do this is to include ‘calls to action’ in your project communications: these are messages or instructions intended to motivate people to perform a specific act, such as sign-up to a project newsletter; or attend a volunteering day; or join the project steering group, etc. Calls to action can help guide people towards getting involved in your project and convert interested citizens into active participants.

• “One size does not fit all”. Provide different ways for people to get involved. Using multiple methods can be a good approach to citizen engagement, and this is proved effective in other forms of public communication (including media and marketing). The INTERLACE project used community arts, citizen science, outdoor learning and digital gaming to engage a diversity of people, and city authorities were free to pick and choose methods most suited to their local context. This flexibility offers a number of benefits, most notably: (1) It simplifies implementation, enabling city authorities to select methods that maximise their available expertise and resources, and which complement other ongoing public activities; (2) It expands outreach, enabling more and greater diversity of people to get involved; (3) It fosters innovation, providing opportunities for unforeseen interactions and outcomes that might not otherwise occur from using a single method. Don’t be afraid to try new approaches and use external specialists and facilitators when needed (if you have resources): the insights and fresh perspectives they can bring as ‘outsiders’ to your core team are often valuable.

• Integrate your methods and the different stakeholders you are working with. When using multiple methods, it’s important to try and link them as much as possible, so that activities are presented are a joined-up ‘programme’ rather than as separate events. This makes things easier to coordinate and it also helps citizens see that they are contributing to something bigger. It’s also good to make links between the different stakeholders you are engaging with, rather than engaging different groups in isolation. This can present challenges if you are working across a large area, or for example when linking technical experts with the general public, but such efforts are nearly always rewarded in terms of the value gained from these interactions; the knowledge and perspectives shared; and the common ground established between different groups. For example: fostering connections between city authorities and city inhabitants – and importantly, empowering citizens to act through and supported by city authorities – can result in a basis for ongoing stewardship of NbS. Engaging adults and children through a shared platform, such as digital gaming, can lead to co-creation and collaboration not possible if either group were engaged by themselves. Integrate your approaches as far as possible, establish links between different communities and create a shared vision – this will help to build the momentum you need to carry your project forwards.

• Provide support throughout the process and follow-up once it is completed. If you want citizens to become actively involved in your NbS or nature stewardship project, then you need to support their involvement just as you would any member of your project team. This needs to be factored into your project planning and resourcing. Motivated citizens who want to get involved may need some training, mentoring, up-skilling and equipping. Such investments are always well spent as they contribute to project longevity and in some cases can lead to spin-off activities instigated by citizens themselves, once empowered with new-found knowledge and capabilities. It’s also crucial to follow-up once a project has ended, share the success stories and communicate the positive impacts that people have made through their involvement. Doing so establishes a strong basis for other citizen engagement projects; builds trust between different groups; creates opportunities for positive publicity; and fosters support for NbS and nature stewardship more broadly. If your project achieves its mission, tell people about it! And especially those who made it a success.