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Case Study 1

Developing an Issue Guide for the Indian River Lagoon

By Mandy Baily and Martha Monroe

In the spring of 2019, a CIVIC team made up of faculty, a graduate student, and a Kettering trained facilitator gathered to create an issue guide to prompt discussion around the health of the Indian River Lagoon (IRL). The situation and its problems were identified in many reports over the years, and public opinion was summarized in a report developed for the IRL National Estuary Program (IRLNEP) (Monroe et al., 2018). That report was based on a series of interviews and focus groups with experts and a public survey across the five-county region to understand awareness, attitudes, and behaviors that protect the

lagoon. The IRLNEP has a history of funding educational programs that prompt appropriate individual behavior changes; CIVIC members believed it was time to elevate the discussion to community-level activities to build broad support for larger-scale actions.

The first steps in developing this issue guide began with collecting available resources. The team used the IRL reports and the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) and the Kettering Foundation booklet “Let’s Talk About Water.” Realizing that the concerns from minority communities were under-represented, they gathered information through in-person interviews. These data and the team's impressions were organized into broad themes. The team members asked themselves how to organize themes to best generate discussion around solutions. This meant that traditional ways of representing water quality concerns may not be helpful (Fig 1). A framework that revolved around the environment, public health, and economic health was pilot tested in community discussions.

Pilot tests of this first draft clearly reflected four challenges in developing a salient IRL Issue Guide: (1) it was hard to move people away from discussing what individuals should do toward what communities could do; (2) even with special invitations, minority perspectives and voices were consistently missing from the forums; (3) stressing “ecosystem” concerns primarily attracted environmentalists to the discussion; and (4) very few participants got excited about addressing an economic option. Getting a full complement of perspectives at a discussion was challenging. After pilot tests and in partnership with IRLNEP, the team simplified the language, reshaped the guide introduction and descriptions of options, and renamed the Issue Guide: “Our Home, Our Water, Our Quality of Life: How Can We Protect Our IRL Communities?”

The new IRL Issue Guide was used in online discussions several times during the COVID-19 pandemic. Forum conversations appeared to reflect a diversity of values and approaches for IRL communities. As a result of the pilot test forums, a variety of possible next steps were suggested. One action was a subsequent town hall meeting with the Ocean Research Conservation Alliance (ORCA) that led to the development of the Indian River Lagoon Youth Fishing Clinic. This iterative process of listening to the community, developing various frameworks, testing them with both experts and the public, and revising them based on observations of the discussion is essential to the development of a useful guide that prompts deliberation.

References

Monroe, M. C., Crandall, C., & Maynard, L. (2018). Developing and Testing a Citizen Survey for the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Final report of project UF P0037358.

NAAEE and Kettering National Issues Forum Guide. (2017). “Let’s Talk About Water” Retrieved November 6, 2023, from https://eepro.naaee.org/resource/lets-talk-about-water

Case Studies