Setting limits the collaborative way cold halls, sausage rolls and success?

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1 Setting limits the collaborative way cold halls, sausage rolls and success? Meredith Macdonald¹, Nic Newman¹, Ned Norton², Helen L.Rouse³, Joanne Stapleton¹ ¹ Environment Canterbury, Canterbury Regional Council ²Ned Norton Consulting ³NIWA Christchurch Introduction Freshwater management in New Zealand is changing. At the national level, the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011 (NPS-FM) requires regional council s to set water quality and quantity limits in regional plans. Recent national freshwater management reforms encourage undertaking this in a collaborative manner (MfE 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). At the regional level, Environment Canterbury (ECan) is functioning under the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Act 2010 (Ecan Act) and the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS). The CWMS was developed by a region-wide partnership between ECan, Ngāi Tahu, and Canterbury s district and city councils, and established a shared vision, targets and framework for collaborative, integrated water management. What is not defined at national or regional policy level is - how is setting limits via a collaborative approach to play out on the ground? Our paper will outline the South Coastal Canterbury Streams (SCCS) project, which is the fourth collaborative community limit-setting process in Canterbury in the last four years. Through lessons learned from the first three processes in Hurunui, Selwyn-Te Waihora and Hinds, ECan has developed new ways of working, and here we share the key ingredients of success that we believe are applicable for all practitioners. We believe that one key ingredient is effective integration of the roles of planners, project managers, technical staff and community facilitators, and accordingly a summary from each of these four perspectives is given here. We also give participants perspectives by way of results from an independent survey of key participants in the SCCS process, before summarising our ingredients of success. Introducing the South Coastal Canterbury Streams project The CWMS outlines a governance structure to deliver on its targets, and splits Canterbury into 10 water management zones, establishing a water management committee for each zone, plus an overarching regional water management committee. The so-called Zone Committees are charged to work collaboratively to develop effective water management solutions that deliver economic, social, cultural and environmental outcomes in consultation with the local community 1. They articulate these solutions in non-statutory documents called Zone Implementation Programmes (ZIPs) which then serve as a basis for ECan to prepare statutory regional plans. ECan is currently in the midst of defining limits in the Land and Water Regional Plan (LWRP) that give effect to the NPS-FM through the CWMS shared vision of a collaborative approach. Under the umbrella of this region-wide plan, sub-regional sections are prepared and inserted into the LWRP. Any catchment specific provisions in the sub-regional sections supersede the regional defaults. Commissioners (established through the ECan Act) have put in place a program which aims to achieve specific catchment solutions captured within the sub-regional sections for five zones by October The SCCS zone includes catchments from the Otaio River in the north to Morven Drain in the south, and contains the shallow coastal Wainono Lagoon which is highly valued as part of the 1 1

2 Waihao Mataitai Reserve, for biodiversity, wildlife, conservation, recreation and mahinga kai 2. The intention is to notify a SCCS sub-regional plan change in The project manager s perspective In ECan s sub-regional processes, the planner has taken the role of overall project lead, the end goal being the production of a sub-regional plan. The focus for the project manager is to organise the work-streams required, write contracts, prepare budgets and draft timeframes to complete the process, i.e. a sub-regional section of the LWRP. This however can only be done once the technical lead, community lead and community facilitator (the core team) have all fed in their work streams and individual timeframes. Good communication between core team members, external consultants and those who hold the purse strings is essential. Project management is a moveable feast in these collaborative processes, making close tracking of budgets and spending essential, as well as agility to accommodate unforeseen events (e.g. cancellation of vital meetings due to snow storms in SCCS). The planning perspective The decision by ECan to follow a collaborative process has required a change from the traditional Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) planning process where draft plans were prepared behind closed doors and then tested with the community at a high level, notified and argued at regional hearings and then Environment Court. The collaborative planning approach is different; instead of being fought out at the end, the conversations and community input into the entire planning regime begins with the development of a ZIP (and any necessary addendums) before plan drafting even begins. For planners the challenge is to draft a plan based on the ZIP recommendations from the community process, while also meeting the RMA requirements for plan development. The planner s role at the start of these processes is an informative planning 101 role; explaining to the Zone Committee and public meetings the general nature of decisions that will need to be made, without delving unnecessarily into complicated RMA plan detail. Planning in these processes has become almost a hush word, as we want the community and Zone Committee to focus first and foremost on the outcomes they want. It is then the planner s role to transform the community recommendations into a plan and explain to them how this has been achieved. Having a strong direction from the community with regard to statutory and non-statutory aspects when starting to form a framework is helpful as the plan writer is aware of how everything is to fit together. However, what if all of the calls have not been made by the Zone Committee, or additional decisions crop up while plan writing? The planner is required to go back to the Zone Committee and possibly the wider community to obtain direction which can be a time consuming and resource intensive process. Currently in the SCCS process we are in the initial stages of plan writing and have several aspects that we need to go back to the community to work through. This causes potential challenges for meeting budgets and timeframes set by the ECan Commissioners. A balance must be struck, and then constantly reviewed, between timeframe, budget and the robustness of community engagement. The community facilitator s perspective The role of the community facilitator is to organize and facilitate the community engagement required to run a collaborative process. Our experience is that investing time and effort up front is crucial. The quality of community engagement sets the platform for how successful the rest of the process can be. Key ingredients of success we have identified are: 2 2

3 1. Be clear from the outset on what the objective of the project is, and what role the community will have in the process. 2. Identify the different components of the community that you need to work with. This might include Councillors or Committee making the decisions, papatipu rūnanga, industry, nongovernment organisations, the general community members, District Councils, internal council staff who needed to be kept in the loop and any RMA Schedule 1 parties (such as the Ministry for the Environment). 3. It is important to build honest, open relationships within the community, otherwise it will be difficult to facilitate and negotiate when the big calls need to be made. We found the most effective way of doing this was making time to meet people on their properties, and getting to know who were the key leaders and communicators. 4. Each group has different requirements for information and when they want/need to hear about key issues. It is important to be clear on these differences and provide appropriate opportunities and tailored information for each community of interest. For example in the SCCS case study, we found that it helped the two papatipu rūnanga in our project area to become engaged by offering them multiple pathways by which they could participate: 1) as community members, 2) by representation on the Zone Committee and 3) through a joint working group between the two papatipu rūnanga called the Tangata Whenua Working Group, which met regularly with ECan staff to discuss issues. 5. Being honest about timeframe constraints and what we needed to achieve was appreciated and helped to build trust. Communication and relationship building was a two-way process, so that as community members learnt from us, we learnt from them as to how to engage with them more constructively. 6. A final key ingredient from a community facilitator s perspective is Do not assume, ask! The technical perspective The role of the technical team is to help inform on the effects of land and water resource use across environmental, social, cultural and economic values. For this it is necessary to integrate multiple technical disciplines. Technical expertise is needed in biophysical disciplines from the mountains to the sea (e.g. climate, hydrology, hydrogeology, geology, soils, lakes, estuaries, coastal and marine, terrestrial and aquatic ecology), as well as rural, agriculture and urban resource use, social science, matauranga Māori and economics, in various levels of detail depending on the catchment in question. Limit setting requires integration between these disciplines as well as beyond them into the realms of community facilitation, social science, planning and law. Such integration lies at the heart of the challenge for technical contributors to collaborative limit setting processes. Our experience is that setting limits the collaborative way is definitely not business as usual for scientists. It requires a way of thinking, working and communicating that is challenging and sometimes uncomfortable for those with traditional technical training. Our ingredients of success that apply particularly to the technical team are: 1. Clearly define the technical role, which is to inform the process by predicting the consequences of alternative options or future scenarios that contain limits to resource use. Setting limits is a social process informed by science. There is rarely, if ever, a single technically defensible magic number for a limit. Thus, presenting a range of options with consequences is the way for the technical team to inform without inappropriately imposing value judgements. To build credibility it is critical that technical contributors maintain objectivity and transparency, even when discussions become emotional. 2. Integrating multiple disciplines requires tight teamwork. Establishing a common purpose, roles and shared terminology are key first steps to building a multidisciplinary technical team. 3

4 3. Predictions, and therefore models, are necessary. There are numerous types of models to consider and deciding on fit-for-purpose model(s) in each particular catchment case is a key step in project design. 4. Uncertainty is inevitable and must be shared (i.e. communicated) and managed. We have found it useful to develop simple ways of communicating uncertainty for risk management. 5. Communicating complex technical information, including uncertainties, credibly and accessibly for a wide community audience, is a difficult but critical task. The technical team needs to generate a pyramid of information. The base of the pyramid is data and technical analyses that are robust to traditional science peer review. It is then necessary to translate that information at several simpler levels for different audiences, so that the most simplified level (the top of the pyramid) is a summary that is accessible for all. We have found it useful to simplify the pros and cons of future scenarios down to a single page matrix, using a colourcoded visual representation of uncertainty. 6. Sharing draft technical material widens the benefits of review and improves the development of, and community engagement with, solutions. We have found it necessary to share draft technical reports in public during the collaborative process. This is different to a traditional prepare-review-finalise-release technical process. This can be uncomfortable for technical contributors and presents significant risks that must be carefully managed. The participants perspective To find out more about what participants thought about the SCCS community process, we developed a series of questions to explore different aspects of the process. The questions covered six major topics: The collaborative process; Science communication; You and the process; Catchment groups;; and Overall impression. Some of these topics are of interest for ECan s planning of future meetings, whereas others explore how complex scientific concepts were communicated, and how this process compared to standard RMA processes for plan development. We identified three major groups that participate in the process: the Zone Committee, Stakeholders (people representing organisations who have a broader interest such as Fonterra, Fish & Game or Department of Conservation), and local Community. The survey questions were ed to 12 Zone Committee members, 11 Stakeholders, and to 74 Community members who signed up at one of the community meetings. The return rates of the surveys were 5 (42%) for the Zone Committee, 8 (73%) for Stakeholders and 9 (12%) for local Community; 23% in total across the groups. The survey has identified many points for ECan to consider, but we give here just three examples. We asked all three groups whether the process had provided enough opportunity for the community to contribute. 100% of Zone Committee respondents thought yes. Not all of the Stakeholder respondents gave definitive responses but 63% think the process provided opportunity for the community to contribute. However only 33% of Community respondents answered yes outright, and several highlighted barriers to participation such as the time taken to attend meetings and that the size of the groups limited opportunities to contribute. We asked the Zone Committee and Stakeholder respondents to comment on the difference between this collaborative process and a standard RMA procedure. Respondents found collaborative processes to be slightly more informative, and to be more inclusive, effective and enduring. Collaborative processes also consume more time and resources, and are no different in terms of stress levels for those involved. However, 70% found this process overall better. In terms of Overall impression, not one of the three groups of respondents found the process was not worthwhile. 59% found the process either worthwhile (good) or very worthwhile (excellent). 95% of respondents would participate in a similar process again, although the reasons why they would do this did vary between the three groups. A number of suggestions for improving the process in the future were offered; a common plea being to take more time over the process. 4

5 Conclusions Setting limits the collaborative way is definitely not business as usual. It turns the traditional RMA plan preparation process on its head by requiring community engagement from the outset in the development of water and land resource management solutions (including limits) before a draft plan is even prepared. This requires significant time and effort from the community participants as well as the regional council in running the process. It requires new ways of working and communicating for planners, facilitators and scientists, as well as for industry stakeholders, resource users and other public participants. In reflecting on our experience we have identified in this paper a number of ingredients of success. These are not a step-by-step recipe for success but a set of ingredients that, if combined together in proportion appropriate to the characteristics of a given physical catchment and social setting, will increase the chance of a successful process. We consider that a successful process is one where decisions are informed by the best available information, trade-offs are transparently acknowledged, different values are shared, and enduring solutions are found by engagement with a strong majority of the community. Our key ingredients for success are: Relationship building; Open, honest two-way communication Strategic and flexible project management Clarity of project purpose and of the range of roles involved Multidisciplinary integration (community, multi-technical, planning, law) Prediction (e.g. modelling) of the full consequences of a range of future scenarios An empowered local consensus-building body (e.g. Zone Committee) - the regional council is seen as a servant of the process not its master Engagement and communication methods tailored to suit different community groups Accessible communication of complex information, including uncertainties A process allowing people to share views and values, and develop solutions, in a safe space A consensus based decision-making process to be able to make the hard calls Plan writing to incorporate pre-made consensus decisions and solutions Overall integrity of process and people The Mantra: We are all still learning References Ministry for the Environment (2013a). Freshwater reform 2013 and beyond. Wellington: Ministry for the Environment. Ministry for the Environment (2013b). Proposed amendments to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011: A discussion document. Wellington: Ministry for the Environment. Ministry for the Environment (2013c). Proposed amendments to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, Section 32 evaluation. Wellington: Ministry for the Environment. 5

Community engagement toolkit for planning

Community engagement toolkit for planning August 2017 State of Queensland. First published by the Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning, 1 William Street, Brisbane Qld 4000, Australia,