Improving Community Profiles for the North Pacific Fisheries: Hosting conversations with Alaskan fishing communities Amber Himes-Cornell, Christina Package, Jennifer Sepez, and Allison Durland Alaska Fisheries Science Center

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Improving Community Profiles for the North
Pacific Fisheries Hosting conversations with
Alaskan fishing communitiesAmber Himes-Cornell,
Christina Package, Jennifer Sepez, and Allison
DurlandAlaska Fisheries Science Center
8th NOAA Fisheries Economics Social Science
Workshop September 21, 2010
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Overview

• Background on community profiles
• Why update the community profiles?
• Role of community meetings
• Training Effective meeting design
• Planning and facilitating meetings
• Importance of community meetings
• Lessons learned
• Whats next?

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Background Community Profiles

• Increasing focus in NOAA Incorporating community
  voices into fisheries decision making process
• Difficult in Alaska travel is expensive, most
  communities are remote with minimal
  infrastructure, subsistence in AK commonplace
  often taking precedence of attending fisheries
  mgmt meetings
• Nation-wide effort to profile fishing communities
  AFSC published North Pacific profiles for 136
  communities in 2005
• Based on existing 2000 data (U.S. census, ADFG,
  AK Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission, NMFS
  Restricted Access Management Division, AK Div of
  Community and Regional Affairs, community groups,
  websites, and archives)
• Only community involvement request for comments
  by mail, low response rate (15)
• Profiles used in FMPs, EIS, socio-econ impact
  assessments, NPFMC decisions, research
  background, city plans, academics

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Why Update the Community Profiles?

• Purpose of profiles
• Provide information on the relationship between
  communities and fisheries that can be used to
  support fishery management decisions and social
  impact assessments
• Updating/Revising more holistic representation
  of how fisheries management may impact
  communities
• Goal
• Help communities be better represented
• More comprehensive information about fishing
  dependence
• More holistic socio-economic impact analyses
• Plan to update with 2010 data and more community
  involvement
• First step Get community advice on how they
  would like to be represented in the profiles

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Effective Meeting Design Art of Hosting
Training with Berkana Institute

• Art of hosting assumptions
• Successful solutions in complex environments
  require involvement, collective intelligence
• Affected people need ownership/responsibility
• Goal is participatory decision making to host
  conversations that matter

Key Be present Participate and practice
conversations Host to build relationships Co-cre
ate solutions
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Appreciative Inquiry

• Appreciate everyone in the conversation and their
  different perspectives
• Harvest local traditional knowledge
• Facilitate group brainstorming

Dream
Discovery

• Explore hopes and dreams
• Challenge status quo
• Envision more valuable futures

• What is and what has been
• Organizational knowledge
• Individual strengths

Affirmative Topic (Community Profiles)
Destiny
Design

• Empower, learn, adjust, and DO
• Gathering data (community voices and statistics)

• What should be the ideal?
• Template of the profiles

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Role of Community Meetings
What do the communities know that we need to know
in order to inform good quality fisheries
management decisions?

• Purpose of meetings
• Revise profile template
• Increase input of communities and industry
• Facilitate greater understanding of the
  relationship between communities and fisheries in
  the fishery management process
• Increase the utility
• Build ongoing relationships between AFSC and
  communities

• Intended outcomes
• New sources of information
• Changed template
• New data sources
• Plan to increase the available information on
  communities
• Engage communities in order to increase Alaska
  involvement
• Strengthening community voice
• Commitments to contribute

First step in revising profiles bring
communities into information gathering process
that informs policymakers
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Meeting Planning Making Contacts

• Key questions to ask
• Who will be interested in the outcome?
• Who should be in the room?
• How do we get them there?
• End-user Interviews Academics, economists,
  government consultants
• Co-sponsors
• North Pacific Fishery Management Council
• Gulf of Alaska Coastal Communities Coalition
  (GOAC3)
• Southeast Conference
• Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference (SWAMC)
• Local contacts Sea Grant MAP agents, Alaskan
  Native Organizations

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Invitation

• 6 meeting locations regional hubs
• Who was invited
• For each of the 136 communities CDQ group,
  harbormaster, mayor, regional native corporation,
  village native corporation
• From other contacts native villages, local
  community members, fishermen
• Others FWS, Sea Grant MAP agents, Kawerak,
  Co-sponsors
• How we invited them
• Invitation mailed or emailed to 800
• Local contacts posted invitations in the
  communities
• Broadcast phone calls to key people and who they
  suggested we invite
• Incentives to come
• Participatory meeting
• Food provided
• Travel scholarships

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Meeting Design and Agenda

• Attempt to have minimal talking at participants
  have a conversation rather than present our
  ideas
• Focused agenda on participatory activities
• Discussions focused in middle of room, not front
• Attempt to actively engage all participants
• Agenda
• Telling the NOAA Story
• Reviewing the Profiles
• Getting a Handle on the Importance of Fishing in
  your Community
• Reviewing and Improving Information Categories in
  the Profiles
• Engaging Communities in Profiles and Gathering
  Information
• Distribution of the Profiles
• NOAA outreach coordinator led discussion of how
  NOAA can better work with local communities

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Input Gathered

• Main input gathered during the profile review,
  mind map and data source discussion
• What communities to include? Subsistence not part
  of original selection, left out many salmon
  dependent communities in the Interior
• How to reorganize and present data already in
  profiles
• New data categories to include and sources

• New Data Categories
• Natural Resources/Environment
• Climate Change
• Hazards
• Trend Data
• Quality of Life
• Crime
• Drug/alcohol use
• Cost of Living
• Educational Opportunities
• Economics
• Energy
• Fisheries Dependent Tax Revenue
• Fisheries Support Services
• E.g., Dry Docks, Grocery Stores, Net Repair
  Facilities, gear storage
• Future Building and Expansion Plans
• Seasonality of Fisheries
• Local Contact Information for All Organizations

• Data Sources
• Local Contacts in the Community
• CDQ Groups
• Indian General Assistance Program
• SWAMC
• Marine Conservation Alliance
• Processors
• Chamber of Commerce
• Boroughs
• State
• Department of Revenue
• Department of Community Development and Affairs
• Department of Fish and Game
• Department of Labor
• Alaska Taxable
• Federal
• EPA
• Army Corp of Engineers

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Importance of Community Meetings

• We know
• Profiles are widely used, but the information is
  old
• Information needs to be updated, more accurate
• End-user interviews gave insight into
• Extent of how profiles have been used
• What information is useful
• What format is easiest to work with
• Gives important voice to fishing communities
• Recognition that communities have access to
  different information that could be valuable
• Community meetings provided forum to discuss
• How to make profiles easier to use and contain
  more relevant information for end-users
• How communities can feel they are accurately
  portrayed
• How to increase awareness of the profiles and
  make them useable for a larger user base
• How to change the profiles so they accurately
  depict each community
• We received thanks from participants at every
  meeting thanking us for taking the time to hear
  their voice and come to their community

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Lessons learned

• Meeting planning must include
• Provide travel stipends
• Local contacts to drum up participation
• Strong invitation gives incentive to participate
• Should pretest invitation with local contacts
  before widespread distribution our invitation
  ended up being confusing
• More effective to not use NOAA template
• Meetings cannot be restrictive people will want
  to participate
• Difficult to focus on specific issues, some will
  use meetings as outlet to vent on management
  concerns
• Group dialogue key focus on center of the room
  rather than facilitators at the front
• Energy of meeting key to valuable input Need
  for creativity in meeting design to keep
  participants engaged
• NOAA doesnt engage fishing communities enough
• You can never make everyone happy need to have
  as many ways to give input as possible
• Listening is hard work

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Whats next?

• Conference Call on September 30th for further
  input
• General email available to accept additional
  comments
• Summary report of end user interviews and
  community meetings
• Will send out draft of profiles to each community
  for editing and further input
• Community data collection project
• Processor profiles development

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