Community Engagement

• What does community engagement mean?

• Why engage communities?• Why engage diverse communities?• Why engage underserved communities?

Community involvement

Expand how we define community

Partner with the community

Define what is important to the community (and accept that)

• What does community engagement mean?

• Why engage communities?• Why engage diverse communities?• Why engage underserved communities?

“Congress recognizes…that each person has a responsibility to contribute to the preservation and enhancement of the environment.” - NEPA, 1969

“ The most significant threats to our environment now seem to lie not with major industrial sites, but in the habits of ordinary Americans: we like to drive big powerful cars, use a lot of electricity, generate a lot of waste, enjoy cheap food, live in grassy suburbs, and collectively send pollution in massive amounts to often distant waterways and airsheds.”- Former EPA Administrator William Ruchelshaus, 1996

Babcock, 2009

Schwartz, 1968Van Liere and Dunlap, 1978

Behavior=Ascription of Responsibility x Awareness of Consequences

B = AR x AC

• What does community engagement mean?• Why engage communities?• Why engage diverse communities?• Why engage underserved communities?

What if you...

• didn’t know if you would have electricity when you got home?

• weren’t sure if there would be food on the table?

• couldn’t read or write?

• were worried that your family would be evicted today?

• didn’t know if your drug-addict mom would be home tonight?

Would you give a rip about the environment?

Relevance

Integrating ecology with human demography, behavior, and socioeconomics: Needs and approaches

Ecological Modeling, May 2001.

Jianguo Liu *Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, 13 Natural Resources Building, Michigan State Uniersity, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

Levi van Veluw

“I see a world in the future in which we understand that all life is related to us and we treat that life with great humility and respect. I see us as well as social creatures, and when I began to look back and say, ‘what is the fundamental bottom line for us as social creatures?’…I couldn’t believe it because it seemed so hippy dippy, but it was Love. Love is the force that makes us fully human.” - David Suzuki.

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

Henry David Thoreau