Best Practices by Step
Some best practices are specific to certain steps of the Organon. Categories within each step include: engaging stakeholders and partners; promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and environmental justice (DEIJ); and developing sustainable solutions and social cohesion.
To review best practices by step, scroll down or click on any bubble to explore inclusive collaboration considerations for that step.
To view best the practices in summary form, paired with their corresponding step descriptions, see Explore the Steps.
1) Set Goal & Scope
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Engage local stakeholders from the beginning (at the appropriate level after stakeholder analysis) to define project goals and scope, using focused discussions with trusted representatives to ensure that diverse community insights shape the project's direction.
- Clearly communicate project goals and scope to stakeholders, aligning with their priorities where possible. Focus on empathy and understanding, ensuring stakeholders feel heard.
- Include underrepresented stakeholders in goal-setting, ensuring their needs shape project goals. Co-develop goals to maximize benefit and minimize risks for these groups.
- Ensure broad accessibility to goal setting activities by providing information in all relevant community languages.
- In goal-setting, highlight the connection between natural resources, social elements, and infrastructure. Develop goals embodying this relationship for all-encompassing planning.
- Associate project goals with existing state and municipal plans, leveraging local resources, knowledge, and strengths for informed and inclusive decision-making.
2) Assess Threats & Vulnerabilities
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Associate project goals with existing state and municipal plans, leveraging local resources, knowledge, and strengths for informed and inclusive decision-making.
- Create ways for stakeholders to give feedback on project findings about environmental risks, ensuring clear communication and a plan for sharing the final results.
- Clearly explain to different local groups how potential vulnerabilities may affect them specifically, focusing on those most reliant on threatened essentials like food and safety.
- Assess the impacts of hazards on natural resources, built environments, and community members at various severity levels. Connect this assessment to existing reports detailing local hazards.
- Proactively identify controversial topics in the community (e.g., climate change) and strategize how to navigate them. Consider consulting a small, knowledgeable group of community stakeholders before broader engagement.
3) Identify, Evaluate, & Prioritize Site(s)
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Engage stakeholders in site selection discussions, offering clarity and feedback opportunities on chosen or potential sites based on established criteria.
- Use results from stakeholder analyses to understand diverse group interactions with natural resources and ensure inclusive and representative site selection processes.
- Actively seek out and involve stakeholders vulnerable to natural resource changes in site selection discussions, communicating how their input will be used to shape decisions and how they will be kept informed.
- Assess the impact of potential sites on diverse community members, particularly with ongoing environmental changes, with an emphasis on local vulnerabilities, equity, and justice.
- Ensure site selection criteria reflect project impacts on natural, built, and social systems, promoting sustainable planning by understanding system interconnections.
- Engage with local leaders on how site changes affect the collective community, and match site selection criteria with community identity, aligning with existing community plans.
- Ensure all stakeholder groups are heard during site selection discussions, using a neutral facilitator for equitable conflict resolution and consensus.
4) Identify, Design, & Select Interventions
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Encourage community decision-making in choosing interventions to improve natural resource conditions and human co-benefits, informing on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of options.
- After selecting interventions, document and explain the rationale, how feedback was used, co-benefits, and risk mitigation to stakeholders. Ask for continuous feedback to improve interventions.
- Explain how different solutions will perform in the face of various hazards, focusing on their impact on different community members, especially those disproportionately affected.
- Specifically include underrepresented stakeholders in intervention selection and design, focusing on creating benefits and reducing risks for those most burdened by environmental challenges.
- Develop strategies that address environmental issues while boosting community capacity, building robust partnerships and using local resources.
- Organize educational outreach events like workshops and townhalls to discuss intervention benefits and gather community feedback, leveraging community leaders for effective communication and ownership.
5) Assemble Objectives, Targets, & Action Plan
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Partner with stakeholders to shape an inclusive action plan, ensuring its practicality and community support through regular feedback and reviews.
- Involve stakeholders in clearly defining objectives and steps, enhancing community preparedness and ensuring ongoing feedback and collaborative brainstorming.
- Involve stakeholders in clearly defining objectives and steps, enhancing community preparedness and ensuring ongoing feedback and collaborative brainstorming.
- Engage marginalized stakeholders in understanding their short- and long- term needs, aligning action plan objectives and timelines with these insights.
- Ensure underrepresented and disproportionately impacted stakeholders have opportunities to contribute feedback on the design and selection of targets and metrics in the action plan.
- Include metrics that combine natural resource health, community conditions, and community prioritized benefits from the natural resource.
- Create tactics that leverage local strengths and address community needs. Maximize local decision-making and capacity-building for sustained community involvement.
- Include strategies for community involvement in implementation and capacity-building for climate adaptation and decision-making, ensuring long-term engagement and skills development.
- Ensure the action plan details a maintenance process for project sustainability, identifying responsible parties and planning for a smooth transition of project management.
6) Implement Interventions & Monitoring
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Establish a systematic update and feedback process for implementation and monitoring, designating a project team member to maintain engagement and momentum with partners and stakeholders.
- Continuously collaborate with stakeholders and partners to adjust and improve the plan, responding to changing needs and circumstances.
- Establish and maintain open communication channels with vulnerable groups during implementation and monitoring, ensuring their ability to stay informed and relay any evolving concerns.
- Find opportunities for the community to support the monitoring process, increasing their sense of ownership in the project. Local skills and knowledge should be seen as a project resource.
- Work to seamlessly integrate the implementation process with existing local plans like General Plans and Emergency Plans to ensure cost-effective long-term monitoring and sustainability.
7) Document Progress & Evaluate Success
Engaging Stakeholders & Partners
Promoting DEIJ
Developing Sustainable Solutions & Social Cohesion
- Communicate progress towards goals based on measures of success in the action plan and develop a strategy for regularly communicating effectiveness, lessons learned, and best practices with stakeholders and partners.
- Formulate criteria to evaluate the success of stakeholder participation and periodically reconvene with stakeholders to review achievements against original goals, making necessary adjustments.
- When evaluating project success, address the full range of community perspectives, especially vulnerable groups, and develop strategies to share results and seek feedback from these stakeholders.
- Ensure evaluation results can inform subsequent community planning by documenting stakeholder collaboration best practices and challenges to serve as lessons learned for future endeavors.
- Implement a thorough handoff process as outlined in the project action plan, preparing government and community groups for a smooth transition of responsibilities and sustained project success.