Local Government Guide to Coastal Resilience: Risk Communication

County elected officials are “jack of all trades”

They must be knowledgeable about many things. While some may be experts in planning or emergency management, others may have no detailed knowledge about those topic areas. It falls to local professional staff to be the experts and ensure local elected officials have access to the information they need to make informed decisions.

Elected officials must balance varying and often conflicting priorities

These include but are not limited to: budget constraints, public demands, politics and re-election bids. When speaking with elected officials, always remember that your priorities are just a few of many and try to frame your message to highlight its alignment with other priority areas.

All local elected officials have a common duty and goal to serve the best interests of the community and their constituents

This includes making decisions to protect local residents, property and natural and cultural resources. Across the country, counties currently spend more than $122 billion of building public infrastructure and maintaining and operating public works. That’s a huge investment. And it is in a county commissioner’s best interest to make decisions that can help protect that investment over the long run.

Be prepared to address common questions and statements of resistance

After your present your initial message, you may run into resistance. Common reactions to mitigation requests include: “We don’t have enough time,” “We don’t have enough money,” “This may never happen,” and “Others will fix this if it does happen.” You must be prepared to answer these questions by:

• Showing the budget impacts. Demonstrate the budget impacts of being prepared versus being unprepared.
• Sharing real stories from real people. Demonstrate why they should care and show the need by sharing human-centric stories that “hit them in the gut” rather than scientific data that “hits them in the brain.” If asked, however, make sure you have the data available to pair with your story.

Empower storytellers

You want not only to tell your story but also help your elected official be a storyteller too.

Examine the local context

As during the message development process, the first thing you want to do when tailoring your message for the public is to examine the local context and local perceptions already in place in your area and identify each stakeholder group’s individual priorities. This typically occurs through research, informational interviews and focus groups.

Hold focus groups

 As part of this effort, you want to discover each group’s core community values, what language causes red flags within each group and what messages are well received by each group. How do the people that you’re trying to reach see the world? What is important to them? What is the local understanding of natural hazards? Messages should factor in important aspects of people’s lives, including health, natural resources, safety, where people live, people’s livelihoods and social vulnerability

Emphasize positively-received language and avoid negatively-received language

Once you understand these things, you will be able to better tailor your message to introduce the topic at hand – whether that is building support for a resilience project or increasing awareness of coastal hazards – to each audience by emphasizing and leveraging positively-received language and avoiding negatively-received language that is potentially polarizing.

Equity and inclusion

It is important to engage every stakeholder group in your community in an equitable and inclusive way.

Empower storytellers

As with your elected officials, you want to make sure all stakeholders within the community have a basic understanding and awareness of the topic at hand while empowering them to become storytellers.

Local Elected Officials

Communicating risk is about building relationships – but as local professional staff no relationship is more important than the relationship you build with your local elected official as they are the biggest local decision maker. This dialogue should not be a one-time thing but rather a regular occurrence – with each conversation building on the last. You want to meet with your regular officials and their staff regularly. One way to do this is to hold regular briefings or executive seminars with your local elected officials. In a recent survey of local elected officials, they identified their most preferred methods of contact as email and in-person conversations.

Local Government Departments and Agencies

Within local government, there are a number of departments and agencies with missions related to resilience. As you begin to communicate your message, you want to make sure your colleagues sign on to the core messages and use the same tone and responses to FAQs in their communications. One way to do this is to hold a training program for county employees on the relation of resilience to their departments.

The Public

Engaging the public is a multipronged effort. You want to: make sure that they have a basic understanding and awareness of resilience; build confidence in the government’s ability to improve resilience by being transparent in communications and decision making; and, finally, empower residents to be change makers who effect change by spreading the core message to their fellow residents and decision makers.

Engage as many trusted stakeholders as you can to share your message

The more trusted stakeholders and sources you have sharing your message the better. This goes for both the organizations spreading the message to the public at large as well as residents. People reach conclusions based on what they know and hear, and compare messages to verify their consistency. Groups you might engage to help spread the message include: faith-based organizations, community and social networks, your Chamber of commerce and neighboring communities who have already done this work and can speak to its outcomes.

Make sure you are reaching out in an equitable and inclusive way

It is especially important to engage youth, elders, socially vulnerable, activists and artists. Artists can help you communicate your core message in unique ways and build a space for genuine conversation that allows you to connect with your audience on an emotional level that you might not be able to achieve in another setting.

Have an aggressive public outreach campaign using a variety of methods

Outreach efforts should not rely on one medium to get information to all of those involved in resiliency efforts and should cater to as many learning styles as possible. Additionally, outreach strategies should try whenever possible to extend beyond simply giving people information, but should engage them in the adaptation, mitigation, and resiliency plans as much as possible. Remember that outreach programs should be consistently monitored, evaluated and revised for effectiveness.