In my Portland neighborhood, the bikeways have sunken planters that poke out into the street, slowing down cars and providing lots to look at as we ride along at the pace of our 10 year old daughter. I wouldn’t have known these roadside gardens had a purpose other than calming traffic and adding beauty if I didn’t work in water. The goal of green stormwater infrastructure isn’t always obvious to the casual observer. That’s where communication comes in!
After a decade in this sector, I know there’s a whole technical language needed to plan, permit and fund nature-based solutions, whether we’re talking about meadows or medians. But those wonky words aren’t the best way to engage elected officials, journalists, or neighbors. When we’re talking with people outside the water world, simple words that paint a picture work best.
From Technical to Tangible
The Water Hub hosted a roundtable discussion to highlight some examples of great nature-based solutions communication, from signs and brochures to quotes in news stories. We also shared insights from polling, image tests, and focus groups, and included time to workshop messaging around nutrient pollution, forests, and filtration ponds.
You can watch the recording below or check out the slides here.
Nature-Based Solutions Messaging Recommendations
Here are some of our key recommendations:
- Start with the why: Connect around a common concern (like clean drinking water or livable neighborhoods) or a current challenge, and then explain how your project or policy will help.
- Benefits over beauty: Emphasize the way nature-based solutions improve our lives, livelihoods, and places we care about (focus on benefits like shade, safer sidewalks, or clean water for swimming and salmon.)
- Paint a picture: Use simple, descriptive words: streams that “color outside the lines,” for example, or “plants that like having wet feet”
- Put people in your photos: Consider showing workers installing the projects or residents enjoying them.
Our basic formula for building a message is Values + Problem + Solution (read more here from The Opportunity Agenda.) Here’s how we’d apply that to nature-based solutions:
- Values: Home and family, health and safety, care for the natural world
- Problems: Flooded basements, straightjacketed rivers with no space to spread during storms
- Solutions: Public gardens that soak up rain and runoff, room for rivers to swell during snowmelt and rainstorms
Finally, here are some resources where you can dig deeper, along with a great graphic to inspire you:
- Nature-based solutions message guide
- Wonky words and simpler swaps list (please feel free to add to this!)
- The Water Hub’s 2023 voter poll and 2024 polling roundup
- Visualizing Sustainable Cities by Resource Media
- Green Infrastructure photo library by Resource Media and Washington Environmental Council
- Green filter or gray funnel graphic from Chesapeake Bay Foundation
If you’d like to workshop a nature-based solutions messaging challenge, please drop us a line at [email protected].
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Photo credit: Marcela Gara, Resource Media