Information is critical to the success of watershed stewardship. It helps the participants understand the specific characteristics of their part of the watershed and its place within the whole basin. Depending on your circumstances, you may have little or much time for your participants to gather information. You may wish to spend some time gathering information as part of an individual or class project. You may wish to gather some of the information yourself and present it in a 15-30 minute presentation just prior to going out on your field trip. Even locating the monitoring site on a highway map and discussing the land use around it will give the participants a background upon which to paint their field trip experiences.
c. Consensus Decision-Making
Working with others in the community is an important aspect of developing watershed stewardship. There are many stakeholders in the community all with their own ideas and feelings about water management. Encourage your group to act using consensus decision-making.
Advantages include
treating all members of the group equally
getting away from "winners" and "losers"
increasing collective understanding
motivating people to look for new ideas in order to reach consensus
Steps taken in consensus decision-making:
1. The leader presents the issue at hand (e.g. how to get ready for the field trip, safety issues,responsibility for data collection, etc.).
2. Encourage everyone to voice his or her opinions and get involved in an open discussion.
3. Make possible consensus decisions, testing for agreement.
4. If there is no agreement, then have a round in which everyone can express feelings on the decision without being interrupted.
5. Repeat 3.
6. Repeat 4 until everyone agrees or at least can live with it.
The application of consensus decision-making can be used for organizing the field trip (responsibilities of participants), collecting information on your part of the watershed, arriving at conclusions about monitoring site health, filling in the Monitoring Site Report Card, or deciding on further stewardship actions after the field trip. This is an important skill to develop in environmental leaders.
