Listening into the Gaps
Miscommunication threatens any effort to address environmental governance challenges. Paying attention to different perspectives through active listening can lay the groundwork for effective collaboration.
“Can you hear me?”
If any question captured two months of interviewing land rights practitioners in Sub-Saharan Africa, this was it. Every so often, our discussions would be interrupted as my interlocutors and I struggled to hear each other. At some point, it became too awkward to continue asking if the connection was clear. The last thing I wanted was to waste my interviewee’s time, or worse, make them feel like I wasn’t listening. So, I stopped asking for repetitions and tried to fill out the gaps by myself. And that’s where I went wrong.
Though incredibly frustrating, failing internet connections and awkward Microsoft Teams calls are not the cause of non-inclusive natural resource governance. But they are a useful parable for a pervasive problem in this sphere: miscommunication. Miscommunication is a significant obstacle to equitable environmental management given that it can lead to the exclusion of critical stakeholders’ perspectives. In many cases, however, it occurs despite the most amicable intentions and efforts at inclusivity.
The pitfalls of dialoguing
Several obstacles to inclusive natural resource management stem from incomplete or inappropriate communication. This can manifest, for example, when some stakeholders are not (properly) represented at the negotiating table or when knowledge and power imbalances give some discussants an unfair advantage over others.
Specifically, participants’ different capabilities or positions can leave some disadvantaged, despite having been invited to negotiate or help solve a problem. Take, for instance, negotiations between a mining company seeking a land concession, local-level government, and community representatives. It’s likely that the company, with the necessary technology for geological mapping, will have greater knowledge of the area’s mineral wealth. Local government officials, meanwhile, may lack this knowledge, leading them to propose a lease price below the land’s actual value. Finally, community representatives may not be familiar with the terminology and legal references used by other actors, which will de facto disadvantage them when it comes to making their own claims on the land. This is just one example where dialogue may appear inclusive on the surface but remain exclusive in substance.
Crucially, the danger of exclusionary communication does not only lurk for marginalized actors. When dialogue initiatives fail to accommodate powerful stakeholders, like government or multinationals, they may give smaller actors space to express themselves but will likely not obtain the desired change at the aspired scale.
Missed opportunities for inclusive communication are also often caused by assumptions. We assume we know the best solution to a problem—but what worked in one place, might fail in another ecosystem. We assume we know what communities need—but what an elder with traditionally-imbued authority needs, differs from the wishes of an aspirational youth. We assume that producing more general guidance notes will help land activists in the field—but they are already drowning in theory and would rather receive practical help suited to their context. And finally, from my own personal experience, we assume that we know what someone said, even though we did not hear them.
It’s tempting to tell others’ stories rather than try and fully grasp how a challenge is understood and experienced by a particular party. But such miscommunication threatens effective collaboration by replicating the age-old problem of top-down development instead of fostering truly inclusive bottom-up approaches.
The listening phase, and why it matters
This is where it becomes important to listen. Collaborating for Resilience’s (CoRe) three-phased approach for effective and inclusive collaboration around a shared problem recognizes this necessity. The approach’s first phase is called “listening” and constitutes an active attempt on behalf of all parties to hear what the other has to say. Such active listening requires that, no matter our good intentions, we listen to the person across from us instead of trying to fill out the gaps ourselves. The absence of judgment is a critical characteristic of this phase. It allows all stakeholders to speak freely while listeners pay attention to what is said rather than what to rebuke. If done correctly, all parties will come to better understand the possibilities and realities for conflict mitigation. Whether this occurs in a single workshop or national multi-stakeholder platform, all parties need to have the chance to speak their minds. This may require additional support to actors who lack the means and/or capacities to participate on an equal basis.
CoRe’s three-phased approach to conflict management and collaborative action
The goal is to create space for multiple perspectives to be heard, so that complex problems can be addressed with multipronged, knowledge-driven action plans. This does not mean that stakeholders must necessarily reach agreement. Listening only works, however, when actors who wouldn’t otherwise work together are at least willing to meet and consider collaborative solutions.
In turn, this helps meet the second requirement for successful collaboration: stakeholders need to speak the same language – that of a common purpose. Yet, we also need to recognize our different dialects and accents, manifested as the different routes we take towards this purpose and the variations in how it’s described. Again, this is where active listening is paramount for mutual understanding.
Speaking the same language does not imply that all stakeholders need to see eye to eye on everything. Rather, what’s needed is commitment to a shared purpose and a durable motivation to collaborate towards reaching it (which may require a willingness to compromise). With this in place, the next phases of CoRe’s approach—“dialogue” and “action”—can ensue. This is where plans are developed and executed that, thanks to the listening phase, are attuned to the conflict at hand and the needs of divergent stakeholders.
CoRe, together with the Foundation for Ecological Security, has been sharing this approach with NGOs across rural India working on the Promise of the Commons—a large-scale initiative that seeks to create sustainable livelihoods for 38 million people. Following the three-phased approach, the first training familiarizes practitioners with active listening tools. For instance, an exercise called stakeholder mapping requires participants to carefully explore who has influence on a particular problem, including those who may support or oppose a resolution. Crucially, practitioners are encouraged to follow up their initial mapping with interviews to hear from additional stakeholders identified. This allows for correcting any misguided assumptions and enriching their vision for improved ecological management with that of other stakeholders—resulting in an understanding that is more grounded and more likely to yield inclusive development.
Beyond dialogue
The above-listed requirements for avoiding miscommunication are not just boxes that need to be ticked by a facilitator or organizing party. They are principles that need to be embraced by external parties and by the stakeholders engaged in a search for collaborative solutions. Each of them requires full transparency and clarity of speech, an active effort to understand the voice speaking to us, and continuous reflection on who is involved in the conversation and who is left out. We must seek to understand not only what’s said but also the different contexts and backgrounds from which each stakeholder emerges.
At CoRe, we’ve found that active listening creates possibilities for collaborative solutions to resource management problems, thus making meaningful progress towards inclusive environmental governance. But we’ve also found that the listening, dialogue and choice approach is an ongoing process that requires constant recalibration. This is achieved through sustained communication, which strengthens trust between multiple actors despite their different visions and divergent priorities. Consequently, a cycle of positive reinforcement is created: the more we trust, the more we dare to share, and the more we tend to listen.