Ingredients for Success Tool
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A community's shared understanding of a problem and how to address it is essential for effective action, including a common recognition of the issue and its causes, a shared vision of possible solutions, a collective sense of ownership over decisions, and a united commitment to follow through. While outside ideas can inspire action, it is ultimately the community's collective experience, decision-making, manpower, and financial resources that drive meaningful progress.
Recognize It
The checklist below will help you to recognize what facets of shared community awareness and commitment you already have, so that you can amplify what exists, and either build or work around what does not exist.
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Do you have a formal or informal body for addressing your crisis that involves stakeholders from various parts of the community?
Having community members with a range of skills and experience at the decision making table takes advantage of the whole community's knowledge. It also broadens support for actions that require substantial commitment and sacrifice, and provides the financial and labor resources to carry out the actions.
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Do your decision makers have a process for choosing actions that all can agree upon and participate in carrying it out?
A real sense of collective ownership of decisions is needed for the risks involved in taking action, and the commitment of time, labor or financial resources needed to carry it out. A strong decision making body provides ways for all members to contribute, commits to finding common ground, and supports those members taking the greatest risks to their livelihood, so that they can participate.
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Do your decision makers have a shared understanding of what the problem is and how it occurred?
Choosing a course of action requires a shared vision of the nature and source of the crisis, so that actions are directed at core problems. Gathering the knowledge, memories, and experience of the community allows decision makers to map the events that triggered the vicious cycle of decline.
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Has your group determined key actions that, if successfully carried out, may be powerful enough to reverse the cycle of decline?
Many changes are possible, but not all are powerful enough to set change in motion. By mapping which elements of your vicious cycle are changeable, and brainstorming what can be done to change that element, it becomes easier to see which actions are both doable and potentially impactful enough. An action without enough force may slow the decline for a while, but it won't reverse it.
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Is the community committed to the action?
Although ideas stimulating action may come from outside, the community needs to move forward with its own decisions, manpower, and financial resources.
Amplify It
If you have elements of shared community awareness and commitment in place, nurture and amplify them; they are central to success.
Increase the diversity of your stakeholders
Having stakeholders from various parts of the community increases the chances of success. It brings a breadth of knowledge, memory, and experience to the table. It also broadens support for decisions that require substantial commitment and sacrifice, and provides the financial and labor resources to carry them out.
Arrive at decisions based on consensus
Disagreement is normal in community decision-making. Procedures that help find common ground without loss of integrity matter here, as do avenues for those with dissenting opinions to support agreements for shared action. Consensus doesn't require unanimity; it requires that no one is left with objections serious enough to undermine follow-through.
Map your vicious cycle of decline together
Turning around ecological decline requires a lever with enough force. Doing the mapping process as a group (using the ETP systems thinking process) helps the community arrive at a shared understanding of what triggered the crisis, what elements are changeable, and which actions may be forceful enough to reverse the cycle. A shared map is harder to walk away from than an analysis handed down from outside.
Have all decision makers contribute manpower, financial support, or other resources
Direct participation in carrying out decisions strengthens engagement while providing the funds and labor needed to succeed. This requires planning inclusive strategies for contribution so that everyone has a functional role. Some community members will face greater sacrifice than others; developing ways to support those taking the greatest risks makes it possible for them to follow through.
Build in flexibility
A course of action will need modification as results come in, as resource requirements become clearer, or as new obstacles emerge. Agreed-upon benchmarks and procedures for reevaluating and modifying shared decisions build flexibility into action plans. This matters most when field conditions don't match what was expected.
Build It
Shared community awareness and commitment is essential for turning around ecological decline. If you don't yet have it, these strategies help build the elements most likely to matter.
Interview community members who have specialized knowledge about the crisis
There are community members whose experience is essential to understanding the problem: scientists, educators, elders, those working the land, those managing household resources. Reaching out to pool that experience creates a foundation for mapping problems and solutions. It also creates a base of people now involved who may have the commitment to join a decision-making effort.
Assemble a group to map your vicious cycle of decline
The ETP systems thinking process uses knowledge pooled from the community to identify what triggered decline, what elements in the vicious cycle are changeable, and which may be forceful enough levers to reverse it. Doing this as a group produces shared understanding of the problem and potential solutions, which is harder to generate any other way.
Start with whoever is already committed, however few
In most communities, some people are more frustrated with the status quo or more willing to act than others. Starting there, supporting early efforts and building visible results, creates the proof of concept that draws others in. Visible progress comes first; broad commitment follows.
Use early wins to build shared ownership
When initial actions produce visible results, make sure the community sees them together. Shared witness of improvement (a reef visibly recovering, a field producing more, water returning to a dry channel) builds a collective narrative of "we did this" that is far more motivating than any explanation. Plan for early results that skeptics can see and verify.
Work Around It
Shared community awareness and commitment is essential for reversing ecological decline and hard to work around when absent. When full community commitment isn't achievable, these strategies help move forward without it.
Focus on the action forceful enough to turn things around
When broad consensus isn't possible, concentrate collaboration on the single action most likely to reverse the vicious cycle rather than trying to build agreement across the full scope of the problem. A smaller coalition committed to a high-leverage intervention can produce visible results that eventually bring skeptics along.
Set differences aside around shared material interest
Ideology, values, and even reasons for wanting change are common obstacles to collaboration. When those differences block progress, refocus the group on the material conditions everyone shares: the fishery that feeds all families, the water supply that all households depend on, the soil that all farms require. Shared stakes in a concrete resource often create more durable cooperation than shared values.
Work with willing community members and document results
If some community members won't participate, start with those who will. Careful documentation of what the smaller group achieves (before and after evidence of recovery, economic data, testimony from participants) builds the case that draws in those who were initially unwilling. Results are a more persuasive argument than any framing.
Acknowledge the limits honestly
If commitment is thin, avoid overpromising what the effort will achieve. Communities that understand why commitment matters, and what its absence means for the odds of success, can make better decisions about whether and how to proceed. Honest framing of what's needed and what's at stake is itself a form of respect for community judgment.
Learn More
Learn about Positive Tipping Points and how shared community awareness and commitment enables communities to reverse vicious cycles and make things better.