Of Fish Sticks and Landscapes: Why Sustainable Planning Needs Shared Understandings
“When at school my 4-year-old daughter was asked to draw a fish, she drew a fish stick. It was her favorite dish and to her that was a fish!”
This example clearly demonstrates why mental models and perceptions matter. Mental constructs and their underlying factors have important implications for the effective design of participatory processes in landscape management.
People from starkly contrasting topographies would likely differ in their definition of a mountain, a river, or other natural features. And I am pretty sure that, if we were asked to draw a fish, each of us would draw it distinctly, emphasizing some aspects and leaving out others, as did the girl who drew a fish stick. This variability exists across all societal sectors, including politics and academics.
Differing definitions of a tree, a forest, or other features can generate disagreements with real implications for policies and planning processes, as has been shown in several studies.
These various interpretations of the landscape, or of technical concepts related to it, reflect the individual attitudes and values people assign to a particular concept or landscape. They represent different mental constructs, i.e. the comprehension of specific concepts or ideas. These constructs are influenced by individual perceptions, knowledge, former experiences and value systems.
Participatory approaches and landscape management: Does it always work?
In the context of social-ecological perspectives on sustainable landspace planning and management, participatory approaches are gaining momentum: They allow the development of broader, more inclusive management decisions that integrate different perspectives, values and priorities of the people living in an area, and aim to ultimately increase the legitimacy, public engagement and general acceptance of planning processes.
Despite these benefits, concerns are raised with regards to the real effectiveness of participatory processes in achieving conservation objectives and policies. Participatory processes can easily lead to ineffective results that counteract the original principles of inclusiveness and social justice — for example when it comes to asymmetric power relations, marginalizations of minority actors, the manipulation or misinterpretation of opinions, or the rupture of trust among local actors.
Thus, adequate and fair conditions for the design and implementation of participatory processes are key to the sustainable management of natural resources.
Particularly in consultation processes (such as surveys), participants are often asked to share their view of specific concepts, e.g. ‘biodiversity’,‘protected natural area’, ‘river basin’, ‘ecosystems’ or ‘wilderness’. In the end, however, researchers can not always be sure that the terms used are understood in the same way by all actors involved. It is often a priori assumed that highly technical or administrative concepts related to the landscape are clear to all participants.
Assessing and understanding stakeholders’ mental constructs of landscapes across a river basin
If you were asked to draw a river basin, a protected area, or even something like ‘biodiversity’ or ‘wilderness’ — how would you do it?
In our recent study, we empirically explored the potential biases of participatory processes in two Mediterranean river basin areas in northeastern Catalonia (Spain): the Muga and Fluvià River basin areas. The Mediterranean Basin is the result of a sociocultural process of co-evolution between ecosystems and human activity, which makes it an area of extreme ecological and sociocultural diversity. The river basin served as a potentially contested concept.
ú (Aglaya72/wikimedia).Our overarching aim was to gain a better understanding of stakeholders’ spatial and sociocultural mental constructs of landscape, and of the related technical-administrative concepts.
We used a qualitative approach, combining hand-made drawings and oral descriptions generated through semi-structured interviews with 51 stakeholders from both river basins. According to their profession and their direct or indirect relationship with river ecosystems, they could be divided into five groups: administrative sector, agricultural sector, environmental protection sector, industrial sector and tourism sector.
In the first part of the interview, we provided stakeholders with a printed map of the study area, and we prompted them to draw with a marker the borders of the river basin area by asking, “How would you draw the Muga/Fluvià River basin?”.
As explained in other studies, the action of drawing constitutes a moment where the interviewees can
“individually reflect on their own mental construct and represent it through a non-verbal approach that allows them to express themselves, regardless of their knowledge of the scientific term”(Fischer & Young, 2007).
Subsequently, we asked the stakeholders to describe in their own words the river basin area in 60 s with the question, “How would you describe the river basin?”.
The results revealed three key aspects:
1. The mental construct of the river basin concept is not the same for everyone.
In relation to what was included in a river basin, two diverging understandings of the concept became apparent:
- The majority of respondents generated drawings that included the landscape, thus not only referred to elements related to water but also to geographical aspects and associated values, such as beauty, social structure, gastronomic and intangible aspects of the territory.
- Some respondents, however, differed from this perspective by drawing river basins that included only the territory directly adjacent to the river. This result indicates a mental construct of a river basin spatially represented only by the aquatic element of the river from its origin to the river mouth, excluding any other aspects:
“I do not know exactly what you mean, but come on, the river basin, it is a short river!”
2. Understandings of a concept differ in form and content.
Beyond this, we found additional differences in the descriptions of the river basin concept among stakeholders. There were some shared aspects (mainly geographical), but some also included social and/or economic issues.
Apparently, each person has a different way of understanding — and thus of drawing and describing — concepts such as a river basin. Each way includes aspects of form (as we see in the drawings) and content (as we see in the descriptions).
3. Emotions and prior experiences influence stakeholders’ mental constructs of the river basin concept.
The drawings and descriptions were significantly linked to the emotions interviewees expressed. Some stakeholders showed positive emotions in describing the river basin area, highlighting a sentimental and emotional relationship with it.
These descriptions were related to long river basin drawings with a territorial perspective, almost as if there was a need to express positive emotional relation in a graphic way, causing the drawings to be longer. Descriptions with negative emotions, however, corresponded to short drawings with a river perspective. Thus, a connection between emotions and the drawing type was clear, resulting in different spatial interpretations of the river basin.
Who does not have a sentimental relationship with the landscape, after all?
Moreover, the respondents’ mental constructs were related to their direct relationship with the river basin and to their prior experiences with it. Research has already shown that people with a good knowledge of the territory and those with a direct relation to landscape management (e.g., farmers), were able to perceive more aspects of the area and more types of ecosystem services (Castro et al., 2016; Iniesta-Arandia et al., 2014). We also observed this result with regards to the richest and most varied descriptions of the river basin. Specifically, we found that the stakeholder group an interviewee belonged to could influence how he or she perceived and understood the landscape — and, in our case, how he or she represented it spatially.
Mental models are key to participatory processes and landscape management
From the first line of this post it was clear that each of us perceives the landscape or the elements related to it in a different way (the fish stick drawing, that it is a real story!), but the results of our study reflect the actual distance between real-world contexts and scientific and technical knowledge.
For the benefit of the landscape and the maintenance of ecosystem functions, stakeholders should have common understandings of concepts such as river basins or biodiversity.
The key findings described above should be carefully considered in the design of participatory processes, taking into consideration priorities, contrasting interests, values, preferences and needs, as they allow decision-makers to balance the power between multiple actors and to ensure greater fairness and representativeness — thus to achieve landscape management based on a shared vision.
We advocate for participation models that are co-constructed and co-designed with the same participants, based on an inclusive, transdisciplinary, horizontal, community-based and interactive approach.
Observed differences in mental models should not only be considered but also re-integrated into the participation process. Incorporating the various potential meanings of the river basin allows for redefining the concept and thus for co-constructing shared mental models.
In the context of current global changes and environmental challenges, the inclusion of these aspects in decision-making processes is crucial for adaptive planning models of natural resources.
If we want participatory processes to be truly effective, we need to base them on shared and agreed-upon background knowledge — on common understandings of the landscape.
Otherwise we will be applying conservation policies only for fish sticks!
Full study: Garau, E., Torralba, M., Pueyo-ros, J., 2021. What is a river basin ? Assessing and understanding the sociocultural mental constructs of landscapes from different stakeholders across a river basin. Landsc. Urban Plan. 214, 104192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104192
References
Castro, A. J., Vaughn, C. C., Julian, J. P., & García-Llorente, M. (2016). Social demand for ecosystem services and implications for watershed management. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 52(1), 209–221. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1752–1688.12379
Fischer, A., & Young, J. C. (2007). Understanding mental constructs of biodiversity: Implications for biodiversity management and conservation. Biological Conservation, 136(2), 271–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2006.11.024 .
Iniesta-Arandia, I., García-Llorente, M., Aguilera, P. A., Montes, C., & Martín-Lopez, B. (2014). Socio-cultural valuation of ecosystem services: Uncovering the links between values, drivers of change, and human well-being. Ecological Economics, 108, 36–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.09.028
