Socially responsible restoration initiatives must consider the role of ocean users and local communities in deciding if, when, where, and how to conduct kelp forest restoration ¹. Coastal communities are deeply dependent on the health of coastal marine environments for ecosystem services such as food security, economic benefits, cultural practices and more. Ocean users within these communities are often the first to detect changes and declines in the health of an ecosystem. Further, they are the most affected by changes in the local marine environment and can be critical to the successful restoration of degraded ecosystems and the maintenance of healthy ones.

Co-developing projects and exchanging knowledge about ecosystem conditions and changes over time with the community can help determine if, and where, you need to conduct restoration, what your short- and long-term methods and targets for restoration are, and if you effectively succeed in restoration. While working with communities and making these considerations is conceptually straightforward, it requires considerable time and resources. You must therefore make this investment right from the outset to maximize meaningful engagement and collaboration throughout the initiative.

3.1 Why: The importance of engaging with communities and partners

Every community is unique, dynamic, and diverse in customs, practices, and values. Developing an understanding of the affected communities, their motivations, and context for decision-making is therefore a critical early step for you to take. Indigenous rights holders, coastal residents, ocean users, and other interest groups are some key examples of the communities of people and partners potentially involved in the process to conduct restoration.

Community members often possess diverse place- and expertise-based traditional, local, and scientific knowledge about the socio-ecological context of local kelp forests that external experts may be unfamiliar with. At the same time, external experts can bring knowledge and capacity from broader experiences that can augment community-based knowledge. Collaboration between communities and other partners interested in restoration presents opportunities to respectfully weave together multiple ways of knowing while broadening perspectives to build a more holistic understanding of the restoration context (Northern California: Bull kelp & Haida Gwaii: Gwaii Haanas).

Engagement and participation approaches that create space for active listening and meaningful dialogue can provide reciprocal benefits for communities and restoration initiatives. For example, by actively engaging with community members, you may be able to identify community capacity that can be factored into implementation plans, including the use of existing capacity and the building of future capacity as part of an initiative. Learning, sharing, and actively working on restoration can also enhance the sense of community surrounding coastal stewardship, which can in turn improve overall community well-being and contribute to better restoration outcomes from an ecological standpoint ².

Academic, government, and/or non-government organizations, working internally or externally with communities and partners, can provide a wide range of scientific, regulatory, logistical, and management expertise to restoration initiatives, along with additional funding. These skill sets, insights, and funding can help shape and provide resources to meet the needs of the community. In some cases, however, it may be more appropriate for the community to guide the decision-making process and/or lead implementation of restoration work. The collaboration between communities and specific experts can facilitate important capacity-building and knowledge-sharing with benefits that ripple through other initiatives and places to inform and improve future restoration efforts.

Building a collective understanding of the local socio-ecological context can help you articulate the rationale and motivation for each initiative and guide co-development of goals and objectives (Chapter 4.1) as well as future communications, outreach, and education efforts. Foundational questions such as the following can help ensure that community values and perspectives are reflected in the co-development process:

• Why are kelp forests important to you?

• What kelp forest changes have you noticed here over the years and decades?

• What do you think is causing these changes?

• How have these changes affected you?

• Do you think kelp restoration is needed? Why or why not?

• What would you want to see from restoration initiatives?

• What questions would you want answered?

• What issues would you want addressed?

• How do you see yourself and others in your community engaged in restoration initiatives?

• What benefits, opportunities, and challenges do you think restoration initiatives will bring to you and others in your community?

As communities become involved in the conversations and actions around restoration, they can develop new and closer relationships with the places where they live. Restoration initiatives present novel opportunities to collaboratively address broad- and fine-scale social-ecological issues specific to each place and can advance the resolution and impact of restoration work regionally and globally. Further, collaboration among a broad range of rights and interest holders can address implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), heighten transparency and accountability, incorporate diverse perspectives, and formally recognize the many voices that contribute to any initiative ^{3 4}.

Regardless of who is leading or co-leading the initiative, taking the time and energy to understand the many perspectives involved allows you to consider, discuss, and assess multiple, diverse restoration approaches that can address interconnected ecological and social-cultural objectives. Restoration that explicitly recognizes the importance of multiple pathways to knowing and doing makes space for ongoing learning and capacity-building among coastal communities and partners (Fig. 3.1). Diverse collaborations can therefore lead to synergistic effects that contribute to success and longer-term resilience of restoration initiatives through local stewardship that benefits people and place beyond the life of any individual initiative ^{5 6}.

Figure 3.1 Different ways of knowing and different ways of knowledge-sharing

3.2 Who: Identifying key communities, decision-makers, and partners

Based on the unique context of each restoration initiative, a broader or narrower range of communities and interest groups will need to be engaged in co-development and decision making. In decision-making contexts, collaborative work must be particularly cognizant of fundamental differences between rightsholders such as Indigenous Peoples, interest holders such as conservation groups, and stakeholders such as industry associations. In some cases, co-management arrangements with, and/or approvals by, Indigenous rights and title holders will be necessary to recognize their governance authorities over stewardship of traditional territories (Haida Gwaii: Gwaii Haanas). These arrangements can help ensure respectful inclusion in decision-making and facilitate appropriate ownership and access to information related to the initiative.

Decision-making processes will therefore need to be adaptable to the specific context of each place. For example, using a semi-formal or formal structured decision-making approach can improve transparency and ensure that decisions and actions are more likely to meet specified restoration objectives ⁷. Although no single approach will be applicable across all initiatives, the foundations must build on any existing rights and titleholder laws, customs, and practices. All partners in the restoration initiative must have a genuine desire to work together and agree at the outset on a process for how decision-making will take place.

It is important for you to understand both the decision-making context and the various interests in relation to local kelp condition and trends, what/who is prompting action, and what/who is impacted. This understanding will help identify the range of values and concerns, and therefore the objectives, that stake holders may have in restoration. Some exploratory questions to help identify communities and partners in co-developing restoration initiatives are ⁸:

What is/are the issues, and how do different communities and interests see the issue(s)?

Who and what are the rights, interests, and stakeholders related to the issue(s)?

What are the concerns and values that need to be considered?

Who defines the issues and values, and is there adequate representation by those who will influence and be impacted?

Who has the authority to make what decisions, and how are additional interests incorporated into the decision-making process?

How can an interdisciplinary approach (governance, ecology, culture, society, traditional knowledge, local knowledge, scientific knowledge, etc.) enrich the initiative from individual or collective perspectives?

What data, information, and knowledge systems are available to scope the issue, and who has access to this information?

What approvals and/or permits are required for planning and implementation, and from which communities and organizations?

Taking the time to understand who is concerned with kelp forest loss, who is being impacted, and who can influence the outcome will help determine who needs to be involved. Further discussions can then assist in collectively defining what capacity and/or role different parts of the communities and partners will play in restoration, and how they will be engaged. Involvement could be as project leads, co-leads, experts, active participants, funders, background supporters, and more.

Awareness and consent from all participants in their level of collaboration and how their information will be used (e.g., publications, policy/regulatory change, outreach), will be key to building strong relationships and trust. Importantly, developing a human connection by taking the time to get to know one another and genuinely understand each other’s perspectives is a critical and worthwhile element that will foster unique and long-lasting relationships.

3.3 How: Methods for engaging with diverse communities and partners

Providing opportunities for learning and sharing knowledge and perspectives about restoration in the coastal communities where restoration takes place is a highly effective method to engage with diverse communities and partners. In the initial stages, different avenues and platforms for engagement can help reach a broad range of people and interests. Public forums, small group ‘coffee table’ meetings, and one-on-one conversations are all potential ways to initiate open-ended dialogue around foundational questions such as those in chapter 3.1. Each community engagement approach will have various pros and cons. For example, well-advertised public forums allow open dialogue across diverse perspectives that can establish collective reasons to address kelp restoration and provide transparency. However, the ‘loudest voices’ can sometimes overwhelm public forums; therefore, one-on-one conversations or small group meetings provide alternative venues for all voices to be heard. Everyday conversations where knowledge is informally shared can be some of the most rewarding avenues to lay groundwork for restoration by drawing from personal experiences and interests.

As you document knowledge and data from different ocean user and interest groups in informal, semi-structured, or structured ways, it is important to always follow appropriate research protocols (e.g., community-based research permits, human research ethics permits, university mandated paperwork). Regardless of the means of collecting data, it is important to acknowledge and respect your knowledge sources when disseminating, sharing, interpreting, or publishing the information in order to ensure respectful communications and honour the value of the information shared. In many instances, it will be essential to provide partners with opportunities to review communications materials and activities, including publications, before you distribute or implement them.

Using multiple avenues of communication in outreach and education will encourage more equitable engagement and participation. (Table 3.1) While scientific publications add to global restoration literature, a greater diversity of communications approaches is necessary to incorporate other ways of understanding the world, as well as to reach different target audiences. Avenues include websites, speaker series, videos, short films, newspaper articles, social media, media campaigns, and interactive cultural and scientific activities (e.g., art meets science, interpretative field outings, workshops, school programs). For community-based restoration projects in particular, including local experts and leaders can be especially important (Sydney: Operation Crayweed), and some of the many ways that partners and community members can actively contribute to restoration initiatives are:

Table 3.1 Avenue of Outreach and Education

Engagement and communication strategies and campaigns are ideally developed and implemented in collaboration with all project partners throughout the restoration initiative. Updates on progress, outcomes, and findings can help maintain community interest and foster existing and new collaborations. In turn, these collaborations can extend the often short timelines of individual initiatives into longer-term, community-based stewardship. Importantly, progress updates also provide opportunities for insights to inform adaptive and iterative restoration in a way that is responsive to dynamic social and ecological conditions.

3.4 Further reading

⁹DeAngelis, B. M., Sutton-Grier, A. E., Colden, A., Arkema, K. K., Baillie, C. J., Bennett, R. O., ... & Grabowski, J. H. (2020). Social factors key to landscape-scale coastal restoration: Lessons learned from three US case studies. Sustainability, 12(3), 869.

¹⁰Elias, M., Kandel, M., Mansourian, S., Meinzen—Dick, R., Crossland, M., Joshi, D., ... & Winowiecki, L. (2021). Ten people—centered rules for socially sustainable ecosystem restoration. Restoration Ecology, e13574.

¹¹Long, J. W., Lake, F. K., Goode, R. W., & Burnette, B. M. (2020). How traditional tribal perspectives influence ecosystem restoration. Ecopsychology, 12(2), 71-82.

¹²Lee, L. C., McNeill, G. D., Ridings, P., Featherstone, M., Okamoto, D. K., Spindel, N. B., ... & Bellis, S. —. V. (2021). Chiixuu Tll iinasdll: Indigenous Ethics and Values Lead to Ecological Restoration for People and Place in Gwaii Haanas. Ecological Restoration, 39(1-2), 45-51