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Welcome
Welcome to HD.gov, a new collaborative effort by agencies, academia, nongovernmental organizations, and private organizations to provide a credible on-line portal of information and tools related to the human dimensions of natural resource management. This is a dynamic site that grows with user contributions, so keep checking for new content! For more information please see about this site.
If you have any questions,
comments, or requests, post them to the "Forum" or contact us at info@hd.gov.
We would love to hear from you!
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Management Questions
- Stakeholders may be local or nonlocal individuals or groups, including landowners, business owners, elected officials, realtors, community leaders, religious or civic groups, conservation and other non-government organizations, government agencies, universities, or other private or public institutions.
- Knowing about stakeholders and their particular intersects relative to natural resource management decisions may help identify:
- Who is impacted by decisions
- Who should be involved in the decision-making process
- Where best to direct educational efforts
- Potential concerns and conflicts
- Methods:
- Identifying a community?s key decision makers and opinion leaders, and who influences them may help managers:
- Focus outreach and education efforts
- Involve decision makers in the management process
- Determine issues that should be avoided
- Identify conflicting mandates
- Methods:
- Drivers and motivations of individual and group behavior can include social norms, worldview, cultural heritage, political affiliation, legal requirements, economic status, knowledge, past experience, and various psychological phenomena. Gaining a better understanding of particular factors that influence activities and behaviors may help managers:
- Determine appropriate management and communication actions
- Target educational efforts for different audiences
- Recognize and address concerns
- Promote acceptance of diverse uses and users
- Methods:
- Different resource uses and human activities have different effects on natural resource conditions, other resource users, communities and even quality of life in a given area. Understanding the different types of activities, resource uses and users, and associated effects can help managers:
- Prevent or mitigate the effects of particular uses
- Identify who might be impacted by different activities
- Distribute use and users within an area
- Where best to direct educational efforts
- Methods:
- Particular natural resource features and geographic locations have important symbolic, aesthetic, or utilitarian meanings for different groups. Understanding the different aspects and attributes related to these places may help managers:
- Plan and distribute resource use across a landscape
- Gauge the various meanings of different resources and places
- Recognize and address concerns
- Promote fair consideration and protection for special resources
- Methods:
- Gaining a better understanding of where users come from, how often they come, what activities they engage in, and where they go may help managers:
- Focus outreach and educational programming efforts
- Recognize and address concerns
- Direct use and use levels to best maintain resource quality
- How to promote increased compliance
- Methods:
- Non-market valuation helps calculate the monetary value of environmental resources not normally traded in conventional markets. This information better allows managers to:
- Better justify the need for protection
- Show the value of the resource over time
- Determine the amount of compensation in the event of damage
- Methods:
- Traditions and culture often influence the way people interact with their environment. A better understanding of these traits may help:
- Promote sensitivity to culture and diversity
- Increase local support for management actions
- Reduce conflict between groups
- Improve the sense of community
- Methods:
- Human changes to the environment may have social impacts on the community. Examining these impacts may help:
- Determine the root cause of changes
- Target areas for management actions
- Reveal motivations for changes
- Inform consideration of alternative courses of action
- Methods:
- Community members usually have varying degrees of dependence on coastal resources. Knowing these levels of dependency can help managers identify:
- Key revenue sources
- Economic impacts of decisions
- Community dependence on local resources
- Options to support sustainable economic development
- Methods:
- Conflicts arise when an activity negatively impacts another user?s experience. Understanding the root causes of these conflicts may help managers:
- Improve understanding of multiple perspectives
- Determine how best to target management efforts
- Improve relationships with and within the community
- Methods:
- Community members and resource users often have preconceived ideas of management agencies and policies. Understanding these may help managers:
- Address misunderstandings
- Recognize and address concerns
- Identify potential conflict
- Promote increased compliance
- Methods:
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