Transcriber: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Denise RQ
This is a story about fear and about understanding,
and how when we allow space for both of those things
in planning processes, people are able to work across their differences
and collaborate to achieve extraordinary results,
not despite but because of our differences.
In 2010 and 2011, I helped the Durango community in southwest Colorado
develop a recreation management plan for this reservoir just outside of town,
a new reservoir, a Bureau of Reclamation project.
Based our ability to bring people together in that process,
the following year I was asked to help the city of Durango
develop a river management plan for the Animas River that runs through town.
Both of these processes are examples of collaboration,
of community-scale mediation,
of working across boundaries,
and ultimately, robust citizen participation
in making decisions that affect communities.
When we are competing for finite resources,
it's not our first instinct as human beings to be collaborative.
Our first instinct is to be self-interested,
and do this in a large part because we're afraid.
We're afraid that something's going to be done to us,
or that something's going to be taken from us,
and so in response to that fear,
we get really demanding, and we quickly separate ourselves
from those who we feel are threats to the things that we care about:
recreationists versus conservationists,
motorized boaters versus non-motorized boaters,
anglers versus kayakers versus tubers versus law enforcement
versus private property owners versus commercial outfitters;
"us" versus "them."
Before I started working in Durango,
they had already done a really good job of separating "us" and "them",
and creating stories about what they thought "the other" was.
In this case, they were telling the story
that "them" equates to the party crowd,
the high-noise, high-speed,
"we don't care about anything but having a good time" kind of crowd.
And on the other side, they were characterizing "them"
as the elitist, me-only crowd,
who wanted to protect the thing that they cared about most
to the exclusion of everybody else.
Then I came on scene, and they all started directing their comments to me,
saying that if I--
if I accepted the viewpoints of "them,"
I would be seen as biased from the start
and would be ineffectual in my ability to work with "us."
And then somebody said this,
["I do not envy Joy's job."]
(Laughter)
Thanks for that.
So I'm reading these comments and realizing people are angry,
and they're vocal, and they're building steam,
and at this point, something inside of me,
some voice, deep, and primal, and instinctual is saying,
"Holy cow, they're going to eat me!"
(Laughter)
Because this is what happens.
Something triggers that fear instinct,
and in the case of me reading these comments from these people,
my hands were clammy and my chest was tight,
and my breathing was more shallow.
There's not enough oxygen going to my brain, and I'm thinking,
"I should've just become a florist!"
(Laughter)
Our physiology changes, and our breathing changes,
and our ability to make good decisions is diminished.
So we created a process for people
because we knew that to get to where we were going,
to get to a place where people could agree on a plan,
we were going to have to move beyond fear and demand
to understanding and cooperation.
And so we created a process that was designed to do several things,
including to create space for people to be self-interested,
for them to have an opportunity to think about what mattered most to them,
to be able to articulate their interests, and concerns, and desired experiences,
and then to be able to explain those things to one another.
The process was also designed to create space
for people to really hear and understand one another
so that they could begin to work together more meaningfully.
In the Zulu tradition in South Africa,
when a group gathers to discuss something and a speaker comes up to speak,
they say to the group, "Sawubona."
It means, "I see you."
[I see you.]
In response, the group says to the speaker, "Yebo, sawubona."
It means, "We are here, and we see you."
[I see you.]
It's an acknowledgment of shared humanity,
and a shared moment in time on this planet,
and all of the things that are possible between people in that moment.
I explained "sawubona" and "yebo sawubona" to a group of more than 100 people
gathered for a river management plan in Durango.
It was a group that had already met several times
to talk about what mattered most to them, to hear one another,
and begin to think about ways that they could share the river.
We were in a big room, and there were tables all around the room,
and people were sitting in mixed groups with different perspectives,
and I said to them,
"Before we go any farther in this process, I want to ask you to look across the table
and to look across the room at the people gathered here,
and ask yourself, 'Have you seen them?'
Do you understand what they care about?
Are you willing to find solutions
that take their interests into account too?
Because tomorrow, or next week, or next month,
when you see them in the grocery store,
or when you pass them walking down the street,
or this summer when you see each other on the river,
I want you to be able to say to yourself, "I saw that person, I heard them,
I understood them, and I did everything that I could
to make sure that they got what they needed too."
There's tremendous power in understanding,
and it unlocks the ability for collaboration.
This image is really meaningful to me
because these are people who've spent time
doing the work of hearing each other and understanding one another.
And here they are finding ways to meet everybody's interests.
They're finding ways to make sure
that everybody got heard, and everybody gets what they needed.
Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley,
I heard him in an interview one day say
that there are really sound reasons, deep instinctual reasons,
why we have evolved to be good to one another.
And the idea is that we're wired to care,
to be concerned, to feel compassionate, and to cooperate.
Golden, Colorado is another community with really active, engaged residents,
and one river that runs through town, one well-loved river.
I've been asked to come and help them create a collaborative process
for a river management plan because Golden this past summer
found themselves in a position that they had never been in before.
Recent drought in Colorado created a situation
where there was much less water in the river
for a much longer period of time, and this past summer was really hot.
It turns out that those two conditions, low water and high heat,
are perfect conditions for tubers.
(Laughter)
And they showed up on the river in numbers that Golden has never seen before,
thousands more than Golden has ever seen before.
And there are impacts to that kind of increase in use and visitation.
There are conversations
that are going to need to be had about balance,
and about managing diverse interests,
and about hearing each other, and understanding one another,
and working together.
As our issues become more complex,
[Political Affiliation, Race, Gender Identity, Religion, Age, ]
[Sexual Orientation, Socioeconomic Class, Country of Origin]
the divides between us as humans are deeper and more pronounced,
and it's not easy to have conversations across these kinds of differences,
but it's possible.
I've seen it happen over water in Colorado.
We start by creating understanding,
we start by creating space for people to see each other, to hear each other,
to articulate their own interests,
but ultimately, to roll up their sleeves, together,
and to embark on that transformational process
of finding solutions to complex problems
that lay out beyond the realm of fear
in the field of understanding and collaboration.
(Applause)