How Public Input is Shaping The Nature Record Draft Assessment

From Seattle to Philadelphia, The Nature Record’s Deputy Director Tessa Francis has been on the road — and online — gathering input on the draft assessment with other team members. We spoke with her about what she’s hearing in those conversations and how public input is shaping the work.

The Nature Record (TNR): We’ve been in rooms with scientists, practitioners, and the public. What’s surprised you most about how people are talking about nature right now and what that says about this moment in the U.S.?

Tessa Francis (TF): Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised about this, but what has been most gratifying is that everywhere we go, we hear from people of all backgrounds, communities, and professions that nature matters to them, that they see it changing, and that they want to do something to help. We’ve had so many people volunteer to join us! And gratitude — we’ve heard so many expressions of gratitude just for the fact that we are producing The Nature Record, and that we are asking people for their thoughts and opinions to help us shape it. I think right now people want to get involved, want their voice to matter, and want to help make a change. That has been a very pleasant surprise.

TNR: The assessment aims to be rigorous, but the input can be personal and emotional. How do you bring those different kinds of knowledge together?

TF: We have been working for years on the science. Our protocols around rigor follow the gold standards for how to produce an assessment. So we are pretty confident about getting that part right. What we need to do now is make sure that our scientific findings matter to people, that they resonate. That’s where people’s experiences and stories come in. They offer our authors a way to focus or even pivot towards those threads of personal experience and emotion, to highlight the pieces of the scientific record that bring people in. And help us see what we might be missing. Those two parts — the head and the heart — are both crucial, and it turns out that they work well together.

TNR: Where are you seeing the strongest connections between people’s lived experiences and the broader findings in the assessment?

TF: I’d have to say that it’s around health and well-being. There is an extraordinary wealth of scientific research demonstrating the health benefits of nature, and the assessment focuses an entire chapter on that research. In place after place, we hear stories from people about their local park, their visits to national parks, their activities on open, public lands, their fishing and kayaking and their urban forests — and just how happy they feel when they are outside. They talk about how being in nature connects them to family and community. How much they care about the health of nature and how distressed they are when they see it being lost or degraded. What we see in the scientific literature is exactly what we hear people experience. Including me!

TNR: How do you see feedback from these events challenging, validating, or otherwise influencing the assessment?

TF: We’re really being held to our promise to make this assessment accessible to a broad audience! Our team of 160-plus authors are the best in their fields. They are qualified, experienced experts. Big brains, with a lot of information inside. And the assessment is actually short. So there is a need to pack a lot of information into a small number of pages. One strategy is to use fancy words, technical jargon. But we are being challenged to write better, to make the report accessible to everyone who wants to read it, who wants to know what’s happening in nature. And that’s a great challenge to have to meet! And the “+1s” — we get a lot of comments on the assessment content that amount to “Yes! This is great! I want to know about that!” That is very validating, knowing we are on the right track.

TNR: Has there been a comment, story, or interaction at one of these events that changed how you think about the assessment?

TF: We’ve been so focused on the assessment as a U.S. story — a record of nature and its benefits to people in our nation. But we held an event in Dallas, and a man came to see us who works in Africa, and he really wanted to share his appreciation for the fact that we are going out to communities and people and asking them for their opinions to help shape the assessment. In his experience, if our process had been implemented in the places where he works, a lot of unnecessary environmental damage could have been avoided. I’m not sure whether that is true, but it really made me think that not only are we producing the best science, with a focus on what matters to people, but our process also has the potential to lead to some real positive outcomes for nature.

TNR: If someone is on the fence about submitting a comment or attending an event, what would you tell them about why their perspective matters right now?

TF: The Nature Record is not done! How are vinyl records made? Are they pressed? The Record is not pressed yet! We have the song list, and we even have the basic melody written, the drums laid down, and maybe the bass line. But there is still time to add harmonies. Guitar solos. Maybe even a horn section! OK, enough with the musical analogy. But it’s true: our authors are not done writing the assessment. They are waiting to hear feedback from the public on their first draft, and will be using that feedback to write the final version. And in my analogy, every member of the public is a qualified musician. Everyone who cares about nature is qualified to comment. Our authors have recorded the raw song, but now it’s time to hit the mixing board and produce the final track. OK, now I swear I’m done.

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