Congratulations Class XIX Fellows of the 8-month NRLI program!  Congratulations Cohort 3 of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's  Effectively Engaging DEP Stakeholder NRLI program!  Last month you completed your training while simultaneously:

In these unprecedented times it is tempting to focus on our final weeks, the online training, the uncertainty and the impressive flexibility and resilience displayed by all. There is however a misleading bias in focusing only on recent events, no matter how compelling. Although it feels like a lifetime ago, we must also celebrate and apply lessons learned about port expansions, beach nourishment, Lake O releases, human-black bear interactions, agriculture and water, and how to bring multiple stakeholders together to address contentious issues like freshwater lake management. We must celebrate time spent together at Prairie Creek Lodge and Austin Cary Forest. Nested within each of these topics and/or locales were the concepts, skills, tools and approaches that are the backbone of NRLI training. You learned from the project team, you learned from stakeholders and you also learned from the state's leading front-line experts - the other members of your respective cohorts. It was demanding, fun and intense, we asked you to stretch in new and uncomfortable ways. We are asking you to stretch again.   

 

At your graduation ceremony, we noted that NRLI is about creating a professional network of people trained in a unique set of concepts, skills and approaches. NRLI is a leadership institute predicated on the idea that our state and its people cannot survive without a healthy and thriving natural environment. Natural Resources leadership is about having a proactive say in the process of maintaining and enhancing that environment, a proactive say in maintaining and enhancing the wellbeing of the people, flora and fauna who depend on it. The ceremony celebrated your hard work and dedication, our challenge now, our responsibility, is to take the lessons learned and the networks formed and use them.

 

As we peek out, bleary-eyed, from beneath our self-isolation covers, we are being greeted with scenes of true economic and social crisis. But that does not mean that environmental crises have gone away. Yesterday's desperation about water quality is linked to today's desperation about the economy. Today's frantic cries about loss of jobs are linked to yesterday's frantic cries about loss of farms and landscapes. The issues are one-and-the-same, profoundly interconnected social, economic and environmental pieces of the same Florida puzzle. As NRLI program graduates, you have been trained in helping people put puzzle pieces together. You have strategies for how we decide on the what's, where's and when's of our future and for how we effectively and respectfully engage the diverse people and interests needed for our state to collectively and wisely decide that future.

 

In the current fog of uncertainty there is no more important time to apply what you have learned about listening empathically, about working through competing needs and interests, and about the danger of unintended bias. There is no more opportune moment than now to use what you know about gathering and sharing information, running effective meetings and negotiating integratively. We challenge each of you to stretch, to continue to show leadership in your offices and communities, in small ways and in large ways. And always, in safe ways.

Congratulations graduates! Please keep in touch.