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The Rapid Benefit Indicators (RBI) Approach: A Process for Assessing the Social Benefits of Ecological Restoration
Citation:
Mazzotta, M., D. Martin, A. Lehrer, AND J. Bousquin. The Rapid Benefit Indicators (RBI) Approach: A Process for Assessing the Social Benefits of Ecological Restoration. River Rally, Olympic Valley, California, April 29 - May 02, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
This workshop will introduce watershed managers to the Rapid Benefit Indicators Approach, through an interactive learning experience. Attendees will evaluate example sites and will gain knowledge and tools to conduct their own assessments.
Description:
Environmental managers face difficult decisions about allocating resources to the most beneficial projects. Focusing solely on ecological outcomes can lead to missed opportunities to provide social benefits, yet few methods exist to easily compare the social benefits of ecological restoration. The Rapid Benefit Indicators (RBI) Approach is an easy-to-use process for assessing restoration sites using non-monetary, social benefit indicators. The process involves collecting readily-available data to quantify potential benefits for managers to more easily compare candidate restoration sites. In this workshop, attendees will participate in an interactive demonstration of the RBI Approach, using examples from an ongoing collaboration between the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Rhode Island. We will begin with an overview of issues and management vision in the Woonasquatucket River Watershed, a formerly industrialized urban river. Next, we will present the RBI Approach and its concepts and tools, and will provide attendees with example assessments from wetland restoration sites in the watershed. Attendees will then engage in small group discussions to rank the example sites based on their social benefits. The full group will reconvene and discuss how decisions were made. Finally, the group will apply a multi-criteria decision tool that we developed for the analysis to aggregate indicators and rank sites, based on weights determined by the group, and will compare the aggregation tool outcomes to those of the group discussions. The primary learning objective is to enable attendees to conduct their own assessments of the social benefits of restoration sites.