Enabling citizen choices about land use and the natural environment

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What makes stakeholder participation in environmental management work?

Enabling citizen choices about land use and the natural environment

Experience from the Sustainable Uplands and Involved projects

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Plan

1. Introduction2. What can published literature tell us?3. New research on citizen engagement in land

use and environmental decisions4. Case Study: Lessons from the Sustainable

Uplands project

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1. Introduction

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Participation: frustrating...

... yet alluring

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How can you design participatory processes that can effectively engage stakeholders

in policy decisions?

How can we harness participation to achieve social and environmental benefits, but avoid the pitfalls?

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2. What can published literature tell us?

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1. Start talking to people as soon as you can

• From concept to completion

• Early involvement leads to higher quality and more durable decisions

• Avoid raising false expectations: make sure there’s something to negotiate

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2. Make sure you’re talking to the right people

• The nature and legitimacy of outcomes is significantly affected by participant mix

• Lots of methods available now for “stakeholder analysis”

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• Design the process to the goals

• Identify goals with stakeholders

• Be prepared to negotiate and compromise

• Partnerships, ownership and active engagement in the process is more likely

3. Make sure you know what people want to talk about

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4. Be flexible: base level of participation & methods on your context & objectives

• Communicate e.g. information dissemination via leaflets or the mass media, hotlines and public meetings

• Consulte.g. consultation documents, opinion polls and referendums, focus groups and surveys

• Participate e.g. citizen’s juries, consensus conferences, task-forces and public meetings with voting

• Tailor your methods to context

• Manage power

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What makes stakeholder participation in environmental management work?5. Get a facilitator

• The outcome of a participatory process is more sensitive to the manner in which it is conducted than the tools that are used

• Don’t underestimate the power of investing in a good facilitator to bring people together and deliver high quality outcomes

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6. Put local and scientific knowledge on an equal footing• Science can help people make more informed decisions • Local knowledge can question assumptions, and perhaps

lead to more rigorous science

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• Decisions based on a combination of local and scientific knowledge may by more robust due to more comprehensive information inputs

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3. New research…

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The projects

• Ecopag: quantitative analysis of 2-300 case studies• Involved: in-depth interviews with those who led

and participated in environmental management projects/programmes– 5 projects/programmes in Spain & 5 in Portugal– Along continuum from less-more participatory– Studying a replicated participatory process in these

plus 10 other countries– Role of process versus context?

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Emerging lessons• Low levels of participation may lead to simple solutions:

easily implemented and accepted but ineffective• High levels of participation may lead to deeper

understanding, learning and more complex solutions: more effective but harder to apply

• Policy makers with actual decision-making power, need to be included in the process for short-term impact

• In some cases, their presence created a power imbalance that limited active participation & generation of new ideas

• But if decision-makers not part of process, immediate implementation of findings is less likely

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Emerging lessons

• If land managers are well represented, outcomes are generally economically and practically feasible, and there are more social benefits (social learning, better functioning social networks, increased trust)

• Involvement of this group increases likelihood that process outcomes are implemented in longer term

• To get participation of land managers, the process needs to be brought to their local context and communication tailored appropriately

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4. Case Study: Sustainable Uplands

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• 7 years (ending 2012)• Sites: Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, Galloway• £1.1M from RELU and ESRC• 29 researchers: Universities of Aberdeen, Leeds, St Andrews,

Durham, Sheffield & others with Moors for the Future & Heather Trust

Working with people in uplands to better anticipate and respond to future change

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• Inputs to policy processes e.g. via Defra’s uplands policy review, CRC’s upland inquiry, Foresight, NEA, Scottish Government Rural Land Use Study, IUCN peatland programme and consultation responses

• >£800K for 17 projects applying project outputs e.g. Yorkshire Water, Natural England, DEFRA, Premier Waste, United Utilities, Lancashire Wildlife Trust

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Key messages

• Worth investing to find out who wants what & tailoring the process from the outset (but you could short-cut our approach to stakeholder analysis)

• Tailor outputs to multiple learning preferences: use a variety of techniques & technologies to unpack “black boxes”

• Know your stakeholders to get timing right

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Key messages

• A shared philosophy: – Different expertise, but compatible ways of

viewing/constructing knowledge & compatible values/beliefs

– Working in partnership: learning from and with stakeholders as equals to make a difference

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Please take one

• DVDs• Cards for www.ouruplands.co.uk• RELU Policy & Practice Notes• Follow up? Possible sessions on:

– Stakeholder analysis– Other participatory methods– Facilitation (see handout)

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www.see.leeds.ac.uk/sustainableuplandswww.ouruplands.co.uk

Follow us on:

www.twitter.com/reluuplands

Email: [email protected]

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Contactwww.see.leeds.ac.uk/sustainableuplands

Follow us on:

www.twitter.com/reluuplands

Email: [email protected]

Call or text on: 0797 428 6778

Enabling citizen choices about land use and the natural environment

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