STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVMENT

1. INTRODUCTION

Floods are a natural phenomenon and should not be considered animpediment to economic development.

Flood disasters are the results of the interaction between extreme hydrologic events and environmental, social and economic processes. But, floods despite their negative consequences have positive impacts as well becausethey provide valuable natural resources, thereby supporting livelihoods and economic activities.

Unfortunately, generally the emphasis is placed only on their destructive nature. That is why, an integrated approach to flood management can play an important role in sustainable development.

Stakeholder involvment is crucial to risk, adaptation, and vulnerability assessments. That is because the stakeholders will be most affected by and adverse flood event and thus may need to adapt. Stakeholders can be characterised as individuals or groups who have anything of value that can be affected by an extreme natural phenomenon as floods or by the actions taken to manage flood risks. They can be policy-makers, scientists, communities and managers in the sectors and regions most at risk now and/or in the future.

Individual and institutional knowledge and expertise are the principal resources for adapting to floods. The adaptive capacity can be developed if stakeholders have time to strengthen networks, knowledge, and resources, and of course if the have the willingness to find solutions. The success of an stakeholder involvement means not only in informing interested and affected people, but also in involving them to act on the enlarged knowledge. Through an permanent process stakeholders can assess the viability of adaptive measures by integrating scientific information into their own social, economic, cultural, and environmental context. Approaches to stakeholder engagement vary in a large area from passive interactions (the stakeholders only provide information) to the level where the stakeholders themselves initiate and design the process.

Current adaptation practices for flood risks are being developed by communities, governments, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and other organised stakeholders to increase their adaptive capacity. Stakeholders have a role to play in scenario development and participatory modelling.

Stakeholders are also very important in assessing future needs for developing policies and the measures to adapt. All these needs have been already recognised in regional and national approaches to assessing flood riskprevention and mitigation.

Flood management issues are embedded in a lot of societal issues such as environment, risk, policy and sustainability that need an increasing stakeholder involvement.

Managers from public and private sectors find more and more that such an involvement can improve the quality and the sustainability of the policy decisions. Generally, the best practice in flood managementis now shift from the traditional decide - announce - defendmodel (in which case the focus is almost exclusively on technical content) to engage - interact - co-operate model (in which case both technical content and quality of process are of equal importance).

Together with openness, accountability, effectiveness and coherence, stakeholder'sparticipation is now recognised to be one of the five principles of good governance.

Public information, consultation and/or participation in flood management decision are also required by a number of international treaties. These include the Joint Convention and, in Europe, the Espoo and Aarhus Conventions.

In the same time the OECD/NEA Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) considerstakeholder as a convenient label for any actor – institution, group or individual – with an interest or a role to play in the societal decision-making process.

Different stakeholder's involvement can have in the same time different contributions and of course different consultation needs at each stage of the decision - making process.

In flood risk management, a list of possible stakeholders can include: the general public; demographic groups, residents, representatives or elected officials of local communities; national/regional government ministries/departments; regulators; national/local NGOs, local pressure groups; the media; the scientific research community; implementing organisations etc.

Stakeholder involvement represents today an integral part of a stepwise process of decision making. At different phases of a project and / or programme development, involvement can take the form of sharing information, consulting, dialoguing, or deliberating on decisions. This processus can be seen as a meaningful part of formulating and implementing a good policy. Some specific involvement initiatives can be seen as part of a relationship among the different societal partners who are concerned by the same issues (e.g. flood management).

Stakeholder involvement techniques must not to consider as convenient tools for public relations, image-building, or for winning acceptance for a decision taken behind closed doors.

In some contexts times and the means for stakeholders involvement are specified by a law, while in other contexts, a specific player need to create the opportunity and the means for involving other specific stakeholders.

Practitioners develop, apply, and evaluate various techniques for stakeholder involvement so, agreat number of approaches exist described in a large number of publications.

In different situations it is a need for a short guide to let to the non-specialists in the purpose to:

  • form an idea of what is involved in choosing a technique;
  • find their way to pertinent documents.

Because the participation of all stakeholders is not equivalent the need to offer some knowledge about the different levels of involvement seems to be a pertinent idea. So, in the following a short and non exhaustive list concerning the positive effects that may result from stakeholder involvement arrangements will be presented. This short list is intended to give some highlights for setting criteria that can be use for the choice of technique for a given situationand for the evaluation of the involvement process.

2. THE LEVELS OF STAKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION AND / OR INVOLVEMENT

Different levels of stakeholder participation or involvement are giving taking into consideration the use of different techniques. The simplest approach consists in simply transmit information to a passive stakeholder audience. The most complex approach, situated at the other end of the scale, consist in a technique that can significantly empower stakeholders within the decisionmaking process.

In the following the way in how to choose a given level of involvement according to the situation or to the objectives will be presented.

Planners must to take into account that stakeholders may desire, expect or be entitled to a particular level of involvement. Some preliminary discussions, contact with or observation of target stakeholder groups and a review of statutory requirements, can be very helpful to determine the appropriate level. How much an organisation can or wishes to be involved must to be very clear defined and well known by all the participants in a project and / or programme.

3. THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF STAKEHOLDER INVOLVEMENT

The purpose of different inclusive approaches for information gathering and deliberation is to enhance the credibility of the decision-making processes. But this is not the only type of positive effect that can be expected from a stakeholder involvement initiative.

There are three classes of effects that may result from the application of consultation and deliberation techniques:

  • substantive effects which include better, more acceptable choices from the environmental, economic, and technical points of view;
  • procedural effects which include better use of information; better management; increased legitimacy of the decision making process;
  • contextual effects which include better information to stakeholders and/or the public; improvement of strategic capacity of decision makers; reinforcement of democratic practices; increased confidence in institutional players.

All these potential positive effects of stakeholder participation can also used as justifications for involving stakeholders in policy decisions.

4. SETTING THE CRITERIAS FOR THE SELECTION AND EVALUATION OF THE TECHNIQUE

The technique that can be suitable for a particular situation depend on the stakeholders to be engaged and of course on the aims and objectives of the consultation.

In this situation a stakeholder involvement will need to take into consideration these aspects of the involvement and to decide on the most appropriate technique to use. To achieve this purposeaselection criteriamust to be developed. The same criteria can serve later to evaluate the response to the involvement programme.

The appropriate level of involvement represents a fundamental criterion that must be carefully set and communicated to the potential participants.

As mentioned, an appropriate level of involvement represents a fundamental criterion. It should be carefully set and communicated to potential participants.

A list of desired effects and goals, as well as of the constraints must to be made. This list will contain also all form criteria for choosing a technique. After that, the members of the organisation who want to implement a stakeholder involvement will discuss both this list and the ranking of criteria. The criteria must to be ranked by order of importance.

Generally it is known that the involvement techniques are not best used for an isolated, one-off or add-on initiative. Fact is that an appropriate involvement of relevant stakeholders is advisable throughout a good management or decision-making process. The application of specific techniques can give best results both for participants and for the institutions that organise the dialogue, if they support a logical step in well-defined process of management or of decision.

The overall process justifies the use of a specific instrument at a given time, in order to obtain a needed output. In this process, many different issues or problems can take centre stage at different times. They can frame the choice of techniques, in the purpose to elucidate, national or local considerations, or predominantly societal or technical choices.

5. HOW TO CHOOSE A TECHNIQUE FOR THE STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVMENT

Most publications show that the choice of a technique can be considerate as an art, and not as a science. Stakeholder involvement techniques usually can be applied to wide range of issues. As mentioned, the criteria developed in response to a specific context, constraints, desired goals and effects, canlargely differ between different organisations.

This is the reason why, no “one size fits all” list of criteria must be done a priori. It must be mentioned that a definitive matrix containing the matching techniques to criteria don't exist. However, there are a lot of handbooks and manuals who describe different techniques in terms of generic criteria (e.g. level of involvement, scale of consultation – intensive vs. extensive, representative, inclusiveness, deliberative etc.).

The experience in this domain shows that the success of some particular technique application depend on external factors too (e.g. the phase of decision, the political context and the cultural context.

After the preliminary list has been developed or the ranked list of criteria was settled, the planner must to review existing techniques to form an idea of which might fit best.

It can be very helpful to the planner to contact and discuss experience with persons who already have conducted involvement initiatives. In this situation, the planner can consult and/or retain the services of a professional to set up and conduct the initiative, but it is very important that the planner perform himself the preparatory steps to identify the right family of techniques before buying services.

6. LOOKING TOWARDS IMPLEMENTATION

The major part of the existing publications concerning the stakeholders involvement and implementation techniques present a wide range of techniques varying from best practice to flow charts and worksheets that may be printed out.

The organisational goal of informing or educating implies the developing of appropriate public information materials. Information materials can be useful only if they can be understood and interpreted by the intended audience.

Preparing an adequate information material, like is preparing an adequate survey questionnaire, is a professional task. Each must be adapted to the initial position of the stakeholder population. For the information material and for the survey questionnaire development, it can be beneficial to perform an in-depth, reduced-scale preparatory study exploring the initial positions or the mental models of the various stakeholders.

Usually, higher levels of involvement imply that participants will have both the opportunity to communicate their views and judgements in detail and to learn from other stakeholders. The planner can find the preparatory and / or small-scale studies and / or consultations very useful for scoping the issues or it identify target stakeholder groups.

The planners of stakeholder involvement in the technical areas will benefit from advice on communicating about flood risks, translating the complex information about floods and possible consequences of flooding into a accessible form, and interacting with a wide range of stakeholders who possible don't have an technical training. And, finally, the planner can wish to made a broad announcement of stakeholder initiatives, or publicise their outcomes using the mass media.

7. TECHNIQUES AVAILABLE FOR HIGHER LEVEL INVOLVEMENT

The commonly-cited techniques corresponding to the higher levels of stakeholder involvement are discussing, engaging, and partnering.But, there are a lot of other techniques who can be used as it will be present in the following. It must to be mention that handbooks for planning, implementing, and evaluating stakeholder involvement programmes are identified.

8. DIFFERENT LEVELS OF STAKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION AND / OR INVOLVEMENT

As it was already said before in this paper all participation is alike so,different levels of stakeholder participation or involvement are offered by very different techniques. One approach may simply transmit information to a passive stakeholder audience. At the other end of the scale, a technique can significantly empower stakeholders within the decision - making process.

Some organisations proposed a continuum of public involvement which can be considerate as a very reasonable idea.

Different activities presentedin box 1, below can blend into each other because no strict line can be drawn between adjacent activities.

Box 1

A continuum public involvement
Low level of public involvement or influence:
  • Inform, educate, share or disseminate information.
  • Gather information, views.
Mid level:
  • Discuss through two-way dialogue
High level of public involvement or influence:
  • Fully engage on complex issues
  • Partner in the implementation of solutions

Planners must know that stakeholders can desire, expect or need to be entitled to a particular level of involvement. Preliminary discussion, the contact with or the observation of target stakeholder groups, and finally the review of statutory requirements, will be very helpful to determine the appropriate level. How much involvement the organisation can or wishes to offer must be very clearly defined from the beginning and it must to be clearly communicated to potential stakeholder participants, at the outset of the programme.

A number of reports of different organisations confirm the need to well clarify the level of involvement of different stakeholders, and the degree of two-way communication that can be expected by the participants:

  • consulting the public when the legal scope for them to influence the decision is small sometime can causes anger, so it is important to be clear on what issues reasonably can be influenced.
  • the basis for the decision must be very clearly understood.
  • it is important to be clear what the information will be providedto the stakeholders and what will be the feedback provided by the decision - maker as a consequence of the stakeholders involvement.
  • it must to be taking into consideration the fact that people want to see that they have influenced the process and have had a meaningful impact on the outcome.

9. GUIDANCE ON CHOOSING DIFFERENT LEVELS OF PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

Box 2 presents some guidelines in choosing between different levels of public participation.

How to choose between different levels of public involvement
In what cases may it be appropriate to involve the public?
In all situation concerning matters of safety, local impacts; development of policies, statutes and new programmes; development and implementation of legislation and regulations and / or other issues with social, economic, cultural or ethical implications the implication of stakeholders by sharing or disseminating information is very important.
Inform and / or educate
Different, factual information is needed to describe a policy, a programme or process; a decision that has already been made (in the case when no decision is required but it is considered that the general public needs to know the results of a process even there is no opportunity to influence the final outcome). Information is needed also in the case when it is need for acceptance of a proposal before a decision may be made or in the case of an emergency or crisis who requires immediate action. Also, information is necessary to abate concerns or prepare for a future involvement.
Discuss or involve
Two-way information exchange is needed. Both individuals and groups have an interest in the issue and will likely be affected by the outcome; there is an opportunity to influence the final outcome. If the organiser wishes to encourage discussion among and with stakeholders; input may shape policy directions and programme delivery.
Engage
It is necessary for stakeholders to talk to each other regarding complex, value-laden decisions. Here is a capacity for stakeholders to shape policies that affect them and also here is opportunity for shared agenda setting and open time frames for deliberation on issues; options generated together will be respected.
Partner
These means that institutions want to empower stakeholders to manage the process and stakeholders have accepted the challenge of developing solutions themselves. In these case institutions are ready to assume the role of enabler and there is an agreement to implement solutions generated by stakeholders.

10. THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF STAKEHOLDER INVOLVEMENT

Bottom-upapproaches for information gathering and deliberation are helpful to enhance the credibility of the decision-making processes. And this is not the only type of effect that can be expected from a well-run stakeholder involvement initiative. As it was already mentioned there are three classes of effects may result from the application of consultation and deliberation techniques:

  • substantive - concrete decision outcomes;
  • procedural - modifications to the process of deciding;
  • contextual - side effects.

Box 3 lists the potential positive effects of stakeholder participation. These can also be used as justifications for involving stakeholders in policy decisions.