Presentation of preliminary findings from the British Academy funded Involved project, showing links to parallel and previous work about what makes stakeholder participation in environmental management lead to beneficial environmental outcomes

1. What makes stakeholder participation in environmental management work? Preliminary findings from the Involved project Mark Reed, Joris de Vente, Lindsay Stringer & Jens Newig

2. Plan Introduction What can published literature tell us? Preliminary findings from new research

3. 1. Introduction

4. Participation: frustrating... ... yet alluring

5. How can we design participatory processes that effectively engage stakeholders in environmental decisions? How can we harness participation to achieve social and environmental benefits, but avoid the pitfalls?

6. 2. What can published literature tell us?

7. 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

10. Identify goals with stakeholders

11. Be prepared to negotiate and compromise

12. Partnerships, ownership and active engagement in the process is more likely3. Make sure you know what people want to talk about

14. Manage power4. Be flexible: base level of participation & methods on your context & objectives

16. Don’t underestimate the power of investing in a good facilitator to bring people together and deliver high quality outcomes5. Get a facilitator

19. Twinned projects Environmental Consequences of Participatory Governance (ECOPAG): a comparative meta-analysis of case studies in environmental decision-making (led by Jens Newig) Involved: in-depth interviews with those who led and participated in environmental management projects/programmes in Spain & Portugal

20. Goal To help people design participatory processes that are more likely to deliver the outcomes people want, by understanding why different approaches work in different contexts

21. Questions Does participatory environmental governance – as opposed to more hierarchical, top-down approaches: Improve the quality of decisions or policies, facilitate their implementation and thus achieve environmental goals more swiftly and effectively? Benefit participants in other ways linked to the process e.g. learning, trust etc., and achieve their stated goals (whether related to the environment or not)? Which conditions and which modes of participation affect the outcomes of participatory processes?

22. Involved Semi-structured interview & questionnaire (adapted sub-set of Ecopag items) analysing: Different participatory processes in comparable socio-economic and biophysical contexts 5 each in Spain/Portugal Comparable participatory processes in different contexts DESIRE/DesertLinks in Spain/Portugal and DESIRE in 12 countries

23. Emerging lessons Low levels of participation may lead to simple solutions: easily implemented and accepted but perhaps 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-termimpact 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

24. 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

25. Ecopag Sample of c.300 existing, published case studies Precise coding according to theoretically informed scheme transforms qualitative into quantitative data for statistical analysis All cases coded by 3 coders

26. Preliminary findings of a 47-case-comparison High inter-coder reliability No confirmation of the hypothesis that participation improves environmental standards of decisions Weak evidence that participation improves implementation of environmental decisions Single most important factor to explain outputs/outcomes: preferences of involved actors (r = 0.85 with, p < 0.001) Context variables influence correlations between process and outputs/outcomes (Newig/Fritsch 2008; Fritsch/Newig in review)

27. More information http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~lecmsr/involved