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<The Councillor as Guardian of the Environment>

An Essay and Workshop for Local Elected Leaders on Environmental Governance
with Emphasis on Adopting Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs)
- Training for Elected Leadership -

Part II - Workshop on the Councillor as Guardian of the Environment
- WORKSHOP -

WORKSHOP COMPONENTS

13.7 Trainer Presentation: STAKEHOLDERS

To help participants appreciate the importance of stakeholders to the process of environmental sustainability and learn how to ensure that as many stakeholders as possible are represented.

Develop a short presentation to prepare participants for the next exercise on stakeholder mapping and analysis. As preparation, use material on Partners and Coalitions from the preceding essay, Part I, supplemented by the following information and ideas of your own.

In any effort to change things for the better, there are parties who are affected by the causes and consequences of the impending change. Nothing is of more importance to the councillor as Guardian of the Environment than knowing who they are, what interests they have in what is being proposed, and what influence they hold over the success or failure of the undertaking. For the next few minutes we will be discussing who the stakeholders are in any effort to achieve environmental sustainability and the importance of keeping them informed and involved.

Natural resources and hazards to the environment are influenced by the activities of many people and institutions in a community. In turn, people and institutions are affected by environmental factors. Those who influence or are influenced by environmental matters can be said to have a "stake;" hence, the familiar term, "stakeholder."

According to public affairs authority John Bryson, a stakeholder is "any person, group, or organization that can place a claim on an organization's attention, resources, or output, or is affected by that output."⁷

Examples of a local authority's stakeholders are citizens, service customers, the governing body, employees, labor organizations, political parties, environmental groups, the banking industry, business interests, other governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. Without stakeholder influence, active participation, and resource commitments, little progress will be made by urban communities toward their goals of environmental sustainability. Therefore, the actions of local authorities that affect the environment must involve "the broad-based, active participation of all those whose interests are affected, all those who can contribute to solutions, and all those whose cooperation is necessary for successful implementation."⁸

Why are stakeholders important?

For at least two reasons. One reason has to do with a fundamental principle of human systems: people will support what they help to create. Applying this principle to the process of sustainable development, including stakeholders in partnership with one another or technical support staff at critical points in planning and decision making will ensure their support at later stages. Issue-specified working groups comprised in this manner are considered a primary mechanism for involving stakeholders in a Sustainable Cities Programme.⁹ Another reason for viewing stakeholders as important has to do with the concept of comparative advantage. Local authorities can't do everything. In fact, no local authority should do anything related to sustainable development on its own that could be done as well or better by someone else (a stakeholder). Moreover, by focusing their resources on what they can do best, local authorities avoid paying the opportunity cost for concentrating on less productive pursuits. The role of the councillor in facilitating or enabling the involvement of others in activities normally performed directly by government is discussed more thoroughly in other handbooks of the Training for Elected Leadership series.

Three questions must be answered by a local authority that seeks to involve key stakeholders in its environmental planning and decision making.

• Who are our key stakeholders? This question must be answered for each of the environmental issues identified. Stakeholders will be important to the resolution of environmental issues for either or all of these reasons: (1) their interests are affected by governmental plans and actions; (2) they have the power to control or possibly block implementation actions; and (3) they possess expertise and information useful in the development of implementation strategies. One way to identify stakeholders to an issue is to draw a map of the stakeholders in relation to the primary change-instituting institution (i.e., councillors).

• What is their principal interest in local environmental issues? Interests will vary dramatically among stakeholder groups. They may be supportive or they may have reservations. For example, older citizens may be concerned with the health implications of an environmental risk. Conservationists may be interested only in its implications for preservation of the ecology. Government's main concern may be the consequences of delay in development. And the business community may be apprehensive about actions of government that could jeopardize its economic interests. These concerns sometimes disappear and turn to into support or they may move the other direction into outright opposition.

Stakeholder Map - An Illustration

Note: councillors are placed at the centre of the map in this illustration, but any institution or group might be shown as the focal point for stakeholder mapping.

• What do we want or need from each of them? This question can be answered in two ways. First, it is vitally important to address the interests of key stakeholder groups in such a way that their support is obtained or, at least, their opposition does not become a significant obstacle to implementation. Second, to the extent that stakeholders can provide needed expertise or information, their advice or assistance should be solicited and their contributions rewarded.

The importance of identifying all key stakeholders to the development and implementation of new environmental plans, policies, and technologies and involving them in appropriate ways is made clear in a Michigan (USA) case from the early 1980s. The case involves the efforts of a citizen group to protect the wilderness characteristics of certain state-owned land. In this case, the citizens and the involved state agency did not do a thorough assessment of all the possible stakeholders. Hence, one county with authority over some of the land at issue was left out of the process for reaching an agreement. During implementation, the county was unwilling to abide by a portion of the agreement pertaining to the regulation of motorized boats. It took an additional six months of hard negotiation with the county to implement parts of the agreement to which the county was opposed. The outcome was not only considerable time lost in implementation but increased animosity between county officials and the state agency.¹⁰

Contrast this Michigan case with the experience of local councillors in Linz, Austria. In need of a local means for the disposal of large volumes of hazardous wastes, the city was planning to construct its own incinerator and to test an innovative new technology for hazardous waste disposal. After local residents began to organize a city-wide protest against the incinerator, councillors decided to appoint a 65-member advisory board assisted by an expert committee to evaluate the efficiency and suitability of the new technology. It was agreed that further use of the new technology was to be contingent on the advisory board's favorable evaluation of the testing phase. After the testing phase, the citizens concluded that the new technology was promising but recommended further testing. The wisdom of this decision was borne out by massive problems with the technology in the Czech Republic where it was later implemented without testing or citizen involvement.¹¹

In view of the many and often competing interests in the process of attaining environmental sustainability, it stands to reason that knowing the key stakeholders and keeping them actively involved is an absolute necessity. Depending on their interests and capabilities, stakeholders can become involved in a number of useful ways. Here are just a few possibilities.

• Helping to identify and prioritize the principal environmental issues to be addressed.
• Serving on working groups assigned responsibility for developing and negotiating issue-specific action strategies and plans.
• Participating in specialized groups assigned to review the environmental soundness of new and existing technologies.
• Coming together to coordinate policies and strategies across sectoral and geographic lines and create coalitions for this purpose as necessary.
• Taking part in review panels organized to monitor and evaluate the impact of strategy implementation.

The most important point is this. The active participation of stakeholders should be an integral part of every step in the process of planning for environmental sustainability. Nothing that can do more good if done consistently; nothing can do more harm if ignored.

Table of Contents

• Brochure
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• International Year of Forests
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• World Environment Day
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• UNEP Campaign
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