Report and synthesis of Stakeholder Workshop 1

Table of Contents

1. Authors
2. Introduction
   1. Background
   2. Objectives
3. Workshops
   1. How the methodology was used
   2. Participants
   3. Duration
4. Results from the single exercises
   1. Causes and effects of land degradation identified through the water and biomass cycles
   2. Local indicators
   3. Stakeholders' influence on, and motivation for sustainable land management
   4. Assessment of locally applied technologies and approaches
   5. Outline of an overall strategy for sustainable land management
5. Workshop evaluation
   1. Stakeholder involvement and participation
   2. Atmosphere
   3. Methodology
   4. Mutual learning
   5. Objectives and results
   6. Recommendations from study sites
6. Overall conclusions
   1. Have the objectives been attained?
   2. Strengths, weaknesses and challenges
   3. Limitations and problems
7. Annex: List of stakeholder workshop reports

Background

The DESIRE WB3 methodology was developed by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland and consists of three parts (work packages):

• Part I: Stakeholder Workshop 1: Identification of existing and potential prevention and mitigation strategies (WP 3.1)
• Part II: Assessment of Conservation Strategies: Assessment and documentation of existing and potential prevention and mitigation strategies (WP 3.2)
• Part III: Stakeholder Workshop 2: Selection and decision on prevention and mitigation strategies to be implemented (WP 3.3)

The current report covers the analysis and synthesis of stakeholder workshops conducted in Part I (WP 3.1) of the WB3.

After having developed the draft guidelines for WP 3.1 and WP 3.2, a pilot workshop was held on June 17-23, 2007 in Morocco. It included a two day training each on WP 3.1 and on WP 3.2 methodologies, and a pilot workshop held in the Moroccan study site for testing the WP 3.1 methodology. For the Moroccan DESIRE team this pilot workshop was at the same time their 1st stakeholder workshop. Two colleagues from the Tunisian study site team (SST) also joined the training and the pilot workshop, and on this basis they conducted the 1st stakeholder workshop in their study site.

Based on the experience from this pilot workshop the WP 3.1 methodology has been revised and considerable changes have still been made; therefore the methodology used in Morocco and Tunisia varies to a certain extent from the one used in the other study sites. A next WB3 training workshop on the consolidated methodology was held on October 1-5, 2007, in Murcia, Spain (see DESIRE Workshop and meeting reports No. 5, October 2007). It covered Part I and Part II (i.e. WP 3.1 and 3.2) of WB3 methodology. The authors of this report were the trainers of the WB3 training workshop.

The following is an analysis and synthesis of the results from the 1st stakeholder workshops (WP 3.1) conducted in the DESIRE study sites. Workshop moderators were provided a template for workshop reports and had to document the results from the single exercises and the final workshop evaluation. These workshop reports are the data basis for this analysis, i.e. we did not consult additional material such as study site descriptions etc.

The authors of this report did not have the opportunity to participate in stakeholder workshops except from the pilot workshop conducted in Morocco. This is a limitation for the analysis of workshop results, especially as far as the learning process is concerned, for two main reasons:

1. Workshop reports mainly contain results of specific exercises, but do not document important discussions, different positions of different stakeholders or relevant conclusions attained on the way to these results, and
2. They contain only very limited information on the workshop process as such.

Nevertheless, the synthesis reflects the wealth of information which was gathered and discussed in these workshops. It allows understanding the similarities as well as the variability among the study sites, resulting from the various socio-economic and bio-physical settings. As all the sites represent desertification - prone areas, some major processes (e.g. causes, impacts, and indicators) of desertification can be synthesised.