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

Stakeholders' influence on, and motivation for sustainable land management

Exercise 4: workshop participants identify the stakeholders in their specific local context, and for each stakeholder group they assess:

• how strong their influence is (with decisions and actions) on the sustainability of land use, and
• how strong their motivation is for implementing sustainable land management.

The following graph shows how stakeholder groups can be classified according to their influence and motivation into the four categories:

1. Key stakeholders for SLM (strong influence and strong motivation);
2. Most critical stakeholders (very strong influence, low motivation;
3. Those that need empowerment (low influence, high motivation);
4. Stakeholders that are not really important, no priority (low influence, low motivation).

Fictive example

The intention of this visualisation (graph) is to lead participants to discuss the following questions:

• Who are the key stakeholders for the implementation of sustainable land use? (very big influence, very high motivation) -> key stakeholders
• Who is strongly motivated but lacks influence? What are their constraints or obstacles, and how can they be overcome? -> need empowerment, support
• Which stakeholders have the power to obstruct sustainable land use? (very big influence, very low motivation) How is it possible to 'get them on board', or how has to be dealt with them?
  -> most critical stakeholders
• Who has neither influence nor interest, and why? -> no priority

Portugal did use the suggested graph to visualise influence and motivation of different stakeholder groups and to categorise them. The other study sites preferred to present the result in a simple table or did not proceed with the categorisation due to time constraints.

Based on the information provided in the workshop reports we compiled the following table presenting a rough categorisation of stakeholder groups in the different study sites. However, to verify this categorisation more in-depth analysis and discussion would be necessary!

Table 12: Stakeholder groups' importance regarding the implementation of sustainable land management

NGO = Non-governmental Organisation
CBO = Community Based Organisation

Analysis

Mainly two facts in the above table catch attention:

1. That the European Commission is considered to be a key stakeholder in the Portuguese study site; and
2. That several study sites (Portugal, Karpinar, Djanybek, and Saratov) classified land owners and farmers as stakeholder groups with no priority for sustainable land management.

Regarding point 1), the Portuguese SST was asked this question by the authors since we were surprised of this result. Their answer was: The EC has financial mechanisms like e.g. the agro-environmental measures, to support SLM; so it was considered that their influence and interest is high.

Regarding point 2) it is astonishing that farmers should have no priority regarding sustainable land management, as influence is not only defined by decision-making power alone, but also influence by action, i.e. land use practices. If we understand 'having influence' in this broader sense (as was suggested in the workshop guidelines), we must assume that farmers do have quite some influence and should not be found in the 'no priority' quadrant.

The reports from Djanybek and Saratov let us assume, that in their case influence was judged by decision-making power alone. From Karapinar we don't have any hints which could explain the result, but we assume it was the same reason as in Russia. In the case of Portugal, the 'no priority' result for land owners is even more astonishing, as the SST reported that forest fires (one of the major causes for land degradation) are strictly related with the human depopulation (migration) and abandonment of land since there is no interest in land as a productive factor. In this case it should be expected that this lack of interest of land owners has a big influence on the sustainability of land use, and therefore land owners would belong to the category 'most critical stakeholders'.

Considering the problem, that the factor 'influence' was sometimes reduced to power in decision-making, we have to assume that this was also the case for other stakeholder groups (not only farmers) and that the above table does not fully represent the situation in the study sites and has to be read with much caution.

Conclusions

• The goal of the stakeholder analysis was only partially attained as only one study site went beyond identifying influence and motivation and made a categorisation of stakeholder groups.
• However, if we also consider additional information and comments provided in other sections of the reports, we can find some interesting information on power in decision-making and the role of service providers - aspects that can strongly influence land use practices and the sustainability of land use.

Power in decision-making

In some reports specific information on the power different stakeholders have in decision-making could be found and was compiled in table 13. It clearly shows that in a number of study sites farmers, and even more so small farmers, lack power in decision-making. It also points out the problem of top-down political decision and policy-making which tends to ignore the farmers' needs and opinions.

Table 13: Power in decision-making

The role of service providers

Table 14 shows problems found in some study sites that are related to the role and performance of service providers potentially having a great deal of influence on land management and land conservation practices, i.e. extension services, the provincial Directorate of Agriculture, Agricultural Credit Cooperatives etc. From several study sites it was reported, that these services do not reach the farmers, or only part of the farmers (which usually are bigger farmers), and that the provision of services is not very effective.

Table 14: The role of service providers