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

Stakeholder involvement and participation

"Although their interest was high at beginning, to keep this dynamism throughout the project duration is a huge challenge" (Eskisehir, Turkey)

Within DESIRE project, Stakeholder workshop 1 was for most study sites the moment, when a broader range of stakeholders was involved for the first time. This involvement however, was a challenge, as several study sites reported having had difficulties to motivate stakeholders to participate in the workshop. In Spain, Morocco and Tunisia it was found hard to motivate farmers; in Botswana it was hardly possible to get non-community (i.e. external) stakeholders to participate; in China it was found difficult to get more land users due to the importance of off-farm activities; and in Turkey, participation of female farmers is difficult due to cultural reasons. Karapinar reported that the continued participation of local farmers throughout the workshop should be interpreted as the result of the heavy struggle of the study site team. Also Cape Verde found it a difficult task to hold every participant to work the entire day.

In at least 4 study sites, i.e. in Spain, Portugal, Eskisehir and Chile, workshop participants explicitly stated a clear interest in future collaboration and involvement in the DESIRE project (this might also be true for other study sites, but was not stated in their workshop report). The Botswana participants mentioned that they would like this type of workshop to be repeated regularly so that they can have regular dialogue on land use and management issues.

The following graph is based on information from workshop moderators who made comments on the development of the level of interest and participation of stakeholders from the time of workshop preparation to the end of the 1st stakeholder workshop. Of course, this development was not exactly the same everywhere, but it seems that many study sites experienced, that after some initial hesitation, participants became more active and interest and participation increased along different exercises.

Morocco is the only study site, where farmers gave a negative evaluation of the workshop. They said they didn't see the interest of such a workshop and thought there were too many not very useful discussions. Interestingly though, external participants (from GOs and NGOs; researchers) very much appreciated the (same) workshop and discussions they had with farmers. We don't know exactly what this negative evaluation is related to, but it might also be a reflection of the specific difficulties that occurred in workshop moderation in this pilot workshop.

In both Turkish sites especially the representatives of research institutions showed high interest in finding potential strategies and synthesis. Also China reports that the researchers were the most active participants of the workshop because they take this kind of workshop as an opportunity to put their knowledge and techniques into practice.