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

Strengths, weaknesses and challenges

In the following, we would like to address some strengths and weaknesses of the methodology we perceive on the basis of the experience of its use in the context of the DESIRE project, and challenges found in its application.

Strengths

1. Valuable results: the rather short but intensive and collaborative process in which workshop participants discuss, work on and prioritise various aspects of land degradation and possible solutions to it allows achieving valuable results in a short, (more or less) participatory and economic way. Besides the selection of possible strategies to be followed up during the next steps of the project, the results consist of aspects such as: bringing together people to discuss and reflect on land degradation and possible solutions who usually would not meet for this purpose; to give equal right of expression to different stakeholders, which contributes to the empowerment of usually marginalised stakeholders; to make stakeholders be interested in the project and willing to collaborate; to stimulate lively discussions and enthusiasm among participants; etc. Based on the information from the reports and the feedback we received we can say that this applies to the big majority of study sites, though obviously not everywhere to the same extent.
2. Initiating stakeholder collaboration: the methodology allowed to initiate stakeholder collaboration and motivating people to further collaborate in the following steps of the project.
3. Integration of different stakeholders: The methodology is designed to integrate different stakeholder groups with their interests and perceptions into the process of the project. If properly applied, the methodology is suitable to initiate mutual learning and dialogue among different stakeholder groups through experience and knowledge sharing and joint reflection between land users, local authorities, researchers and representatives of different governmental and non-governmental organisations.
4. Flexibility: its use in the DESIRE study sites, covering a variety of different bio-physical and socio-cultural contexts shows that the methodology is flexible enough to be adapted to and applied in a wide range of different local contexts, be it in industrialised or developing countries. However, this does not mean that 'everything goes', and in fact, not all adaptations made by the study sites were beneficial for the envisaged process (i.e. to foster mutual learning).
5. Awareness of local solutions: by intentionally looking for and identifying already applied local solutions (besides potential ones) the awareness of local and external stakeholders is raised on the fact that a number of solutions for SLM are available locally and related to them a rich and vast knowledge can be tapped.

Weaknesses

1. Socio-economic, legal and institutional drivers of degradation and constraints do not get enough consideration: The methodology used for the 1st stakeholder workshop does lead the group to identify and address socio-economic, legal and institutional drivers of degradation processes and constraints that have to be considered (mainly exercise 2). However, no in-depth discussion of these factors follows and there is a risk that in the course of the further process of assessing and selecting strategies these factors do not get adequate consideration on the one hand, and the focus remains on technical measures on the other hand. Suggestion for solution: revise the methodology accordingly and put more emphasis on socio-economic aspects throughout all exercises and discussions.
2. Dividing the workshop into two parts: based on our previous experience with similar methodologies and the often heard concern and complaint that stakeholders, and especially external stakeholders do not have the time to participate during several days in a workshop, we decided to design the methodology in such a way that it allows to split the workshop in two parts, with a first part focusing on local perspectives, in which mainly local stakeholders participate, and a second part focusing on current and potential solutions and the overall context, in which local and external stakeholders participate. In fact, only few study sites have chosen to split the workshop in two parts. Some did involve different stakeholders at different times according to their own deliberations.
   We consider dividing the workshop and not having the full range of participants throughout the workshop a factor that weakens the mutual learning process as the time for sharing, jointly reflecting and developing mitigation strategies gets very short and depending on the specific context and previous experience with interactions among different stakeholder categories, does hardly allow to build up the necessary trust and dynamic for a really collaborative and participatory process. Therefore, splitting into two parts is a trade-off to the everywhere prevalent limitation of time, which results in weakening the potential for mutual learning and thorough participation.
3. Too quick - too 'dirty'? Again related to the necessary trade-off between the time available to spend in a workshop, and our aspiration regarding the quality and depth of the learning process we ask ourselves whether the WP 3.1 methodology is not too quick (regarding the time spent on single exercises and issues) and too 'dirty' or superficial (regarding the depth of analysis and understanding possible in such a short time) to adequately address and deal with the complexity of land degradation and desertification. In our view, if applied properly and lasting for 3 days, it is probably appropriate (and economically justifiable!), but if shortened, it does indeed get too quick and too 'dirty'.

Challenges

1. Demanding workshop moderation: the chosen approach for developing the WB3 methodology is a multi-stakeholder multi-level approach. The moderation of a WP 3.1 workshop is a challenging and demanding task, as it requires that moderators do know the local context, are able to perceive land degradation in a holistic way, do have strong moderation skills and are familiar with participatory methods. As a consequence, also the selection and training of moderators is a challenge.
2. Application in strongly top-down organised socio-political contexts: it is a special challenge to apply a participatory approach in a socio-political context which is characterised by strongly centralised and top-down decision-making processes, or with limited scope for societal negotiation and citizen participation. This applies e.g. to countries with no or little democratic tradition such as (former) communist countries, where the civil society is usually weak.