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

Limitations and problems

Besides weaknesses in the methodology as such, reports and discussions during the general meeting in Eskisehir also revealed difficulties and limitations directly related to how and by whom the methodology was used in the context of the DESIRE project.

Problems related to the general DESIRE context / set-up

Regarding the general project context / set-up the following difficulties have been identified:

1. Time constraints: the DESIRE project aims at testing potential conservation measures during 3 consecutive agricultural years (-> WB4). Given a total project duration of 5 years, the time available for developing and applying a methodology to initiate stakeholder participation and select potential measures (-> WB3) was rather short, as these workshops had to be conducted during the first 1.5 project years. This time constraint also led to the situation that preparatory work from WB1 (e.g. stakeholder analysis) was not achievable before the workshops had to be conducted.
2. Few social scientists in study site teams: only few study sites include social scientists in their study site team (exceptions are: Botswana, Portugal, Morocco, Tunisia, others??), which results in many study sites having very limited experience with participatory approaches and in dealing with socio-economic issues. However, this does not mean that they are disinterested in stakeholder participation or unwilling to apply a participatory approach, but as it was mentioned during a discussion at the plenary meeting in Eskisehir on the experience of study sites with stakeholder participation in DESIRE, many study sites find it difficult to integrate socio-economic factors in the implementation and research process.
3. Conflicting requirements of academic research and stakeholder involvement: as is the case for many applied research projects, researchers in DESIRE have to deal with the sometimes conflicting particular requirements of disciplinary oriented academic research on the one hand, and stakeholder involvement on the other hand. We consider the critique (which has been mentioned during the plenary meeting in Turkey) that the approach and methodology suggested by WB3 is problematic and not in line with their specific scientific goals, and therefore more appropriate for applied research, to be an expression of this conflict.

Problems related to how the methodology was used

Regarding how and by whom the methodology was used the following problems were found:

1. Selection of workshop moderators: WB3 strongly requested that study sites work with experienced workshop moderators who are not themselves involved as researchers in the project (see ToRs sent to study sites for the recruitment of moderators). The main objective being to avoid role confusion of moderators, i.e. to avoid having moderators who themselves have a stake in the workshop process as researchers.
   Nevertheless, the people sent to the WB3 training workshop were (with very few exceptions) researchers from study site teams, most of them with a strong bio-physical focus and little experience with moderation techniques, participatory approaches and socio-economic issues. Suggestion for solution: use external workshop moderators!
2. Short duration of WB3 training: given the above mentioned problem of not having people with the requested prior knowledge and experience as trainees, the training on the use of the WP 3.1 methodology was too short. In the three days we had, it was not possible to include enough specific and practical training for developing facilitation and moderation skills. Suggestion for solution: more specific and in-depth training on facilitation needed.
3. Stakeholder participation and the role of researchers: stakeholder participation does not mean to leave every decision to the farmers, it means engaging in a discussion and negotiation process. According to the WB3 approach, researchers are a stakeholder group (among others) in this participatory process of identifying, assessing and selecting promising strategies to combat desertification. They therefore are expected to bring in their expertise into the respective discussions and negotiations (without intending to define the ultimate solutions on their own and simply convincing farmers to adopt them). Researchers should also be critical in the process and consider bio-physical or socio-economic constraints and they should be able to recognise if prioritised technologies are unfeasible in the given context.
4. Selection of workshop participants: It is decisive to have a good mix of relevant local and external stakeholders in the workshop. The guidelines do give advice on how to select participants. The mix of participants was surely not ideal in some study sites, the most obvious being the Russian sites, Botswana, and Eskisehir, where a strong over or under-representation of land users, or generally of local or external stakeholders was found. Due to the time constraint explained in 5.3.1, in most cases neither the in-depth stakeholder analysis per study site made by WB1, nor the stakeholder list made by WB6 was available at the time of organising the workshops. Having these at hand, of course would have helped to identify relevant stakeholders that need to be represented in the workshop.
5. Methodology sometimes applied 'mechanically': some of the workshop reports convey the impression that the methodology has been applied a bit too mechanically and that results of the exercises have not been scrutinised enough. This of course is problematic. We assume that this shortcoming is an expression of a) the limited previous experience with participatory methodologies most workshop moderators had, and b) correspondingly, the insufficient duration and depth of training in the use of the methodology and moderation skills.