Workshop and workshop report on how to establish and nurture MARG for constructive engagement in water - agriculture - environmental conflict related issues. Deliverable D1.2 of the EU Horizon 2020 project OPTAIN.
Creators: name: Van den Brink, Cors
name: De Vries, Alma
name: Nesheim, Ingrid
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: OPTAIN
stakeholder engagement
multi-actor approach
Multi-Actor Reference Group (MARG)
H2020
NSWRM
NWRM
water retention
agriculture

description: <strong>Deliverable report D1.2 of the EU Horizon 2020 Project OPTAIN (Grant agreement No. 862756)</strong> <strong>Summary</strong> Work package 1 (WP1) of the OPTAIN project coordinates and harmonizes stakeholder activities and ensures the link between the 14 OPTAIN case studies, research and modelling work across all WPs. At the start of the OPTAIN project, WP1 facilitates the establishment of multi-actor reference groups (MARG) in each case study and provides communication techniques to encourage active stakeholder engagement for the lifetime of OPTAIN. To facilitate the establishment of a MARG per case study, WP1 has organized two digital workshops of 3.5-hour duration, because COVID-19 restrictions didn’t allow for a physical meeting. These workshops took place in December 2020. The purpose of the workshops was to inform case study leaders how to establish and nurture MARG for constructive engagement in water – agriculture - environmental conflict related issues. Stakeholder engagement is important because a sound scientific solution not necessarily results in solving a real-world problem. Key lesson learned is that engagement of stakeholders is essential during all phases of the project: the phase of the identification of the problem, assessment of the problem, scenarios to solve the problem and in the phase of implementing the solution. Engaging stakeholders and establishment of MARGs can be brought down in four steps, 1. preparation, 2. make contact &amp; invite to meeting; 3. organize MARG kick-off and 4. confirmation from members (GDPR). Finally, different types of case study context across the 14 case studies ask for a flexible and pragmatic approach in establishing the MARGs. A strict set up for how to establish a MARG cannot take into account the varying situations with regard to norms and practice of engagement already existing in the different case studies across the European countries in the project. In some case studies relations with core stakeholder groups are already present, or engagement platforms may already exist, in other case studies the situation may be entirely different. It was an aim for the workshops to present important issues to be considered when organizing a MARG, explain the theory, and suggest how to approach these issues in practice. Enabling meaningful engagement is facilitated by some knowledge of stakeholders. Meaningful and successful stakeholder involvement are influenced by issues as: power balance, equity, trust, adaptivity, shared goals, available resources, decision space as these issues are likely to impact positively or negatively stakeholders’ willingness to contribute, share their experiences. Continuity of stakeholders is important for building relationships and trust (takes time). «Trust» is identified as an overall cross cutting dimension being fundamental for successful engagement processes.