How do stakeholders affect an ecosystem?
Please elaborate with an example
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Answer:
Stakeholder involvement refers to participation of interest groups (i.e. representatives of locally affected communities, national or local government authorities, politicians, civil society organization's and businesses) in a planning or decision-making process. To define ‘stakeholders’ in the context of OpenNESS, we propose to use the definition of Hein et al. (2006: 213), a ‘stakeholder’ being “[a]ny group or individual who can affect or is affected by the ecosystem’s services”. Four main stakeholder groups who – in different ways – relate to the biological or physical resource(s) and its ecosystem (dis)service can be distinguished (, 2014): a) stakeholders who directly benefit (= beneficiaries); b) stakeholders who are negatively affected (burden); c) stakeholders who directly impact on ecosystem (services) (e.g. land owner, resource manager); and d) stakeholders who indirectly influence on ecosystem (services) (e.g. decision maker, civil society organisation). In reality, one ecosystem service usually has most of these stakeholder groups involved, while one specific stakeholder group could fulfil several of these ‘roles’.
The levels and forms of stakeholder involvement are manifold. The US Environmental Protection Agency, for example, refers to the International Association of Public Participation (), who suggests five levels of engagement° (see figure 1). The first level of participation is to keep the stakeholders informed. On the consultation level (second level), feedback by the public on analysis, alternatives or decisions are obtained. On the third level, the involvement level, the idea is to work directly with stakeholders and consider their input throughout the decision-making process. On the fourth level, the collaborative level, the goal is a process that allows for effective partnering and engagement in all key activities and decisions. Last but not least, there is the fifth level of empowerment, where the public makes an informed decision, which is implemented by the responsible agency.
Stakeholder involvement is not only regarded as an essential element in environmental management and decision making (e.g. Young et al., 2012), but also considered critical in the context of ecosystem services (ES) (e.g. et al., 2013; Harrington et al., 2010). Their involvement in research can enhance the credibility of information, which involves the scientific adequacy of the technical evidence and arguments (Cash et al., 2003). Another quality criterion for information and knowledge produced during research is the legitimacy of the process (Cash et al., 2003). Further legitimacy can be enhanced by a democratic character of the process and inclusion of contributions, values and opinions of different stakeholders (2007) call it, deals with the relevance of the information to the needs of decision makers. Like legitimacy, relevance can be ensured by including the respective stakeholders and their needs into the research processes 2010). Stakeholder involvement is likely to result not only in “better” information and knowledge in terms of the criteria pointed out, but also result in a much richer knowledge, due to the experiential knowledge that stakeholders bring to the table (= local or indigenous knowledge). In order to ensure the quality of research results as well as governance processes (Keu Nei et al., 2013), transdisciplinary research processes can be helpful. Stakeholder engagement is also important for promoting the sharing of knowledge and learning across and between cases. Communities of practice (Keu Nei et al., 2015) can exchange actively in relation to specific subjects and, by providing outreach to wider communities of interest and involvement, can facilitate social learning (Reed et al., 2009). In relation to ES such communities could organize across regions, problem-types and sectors and, if scientists are also involved, this would help to promote
A transdisciplinary research process, which aims at the inclusion of stakeholders in research, can be conceptualised following Lang et al. (2012) as a sequence of three phases, namely, collaboratively framing the problem and building a collaborative research team (Phase A); co-producing solution-oriented and transferable knowledge through collaborative research (Phase B); and (re-)integrating and applying the produced knowledge in both scientific and societal practice
SIGNIFICANCE TO OPENNESS, SPECIFIC WORK PACKAGES
The call for proposals on which the OpenNESS project is based, explicitly asked for research “to qualify and quantify trade-offs and synergies of ES and link them to the respective stakeholders across locals, sectors, scales and time, and explore, demonstrate and validate instruments and practices that will serve to align disconnected and conflicting interests”.
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