1 research outputs found
Limits of stakeholder participation in sustainable development : "where facts are few, experts are many"
Extract from: The Mediterranean coastal areas from watershed to the sea : interactions and changes / by L.F. Cassar ... [et al.]. Proceedings of the MEDCORE International conference, Florence, 10th-14th November 2005The notion of including stakeholders, those affected (positively or negatively)
by a sustainable development programme in both its design and implementation,
has become a central concern for those implementing such programmes.
Such an approach is often referred to as ‘stakeholder participation’, as ‘participatory
development’ or more simply still as ‘participation’. How best to
achieve this has been the topic of a substantial literature, with a host of different
methodologies presented and promoted. Each has its own advantages
and disadvantages, but there has been surprisingly little discussion in the
sustainable development literature as to the limits and dangers of participation
irrespective of the approach employed to ‘best’ facilitate it. Inter-linked
with the limits of participation is the role of specialists and expert opinion
in sustainable development. This paper discusses the results of participatory
exercises conducted in Gozo (Malta) between 2003 and 2005. On the positive
side, participation yielded many useful and interesting insights and invoked
a sense of ‘involvement’ in sustainable development, but there were
problems and these are discussed in this paper. For example, the outcome of
the exercise crucially depends upon representation, and a simplified vision of
‘community’ often employed in participation to make it practicable can load
the process in favour of certain stakeholder groups at the expense of others.peer-reviewe