International Waters learning Exchange & Resource Network

Stakeholders

See Documents 1022282935363859]

'Stakeholders' are key partners of all IW Marine Projects and as such the PCU has an obligation to keep the many interested groups updated on aspects of the project (See PMM for more information). It is critical climate change in ocean and coastal governance in the context of reducing vulnerability of the poor, to maintain sustainable livelihoods and support sustainable development.

Role of community organizations in managing marine resources

Local-scale actions over medium-term time frames (i.e. <5 years) can include strengthening community groups responsible for managing coastal resources, improvements in coastal infrastructure, and migration to non-coastal areas. In much of the western Indian Ocean, community-based organizations are increasingly empowered with the responsibility of managing coastal resources such as reef-based fisheries. In the short term, national scale efforts to provide social safety nets may help to increase adaptive capacity by preventing the marginally poor from falling into poverty traps and reduce exposure to climate change. International-scale policy actions are much more general, with little specificity to coral reefs. Effectively adapting to changes in coral reef fisheries will also require governance of broader marine seascapes. Decades of research on common property institutions have suggested that there is a clear need for governance rules to be congruent with local social and environmental conditions.

Vulnerability of coastal communities to key impacts of climate change on coral reef fisheries,Global Environmental Change, 22, 2012 (Ref. Doc. 5)

Stakeholder engagement occurs throughout the project cycle, from inception through policy development, implementation and monitoring. Initial steps (for example stakeholder mapping and analysis), essential to projects undertaking a TDA/SAP are also beneficial to all GEF IW Marine Projects.

During the main implementation of the project, the PCU should consider preparing information targeted to specific groups of stakeholders (e.g. government institutions, communities, schools, etc.) to convey both the issue of climate change and the need for adaptation and the approaches to be adopted by the project. This will further increase overall awareness of the issues and encourage sustainability at all levels.

Mainstreaming into development institutions

The paper reviews the context and challenges to environmental mainstreaming (EM), discusses what it takes to achieve effective EM, and provides a roadmap for selecting operational EM methods and tools. The focus is on those approaches and tools which directly help to shape policies, plans and decisions; not the wider array of secondary tools applied to implement those decisions. The conclusion is that too many tools are being ‘pushed’ by outside interests, and too few locally developed (and more informal, or less expensive) approaches are widely known. There is not enough ‘demand-pull’ information from potential users. Neither is there enough information available that helps them to select the right tool themselves – as opposed to taking what others want or suggest/promote. Given the prevalence of ‘top-down’ material promoting particular mainstreaming techniques on the one hand, and the paucity of really effective mainstreaming to date on the other, the conclusion is that environmental mainstreaming capacity will be much stronger if stakeholders are able to select tools, methods and tactics that are relevant to their context. Some of these will be widely used and others still in development; some are easy to do and others demanding of skills and money; some are effective but others are not.

IIED: The challenges of environmental mainstreaming into development institutions and decisions, 2009 (Ref. Doc. 59)