Stakeholder Analysis on Ecosystem Services of Lake Manyara Sub-basin (Tanzania): How to Overcome Confounding Factors.

Ecosystem services are a telling concept to discuss the integrated management of natural resources, such as integrated water and soil, with non-academic stakeholders. Stakeholders have different perceptions regarding the management of various ecosystem services, which is challenging when aiming to develop and foster sustainable ecosystem management. We performed a stakeholder analysis as part of a social-ecological study in preparation of a decision support system for integrated water management within the Lake Manyara sub-basin (LMSB), Tanzania. The area includes a National Park and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. A group discussion listed 26 stakeholders, categorized according to the sector, influence, and interest. The stakeholders were grouped into six functional categories: local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), other civil society groups, Belgian and international NGOs, authorities, academics associated to international donors and the private sector. We empirically identified advantages, shortcomings and associated risks when performing a stakeholder analysis with an interest-influence matrix. Confounding factors may include, e.g., the omission of important stakeholders, a different understanding of 'influence' and 'interest', or the omission of fragile groups. Instead of 'low' or 'high' interest and influence, we propose the terms 'supportive', 'potentially supportive', 'unsupportive', 'not interested', 'low or no influence' and 'antagonistic'. Further, we consider stakeholders who directly extract resources from the social-ecological system (SES) as a separate category, because of their direct dependence and impact on the SES. This improved stakeholder analysis framework for developing decision support systems in water basins can contribute to better analysis, understanding and management of aquatic social-ecological systems in general.

Communicating climate change and biodiversity loss with local populations: exploring communicative utopias in eight transdisciplinary case studies.

Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies targeting and impacting local communities worldwide. However, research and policy implementation often fail to sufficiently consider community responses and to involve them. We present the results of a collective self-assessment exercise for eight case studies of communications with regard to climate change or biodiversity loss between project teams and local communities. We develop eight indicators of good stakeholder communication, reflecting the scope of Verran's (2002) concept of postcolonial moments as a communicative utopia. We demonstrate that applying our indicators can enhance communication and enable community responses. However, we discover a divergence between timing, complexity and (introspective) effort. Three cases qualify for postcolonial moments, but scrutinising power relations and genuine knowledge co-production remain rare. While we verify the potency of various instruments for deconstructing science, their sophistication cannot substitute trust building and epistemic/transdisciplinary awareness. Lastly, we consider that reforming inadequate funding policies helps improving the work in and with local communities.