Management and communication consultants. Specialising in the human side of sustainable development

Reading Room

Stakeholder Engagement

The AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard developed by AccountAbility provides at least some structured guidance for designing, implementing, evaluating and assuring an organisation’s overall stakeholder engagement program. It’s only a starting point, but not a bad one at that.

The International Association for Public Participation’s (IAP2) Public Participation Spectrum provides a sensible hierarchy for intensity of stakeholder engagement from “inform” through to “empower”. Their website has other useful resources including a public participation toolbox. There is an active IAP2 Australasian Chapter and annual conference.

Effective, interest-based, negotiation is kernel to a successful outcome from a challenging stakeholder engagement process. Harvard Law School’s Negotiation Clearing House is an excellent place to browse for publications, teaching tools and many other negotiation resources.

With the close of the Coastal Cooperative Research Centre, its excellent Citizen Science Toolbox has moved to Griffith University and has been renamed the URP Toolbox. There you’ll find numerous stakeholder engagement tools and case studies in a readily searchable format.

We recently conducted a stakeholder research project for EPA Victoria on attitudes to engagement around the closure and rehabilitation of the Tullamarine Landfill, a facility for the disposal of prescribed waste with a history of ardent community campaigning over much of its life. The research, which was based on depth interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders, followed a conflict assessment approach.

This paper on the NIMBY phenomenon, presented by Tim Offor to the Electricity Supply Association of Australia’s conference, is getting a bit long in the tooth, but it does provide some – hopefully useful – guidance on engaging with angry communities.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. - Lord Tennyson

Informed Consensus

Download a brochure explaining our Informed Consensus process.

A paper by Tim Offor and Barbara Sharp, presented to the 2008 Indigenous Communities, Economic Development and Tax Policy Symposium, sets the context and discusses some of the key issues associated with a large-scale and very challenging multi-party negotiation process. A more detailed paper on the process has also been published as a working paper through the Australian National University's Resource Management in the Asia-Pacific Program.

To see an Informed Consensus process in detail, have a look through the website for the Ok Tedi CMCA Review, www.wanbelistap.com. The downloads section provides a very detailed chronology of the meetings as well as they key foundation documents and reports.

Social research and impact assessment

We use the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) International Principles for Social Impact Assessment as guidance when conducting SIAs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of our SIA work is related to controversial projects. Following are some examples of our work as well as some reports by independent panels that respond to our expert testimony.

• Expert witness statement on the social impacts of the Gunns Bell Bay Pulp Mill
• Bald Hills Wind Farm Socio-economic Report
• Panel report on the Bald Hills Wind Farm Project
• Panel report on the Dollar Wind Farm Project (although their report was not officially released, the planning panel recommended to the Minister for Planning that the project be approved and their report was subsequently leaked to the ABC. The proponent decided not to proceed with the project).

For the Yaloak Wind Farm Project, in addition to stakeholder interviews, we undertook some novel quantitative research into public attitudes to the visual impacts of wind farms. Very little quantitative survey work, beyond basic opinion polls has been done on public att, and Pacific Hydro has been good enough to consent to this report being made publicly available to contribute to the informed debate around the visual impacts of wind farms.

Sustainable development frameworks and plans

For anyone looking for practical guidance on integrating sustainability into business strategy, we recommend Capitalism at the Crossroads by Stuart L. Hart and “Capitalism as if the world matters” by Jonathon Porritt (Founder of UK NGO Forum for the Future) as good starting points.

We must also draw readers' attention to the Sustainability Leadership Framework released by the Australian Plastics and Chemicals Industries Association in 2008. We have worked with PACIA on the development of the framework, which is based on the Hart-Milstein Sustainable Value Framework and are providing training in integrating the framework to PACIA member companies.