FutureLakes Unveils Best Practices of Stakeholder Participation in Lake Governance

FutureLakes has just released an insightful report on stakeholder mapping and analysis across our six Demo lake basins. This analysis highlights several best practices in lake governance that facilitate successful lake restoration. 
 
Entitled “Stakeholder Mapping: Analysis of Stakeholder Involvement in Lake Restoration in Six European Countries”, it brings a comprehensive analysis of the six FutureLakes Demo lake basins from a stakeholder engagement and participation perspective.

The report also outlines the theory and a practical toolkit for mapping stakeholder interests and their influence on restoration success. These methods, along with the six case-studies, offer valuable lessons and inspiration for restoration practitioners. Moreover, this report is particularly timely for member states implementing the EU Nature Restoration Regulation which, as outlined by Article 15(3)(w)), requires their national plan to include information on how the needs of local communities and stakeholders have been considered. 

This report is important in the project, as many later tasks and activities aim to enhance stakeholder involvement in lake management and understand which stakeholders are most influential in restoration success. It can also serve as a baseline of current stakeholder engagement, especially for the Greek, Polish, and Norwegian cases that will test increasing engagement through Enhanced Platforms for Dialogue using Critical Friends groups.  

Learning and inspiration 
We hope that the report will attract the wider attention of lake practitioners and policymakers and provide them with theoretical and methodological toolkits for mapping stakeholder interests and their influence on restoration success. 

This is very timely for implementing the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) which, as outlined by Article 15(3)(w)), requires national plans to include information on how the needs of local communities and stakeholders have been considered. The methods outlined, along with the six case-studies, offer valuable learning and inspiration for restoration practitioners to achieve greater societal involvement in national plans.  

The deliverable provides learning across the Demo lake basins. FutureLakes' six case studies demonstrate significant diversity in lake governance institutions and mechanisms for stakeholder involvement. Each case has a historical narrative from a stakeholder engagement perspective and is evaluated against an OECD framework, categorizing various levels of engagement. Each case has a stakeholder identification table.

Altogether, the authors have identified 220 stakeholders (between 20 and 60 in each case). The report also includes a Power/Interest matrix for each case study, organizing stakeholders along their influence and focus on the lake restoration process. The report concludes with some interesting observations on lake governance across the cases.