Why Engage the Public?

Not all public participation is the same; there are numerous levels at which you might wish to engage with the public based on the project, the stakeholders, and the decisions to be made.

Public engagement, when done effectively, can improve conservation outcomes. Engaging the public in agency planning and projects can strengthen agency decisions and actions in many ways.

Effective public engagement involves taking the time to understand the interests and values of potentially affected parties. This helps generate solutions that are more reflective of broader interests, while also building understanding between different stakeholders of one another’s perspectives. Increased dialogue and understanding between diverse stakeholders can lead to improved trust and cooperation.
Harnessing multiple viewpoints, experiences, and forms of knowledge helps identify issues and concerns early in the planning process. Effective engagement processes provide a constructive place to identify areas of disagreement – whether between the agency and stakeholders or amongst the stakeholders themselves – and explore opportunities to address those disagreements.
If proposed solutions to a problem reflect public and stakeholder input and interests, they are also more likely to experience support. Increasing public buy-in to collaboratively designed agreements promotes shared implementation and increased compliance.
When done well, public participation helps to teach stakeholders meaningful and collaborative ways to work with one another, manage difficult decisions, and resolve disputes. Stakeholders learn to appreciate other’s positions by first learning about other’s values and interests.

Potential Downsides of Engagement

While effective public and stakeholder engagement can lead to better decision-making processes and outcomes, it is not without potential drawbacks.

Increasing levels of participation require more time, effort, and resources of both the agency and stakeholders. Ideally, this added effort during the decision-making process will pay off through better solutions and easier implementation, but this is not always the case.
Public and stakeholder engagement does not guarantee better decisions or harmonious relationships. It requires patience and a willingness to try new approaches.It can require the agency as well as the public and stakeholders to move out of their comfort zones.
Some pressing problems call for immediate action and there simply is not time to carry out meaningful public engagement.
Extremely controversial or contested issues make high levels of public engagement difficult if not impossible. When differing values or past conflicts are considerations, meaningful engagement might not be possible without investing significant time and energy into relationship and trust-building.

Reasons Why Engagement Processes Fail

Effective engagement processes do not just happen – they have to be designed and supported. Research on engagement processes indicates several common reasons why engagement processes fail.

Incomplete or shallow engagement

Not fully committing to an engagement process, not being willing to try new and different approaches, and/or not really incorporating public input into a decision are some of the most common reasons why engagement processes fail. Incomplete or shallow engagement can do more harm than good in terms of building trust with the public and stakeholders.
Insufficient attention to process design

Poorly designed and poorly run engagement processes can lead to lack of participation, lack of learning and trust-building, frustration on the part of the public, and delays in decision-making.

Situation Analysis

A situation analysis, sometimes called a situation assessment, is the first step in any public or stakeholder engagement effort. Situation analyses gather information to determine the appropriate level of public participation and design the public participation process.

Situation analyses can be limited and informal or intensive and time-consuming. The more detailed the analysis, the clearer the direction for engagement.

Specifically, effective situation assessments can help accomplish the following:

Clarification of the problem or opportunity and the decision to be made;
Explanation of the agency’s approach to public participation;
Identification of stakeholders and their concerns, including hard to reach or marginalized communities;
Uncovering information gaps or misunderstandings so they can be addressed;
Description of constraints on the public participation process; and
Exposing issues that will need to be considered in the decision process.

Why conduct a situation analysis?

A situation analysis systematically examines the context of a project and the needs of stakeholders. The information obtained helps design a public engagement process that responds to the needs and interests of both the decision-makers and stakeholders.

How to conduct a situation analysis

A situation analysis consists of two phases: an internal assessment followed by an external assessment.

Phase 1 - The internal assessment

The internal assessment clarifies the problem or opportunity, the decision to be made, available resources for public participation, agency expectations about the appropriate level of public participation, internal support for public participation, and how public input will be used to inform the decision.

What is the problem or opportunity?

Agencies must first clarify the issue at hand and identify if there is an opportunity for public participation. The more complex or controversial an issue, the more rigorous the assessment should be. During this phase, agencies can assess any potential conflicts, begin to identify potential stakeholders and start a dialogue with the appropriate parties about the proposed participation. By conducting this assessment and laying the groundwork ahead of time, agencies can avoid unexpected conflicts as the process moves forward. A more extensive analysis of stakeholder involvement should be conducted in an external assessment once the internal assessment is completed.

What level of influence should the public have?

The first step in identifying the appropriate level of public participation is to answer the following question: How much influence over the decision is the agency able and willing to hand over to the public? Clarifying the role of the public is critical. Without this clarity, stakeholders may perceive that they will or should have significant influence over a decision, and become dissatisfied by the process or outcome if they do not.

The further along the spectrum of engagement, the more influence the public and stakeholders have over a decision. At the Inform level, the public does not have any influence over the outcomes; the goal is merely to provide the public with balanced and objective information. While the Inform level is not truly public participation, it is important to recognize that sometimes agencies can do no more than providing the public with sound information. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Empower level, the final decision-making rests entirely in the hands of the public. Most agencies are not legally able to hand over decision-making solely to the public. For these reasons, the most effective public participation happens within the middle of the spectrum – at the consult, involve, and collaborate level.

How much participation do you need?

Agencies often utilize varying levels of public participation at different stages of a decision process. Additionally, agencies almost always conduct public participation at all levels beneath the highest level of participation being utilized, as some stakeholders will choose to engage at different levels.

As the level of engagement increases, the number of participants decreases. Lower levels, particularly inform and consult, can accommodate many stakeholders. Higher levels of participation require more effort on the part of both agencies and stakeholders and therefore generally attract fewer stakeholders.

How much time/money does it warrant?

As the level of engagement increases, often so do the number of meetings and interactions – meaning that both the agency and participants must commit more time and effort to the process. Collaboration, for example, may involve consensus-seeking and is often limited to a representative group of stakeholders involved in long-term processes, such as long-term advisory boards.

Phase 2 - The external assessment

Once an internal assessment is completed, an external analysis should follow. During this phase, agency staff, partner organizations, and/or an outside third-party identifies the full range of external stakeholders that should be engaged and begins to map out the different interests, concerns, and aspirations of those various stakeholders. It is important to consider past decisions and historical relationships with stakeholders. The lead agency will also need to consider the involvement of other agencies, overlapping jurisdictions, and existing mandates.

Who are our stakeholders?

Stakeholders are anyone who will be impacted by or can influence your project or decisions. Stakeholders can have a negative or positive impact on your efforts and vice-versa. Not all stakeholders are equally impacted by or involved in your conservation issue. In order to engage each stakeholder appropriately and to determine the best ways to engage with your community overall, you must first characterize each stakeholder and their interests. For example, if you identify serious conflict among two stakeholder groups, you may not want to start off your engagement efforts with a public meeting involving everyone at once, but instead speak to these groups separately and mediate as much tension as possible before bringing them into a shared space.

Who are our key stakeholders?

Agencies need to understand who the key stakeholders are and determine how these stakeholders feel about the proposed project or decision. Think about their motives, what information they might need and want, the current relationship with the potential stakeholders, how much influence they already have within the agency and the community, and your expectations about how they will respond.

How should we prioritize our stakeholders?

Stakeholders can be classified and mapped out in terms of interest and power in a grid: for an example see:

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_07.html