Stakeholder engagement protocol

Description

Engaging stakeholders is a core operating principle of NAIAD, not an add-on. Because the approach spans physical, social, cultural and economic systems, the knowledge required is distributed across a wide range of actors — decision makers, practitioners, scientists, end users and communities — and each of them holds part of the picture. The protocol is the standardised way of assembling it.

It consists of ten iterative and sequential steps: description of the site and its water risks by the site leader; stakeholder mapping by interest, position, power and proximity; interviews with two leaders of opinion; a first round of stakeholder interviews alongside the European IVE survey; a first workshop for collaborative identification and ranking of measures; a second round of interviews; a second workshop to define scenarios, cluster measures into strategies and select indicators; a third round of interviews targeting those who deal directly with risk; and a final workshop to validate business models and design the finance and implementation arrangement.

The sequence was applied across all nine demonstration sites, which is what makes the results comparable between them, while the choice of participatory method within each step was left to the site.

Applications to decision making in the insurance sector

Steps eight and nine are where the sector enters. The third round of interviews is targeted at stakeholders who deal directly with risk and is designed to establish the role insurance plays in local risk management and where the entry points are; the final workshop validates the business models that were identified ex ante through the NAS canvas and collects the information needed to design a financing arrangement.

Added value of this modelling approach

It produces legitimacy. A model built from contributions that participants can recognise as their own is a model they will defend, which is the difference between an assessment that is accepted and one that is contested.

What decision can be improved with this modelling approach

Which measures to take forward and in what combination; which indicators to monitor; who should be involved in a financing arrangement; and how to sequence a co-design process so that it produces decisions rather than discussion.