Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
18
Stakeholder Engagement in
Flood Risk Management
COLIN GREEN AND EDMUND C. PENNING-ROWSELL
Introduction
language, and we have to become effective in the
use of those symbolic systems, including under-
standing how those symbolic systems work.
Power is one form of social relationship; the
adoption of the governance model also opens up
and requires the reconsideration of many different
forms of explicit and implicit social relationships,
and the reciprocals of relationships, social roles.
For example, until recently the role of the engineer
was understood to be to determine what society
needed, determine the best means of satisfying
those needs, and to construct (literally) that best
option. Thus, engineers could talk about optimi-
zation. Stakeholder involvement has changed
all this.
'Stakeholder engagement' is then the practice
of social relationships in the pursuit of gover-
nance. For stakeholder engagement to be useful
and successful, it is necessary:
.
For there to be a reason for it: that in some sense,
decisions and their implementation will conse-
quently be 'better' than they would otherwise be.
In Chapter 17, the argument was developed that,
in some circumstances, cooperative or collabora-
tive approaches can sometimes deliver better
outcomes than individual action.
.
That there is a theoretical basis by which such
a better outcome can be achieved.
.
That the techniques and skills deliver on theo-
retical gain. It would be useless if, whilst some
'better' outcome could hypothetically be delivered
through stakeholder engagement, there was no
means of reaching that outcome in practice.
There are many descriptive manuals available
(UNDP 1997, Acland 1990; Creighton et al. 1991;
Governance, it was argued in Chapter 17, is about
power: who has it, who should have it, and how it
may be used (Lukes 1974). It is about how deci-
sions are made and how they are implemented.
Thus, it is simultaneously about how to achieve
objectives and how to make the best use of avail-
able resources in delivering on those objectives. It
has to address the reasons why decisions are nec-
essary in the first place, and hence the different
forms of conflict. It has to do so in a context where
interests are many and power is diffuse so that
there are many different stakeholders relevant to
a decision, and when social power - the ability to
influence others - is increasingly as important as
physical power - the ability to change the world.
It has to do so when a cooperative solution may
offer at least one interest group no advantages over
an alternative, and when the potential gains from
collaboration lie only in the longer term.
Because governance involves the possession
and use of power, it raises all the difficult ques-
tions of justice, legitimacy and accountability -
different forms of social relationships. For
governance to be effective, it is also necessary that
we become very good atmanaging social relations;
social power is a skill rather than a property. In
turn, those social relationships are managed
through different symbolic systems, notably
