Engaging stakeholders is important for effective climate adaptation for several reasons: 1) Climate adaptation requires making changes that are judged based on both climate impacts and other social and economic factors, which benefits from input from a variety of stakeholders. 2) Implementing adaptation measures often requires collaboration between different groups, mandates, resources, and expertise that are not concentrated in any single entity. 3) Involving stakeholders in the process can increase acceptance of changes and support for adaptation. Stakeholder engagement may be beneficial at different stages of the adaptation process, including problem identification and analysis, planning interventions, implementation, and evaluation. The stakeholders engaged will depend on the issue and may include social groups, organizations, professionals,

1. Engaging stakeholders
in climate adaptation:
why, when, who, how?

2. Why engage stakeholders?
• Climate adaptation is effectively about making changes to reduce the
negative impacts of climate change and harness any positive impacts
• It’s about:
– doing (good) things more
– doing things differently (better)
message
radio
– doing different (better) things
businesses that
distribute
work to
Vietnam)
e.g. dig more drainage canals
e.g. issue early warnings via text
to mobile phones as well as via
broadcast
e.g. establish fund to collect money from
benefit from healthy forests and
it to individual households that
maintain those forests (e.g.
• What is good / better needs to be judged with specific and explicit
reference to changes in the climate, but also alongside other key
considerations, which may or may not be directly impacted by or impact
on the climate (e.g. economic market demands, government policies, etc.)

3. Why engage stakeholders?
• Making such judgements usually require some scientific
information but are also based on values (i.e. choices often cannot
be made on a purely technical basis but also require political
negotiation to be accepted)
• Implementing chosen changes often requires a range of mandates,
resources and expertise, seldom found in a single individual or
organization
• The process of adaptation therefore often requires collaboration
between a variety of stakeholders
• In addition, change is not well accepted and undertaken when
people don’t feel like they are part of the process of deciding on it,
therefore excluding stakeholders can potentially undermine the
adaptation process

4. When might stakeholder engagement
be necessary or beneficial?
• There are various stages in the adaptation process that might require
engaging with a variety of different stakeholders:
– Problem definition and analysis (i.e. climate impacts and sources of
vulnerability) – explored in exercise 1
– Raising awareness amongst other influential stakeholders who might not be
seeing the problem at all / or in the same way
– Planning an intervention to reduce climate impacts or harness new
opportunities (in terms of goal, objectives, strategies, actions, resources
required, means of measuring progress & impact)
– Doing the selected actions
– Reviewing and evaluating progress and outcomes (i.e. what is working, what is
not, who is benefitting, who is losing out / paying a price)
– Redesigning the next phase based on evidence gathered, lessons learned and
newly emerging needs and preferences
• Each stage might require a different level or depth of participation
• These stages are not often discrete and sequential but rather overlapping
and iterative

5. Exercise 1: combining perspectives
through group mapping
• Purpose: identify and work through differences in
perception about what the various causes of a problem are
that in turn can be used to identify suitable interventions to
deal with the root causes and not simply the symptoms
Instructions:
1.
2.
Get into groups of 4-5
On a sheet of flip
chart draw a large
fishbone

6. Exercise 1: combining perspectives
through group mapping
• Instructions continued:
3.
4.
5.
Label the head of the fish with the problem to be analyzed
e.g. increases in crop failure
Identify factors that may cause this problem, prompted by
asking “why”. Group members add their suggestions to the
lateral bones of the fish (use post-it notes so they can be
moved around if necessary)
Explore the root causes of each suggested factor in turn
Problem
Proximate causes
Root causes

7. Exercise 1: combining perspectives
through group mapping
•
•
•
•
Discuss plenary: the potential strengths and weaknesses of using
this kind of exercises with different stakeholder groups (e.g.
groups of fishermen, local government officials, national policymakers, etc.)
Alternative version of the exercise: First individuals create their
own graphic before combining them into a group picture (useful
when topic is new and unfamiliar or very contentious, enables
participants to take time gathering their own thoughts before
engaging with others to reach a consensus version)
One limitation of this exercise is that it doesn’t explore the
feedbacks between causes
A more advance version of this exercise is to develop a systems
model that captures these feedbacks (both positive and negative)
to capture more complex system dynamics and the possible
knock on effects of a particular intervention

8. Who are the stakeholders to engage?
• Depends on aim of the engagement (i.e. list in slide on when to
engage), the resources available (often one has to be selective
for practical purposes), and the willingness of individuals and
organizations to be engaged
• Types of stakeholders:
– Social or economic / livelihood groups (e.g. mothers, rice farmers, tourist
guides, dive instructors, etc.)
– Civic networks / non-governmental organizations (e.g. trade unions,
religious leaders, etc.)
– Professional groups (e.g. spatial planners, veterinarians, educators, etc.)
– Government officials and policy-makers (e.g. provincial politicians, local
administrative officials, etc.)
– Businesses (e.g. ferry company, fishing charters, hotel chains, bottled
water company, rice processors, etc.)

9. Who are the stakeholders to engage?
• Prioritize those with
importance to and
influence over the
problem being
addressed, but being
careful not to perpetuate
or further entrench
existing inequalities by
excluding those with
minimal power, influence
and resources
Source: VSO Participatory Approaches: A facilitator’s guide
Note: PA = participatory approaches

10. Who are the stakeholders to engage?
• There is often value in linking across scales / governance
levels (community-based, local, provincial, national,
regional, international stakeholders as relevant) and
between sectors to draw in different knowledge, resources,
areas of influence and responsibilities
• The next exercise is one example of how to identify who
the critical stakeholders are in relation to the climate
change-related issue you are targeting

11. Exercise 2: exploring influence and
importance of different stakeholders
•
Purpose: Stakeholder Mapping shows the key institutions and individuals linked to
an issue or intended outcome, together with their relationships and their
importance in decision-making
Instructions:
1.
In your group decide on the adaptation issue / outcome to be focused on –
write in centre of flip chart sheet
2.
List the stakeholders that affect and are affected by that issue
3.
Cut out different size circles to represent each institution or individual, the
bigger circle indicates more important stakeholders, label each circle with the
name of the institution or individual
4.
Lay out the circles relative to each other according to the degree of contact and
overlap between each circle in terms of decision-making:
separate circles = no contact
touching circles = information passes between institutions
More important
small overlap = some cooperation in decision-making
large overlap = considerable cooperation in decision-making
Less important

12. Exercise 2: exploring influence and
importance of different stakeholders
• Discuss in plenary: does this exercise help reveal which
stakeholders to target in various ways; can you begin to
identify where potential conflicts might arise between interest
groups
• Beware that the alliances of group participants may influence
consensus over who is ‘important’, which may result in a
skewed picture if there is not diverse representation
• This exercise can lead to more advanced techniques such as
formal Social Network Analysis (where more rigorous and
detailed information adds value and resources exist to
implement the method)

13. How to engage different types of
stakeholders
• Key principles of effective engagement (adapted from
Gardner et al, 2009):
– Learn about other current or prior engagements: important because
prior positive experiences can help promote engagement, prior
negative experiences can retard engagement; current activities of
other groups can potentially confuse participants or cause mutual
interference, but also present opportunities to use existing forums.
– Set goals and plan: spend time clarifying what you want to achieve
from the engagement process; be strategic about where/with whom
engagement is pursued; adding a discussion of climate adaptation into
existing engagement groups may be an efficient approach.
– Manage expectations: establish up-front where there is potential for
participants to influence outcomes and where there is not.

14. How to engage different types of
stakeholders
• Key principles of effective engagement (adapted from
Gardner et al, 2009)… continued:
– Use group discussion: it is important to use a range of engagement
forums, but group discussion is particularly important to enable the
“high quality conversations” which allow people to develop a more
complex understanding of the issue at hand.
– Use varied presentation formats: information should be presented in a
range of different ways to accommodate the range of learning styles
and needs in the community.
– Allow for mutual influence: participants should have the opportunity
to have input into decisions (as opposed to just being told what to do
or just being asked to identify issues).

15. How to engage different types of
stakeholders
• Key principles of effective engagement (adapted from
Gardner et al, 2009) … continued:
– Foster trust, respect and ownership: Ideally, all parties to the
engagement process should trust each other, respect one another’s
viewpoint and inputs, and should gain a sense of personal
responsibility towards the issue.
– Maintain contact and feedback: people become cynical about
engagement if conveners do not communicate how participants’ input
and suggestions were taken into account.
– Engagement should be systematically evaluated, to draw lessons for
the next time.

16. How to engage different types of
stakeholders
• There are various types of engagement for which some modes of
engagement are more effective than others:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Informing
Lobbying
Consulting
Shared decision-making
Acting together (joint implementation)
Knowledge co-production and learning
• There are a range of participatory tools & methods, some of which
are better suited to certain stakeholder groups than others (e.g.
community members versus national policy-makers versus
commercial business managers)
• More of these can be included in further modules if considered
needed and thereby a learning priority

17. Recommended resources
• weADAPT
– Risk communications
– Stakeholder analysis and engagement
– Social learning
• Gardner, J, Dowd, A-M., Mason, C. and Ashworth, P. (2009).
A framework for stakeholder engagement on climate
adaptation. CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship Working
paper No.3, URL: http://www.csiro.au/files/files/pph1.pdf
• VSO Participatory Approaches: A facilitator’s guide, URL:
http://community.eldis.org/.59c6ec19/