9c. Public participation, role of stakeholders

Track Chairs:

Simon Bell. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty, Open University, UK simon.bell@open.ac.uk

Giuseppe Ioppolo. Department of Economics, University of Messina, Italy giuseppe.ioppolo@unime.it

Goals and objectives of the track

Actions to seek "compromise" through stakeholder participation and negotiation is advocated to facilitate integration of shared interests, knowledge and values. Participation, one of the five principles of "good governance", through multi-stakeholder knowledge, significantly contributes to improve understanding and increase transparency in the decision-making process. Participation is a core action in a collaborative management process, and using innovative practice in problem identification, decision-making and action planning. Further, participatory practices allow an ethical operational method of adaptive management and contributes to joint endorsement of common decisions.
By working on sustainability topics, by sharing their importance, and by negotiating the ranking of each aspect with the related problem, in a participatory way, it is possible to establish a voluntary aggregation of local and external actors (e.g., policy makers, stakeholders, citizens).
Starting from these considerations, participation and advocacy play a strategic role at local scale but even more at regional and global scale.
Today Populism, Nationalism and various forms of ethnic exceptionalism have emerged as reactions to globalism and failed experiments in moulding regional civic architecture by technocratic diktat. Identity and exceptionalism are the key stones of the anarchic confusion underlying much of the political debate. Few now can make confident statements based on linear projections of ‘how we are today'. The pundits have been proved wrong time and time again and we live in ‘interesting times'. And yet, the need for sustainability on a global scale has never been clearer, the challenge of fracture and the threat of conflict are balanced against the opportunity for localism and the potential for community engagement.
We are concerned to understand the methods, tools, the experiences, useful to build an empowered community of stakeholders, that can play a strategic role in enhancing understanding, generating new options, decreasing hostility and aggressive attitudes among participants, exploring new problem framing, enlightening policy makers, and producing competent, fair and optimized solution packages that also facilitate consensus.
On the other hand, what kind of new concepts and pitfalls are of importance in the light of sustainability, when we promote participation and advocacy?

Into all of this emerges our Track on participation and advocacy.

This Track is concerned with such issues as:

The value of identity in political movement
The potential for engaging local populations in meaningful change
The passion for stakeholder values

We are also interested in:

The key concepts, methods and applications in participatory action for cutting-edge sustainability
The use of ICT for smart community and participation from local to global perspective
Examples of citizen engagement
The emergence of a new civics

And we want to hear about:

Action research with stakeholders
Blending political strategy with local needs
Advocacy for community sustainability

You may submit your abstract by visiting the Ex Ordo abstract submission system (you will be required to setup an account first): http://isdrs2018.exordo.com
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2017 7 January 2018

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