Stakeholder participation is now universally recognised as an essential ingredient of successful and credible forest policies and programmes. There often remains a gap, however, between stated intentions and actual actions in regard to improving participation. To facilitate policy implementation, practitioners can draw on the published material on participation techniques applied both within and outside the sector and by donors and governments.
Participation can take many forms, from the field level ( participatory resource management methods) up to central policy making (e.g.public consultation). In many cases there are established techniques for identifiying the parties to involve and their likely importance to the successful implementation of programmes (e.g. stakeholder analysis, survey methods).
Much material of interest has been generated by donor agencies (e.g. World Bank, DFID) who have themselves realised the importance of participation to the successful execution of projects. Still other useful knowledge has been generated outside the forest sector but lessons learned are also relevant to forestry professionals.
Interfaces with other digests
Several texts listed here highlight the importance of participation by the poorest groups of stakeholders and the need for participation in crosscutting issues such as sustainable development programmes.