During the past few months, the Italian research team of the Sea Marvel project has traveled among Acitrezza, Milazzo, Catania and Lampedusa to meet and interview some of the stakeholders of the investigated sites.
Stakeholders are all those groups that influence and/or are influenced by an organization’s activities, products or services, and related performance outcomes. Given that, the more stakeholders are involved, the more their great power to influence the planning and implementation of Marine Protected Areas and Oriented Nature Reserves increases, for this reason it is necessary to know how to mitigate all the inputs received and sent and try to better balance the different influences.
One of SEA Marvel’s strategies is Stakeholder Engagement, that is the commitment to support MPAs/ONRs of the principle of inclusiveness, which means recognizing the stakeholders’ right to be heard and accepting the commitment as an organization to be accountable for its activities and choices. Considering equally those who support and those who oppose the MPA project means mitigating the influence of those who only perceive it as a threat through an appropriate communication strategy.
The aim of this choice lies in the desire to look at the efficiency of MPA/ONR management also from the point of view of local stakeholders by trying to understand the possible synergies, which are themselves capable of improving the performance of the selected sites, to influence decisions that are also informed by the expectations and demands of the territorial community in which the investigated areas operate.
Preliminary results show how MPAs still lack technical tools to support and facilitate dialogue and communication with local organizations. In many cases, communication is not planned systematically and does not often ensure the follow-up of ongoing projects.
In this regard, there is an increased need to develop and consolidate synergies among local stakeholders. In order to do so, it is necessary to support dialogue and listening among stakeholders, round tables to check expectations and to set or revise policies and strategies and to implement initiatives aimed at providing concrete responses to the stakeholders involved.
The research team is processing the data from all the interviews carried out in these days; the analysis provided will be the basis for the drafting of the guidelines to efficiently manage the Natura 2000 areas selected by SEA Marvel, in order for these guidelines not to be a tool “dropped from above,” the result of the will or imagination of researchers, but can be the result of a common sense of the area hosting MPAs/ONRs.
Scientific support from the Universities of Catania and Malta continues in this direction.
Research team meets Lampedusa fishing tourism operators
Research team meets Lampedusa shipowners’ association
