Identifying and analysing the stakeholders

The second step in building a stakeholder network to identify and analyse relevant stakeholders. The main purpose of this step is to: i) clarify who has a stake in the issues, who can affect or be affected by the decisions, and who has information, knowledge and expertise about the issues. This step also allows for the identification of those who can support or obstruct the implementation of the outcomes (Taschner & Fiedler 2009); and ii) understand and analyse the relations between the different stakeholder groups. It is crucial to define these relations, whether based on cooperation or competition, in order to identify the methods required to build a consensus (Monjardin 2004).

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According to the definition of a stakeholder used by Gray (1989) and Araujo (2000), there are a wide range of stakeholders, with varying interests and influence, that can be identified for ecotourism development. They may be individuals, groups or organisations. They include government agencies, private sectors, NGOs and communities. The stakeholders, based on the GIZ (2011) classification, may be internal stakeholders, which encompasses the relevant actors located inside the development boundaries, or external, which may include stakeholders from outside the development boundaries, such as national and international actors. Practically, it is impossible to involve all the stakeholders in ecotourism development during the planning activities or to treat all potential stakeholders as equals. Such an approach will be ineffectual and often conclude in stalemate with different stakeholders taking opposing positions (Currie, Seaton & Wesley 2009). Therefore, the identification of appropriate representatives is critical for the efficiency and effectiveness for all planning processes, including ecotourism (Taschner & Fiedler 2009). These representatives will be necessary to increase the legitimacy of the plans and minimise the resistance to their implementation (Choi 2005). However, defining who will be participants and who will be non-participants is not always straightforward. Some of the influential stakeholders to be included in the planning process can be identified using a variety of methods (WEF 2000). The next subsection will illustrate how internal and external stakeholders can be identified and analysed to build the network.

Identifying the stakeholders: It is important to correctly identify all different stakeholders and appropriate representatives to address stakeholder requirements during the process and within the final outcomes (Taschner & Fiedler 2009). Failure to identify either the stakeholders and/or their representative may lead to significant contributions being excluded from the planning process and then significant resistance may arise (Kelly et al. 2004). Some of the problems may include:

-Critical constraints and problems being overlooked or under-prioritised;

-Agreements reached not addressing the concerns and priorities of all the relevant stakeholders who are affected by the development;

-Ownership and support of the process, and subsequent decisions, could be lost if key stakeholders have not been identified; and

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-Excluded stakeholders may resist or try to obstruct the project from being implemented.

Based on a review of the literature, including international examples of collaborative planning in practice, it cannot be emphasised enough that, in order to avoid the issues mentioned above and ensure successful identification of relevant stakeholders, the conveners should start, in the early stages of the process, to create a long list of potential stakeholders using a variety of techniques in an attempt to minimise bias and ensure a wide range of people concerned and interested in the development are involved (Currie, Seaton & Wesley 2009; Markwell 2010). Kelly and his colleagues (2004) acknowledged that there are generally six factors as to how relevant stakeholders can be identified:

-Proximity, which includes people who are living, working or spending time in or adjacent to the development areas;

-Economic, such as local business people or those who want to enhance their livelihood;

-Use which encompasses people who use or may use the area’s resources or facilities;

-Social/environmental, which covers people’s concerns with the social or environment impacts of the development;

-Values, such as people who have ethical, religious or political interests in the development or its effects and;

-Legal mandates, which includes organisations and people who are legally required to be involved.

Beyond this, there is no template for identifying these stakeholders at the pre- planning stage and it is dependent on the issues and the characteristics of local stakeholders (Currie, Seaton & Wesley 2009). However, some studies hint that it is essential to build a list that reflects all the relevant stakeholder groups. In order to do so, the convener needs to: i) compile and review existing information, previous plans and documents related to development in the region. This will draw a general picture about the potential stakeholders and understand their connection to the development plans (Gunton, Rutherford & Dickinson 2010); ii) identify key informants, who are

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the most influential leaders or key people in each stakeholder group or those who are seen as leading players in the history of the conflict (both for and against the proposed development) (Monjardin 2004). In relation to the communities, they need to be mapped out to identify which members are knowledgeable about the local social fabric (Bramwell & Sharman 1999). Then the conveners should conduct semi- structured interviews with key informants or undertake focus groups to develop the initial stakeholder list, often using a snowballing technique to extend the network. Following this initial list of potential stakeholders, a content analysis needs to be utilised to finalise the list (Currie, Seaton & Wesley 2009); and iii) assemble a long list of actors who have been identified into a categorised list; i.e. individuals, government, organisations, etc., to ensure all the relevant interested groups can be included and facilitate discussion and analysis as part of the next phase (Albert, Gunton & Day 2003; GTZ 1988).

Stakeholder analysis: This step aims to categorise the potential stakeholders who have been identified, investigate the relationships between them to try and prioritise stakeholder involvement during the planning process by defining the appropriate roles, levels of participation and techniques of engagement for each stakeholder (Schmeer 2001). Stakeholder analysis is crucial to avoid participation gaps which exist if certain groups are underrepresented while others are overrepresented during the identification process. This may lead to an imbalance in stakeholder impacts on any plans compared to their actual role in society. Effective stakeholder analysis will help to achieve the balance not only in terms of quantity, where each group will be represented in a way that reflects its actual weight in the society, but also in terms of quality to avoid a specific group of stakeholders dominating events (Taschner & Fiedler 2009). A stakeholder analysis can be carried out using two sequential steps:

First, categorising the stakeholders: The literature offers several techniques that have been developed for this purpose, but most classify stakeholders into generic groups, for instance, into primary and secondary depending on whether they are directly, or indirectly affected by the development (GIZ 2011). However, Currie, Seaton and Wesley (2009) assert that a more precise typology of the stakeholders

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based on the number of attributes and interests may be more effective in collaborative planning by leading to better agreements compared to using generic groups. Such an analytical categorisation method can be carried out by using the level of stakeholder interest and influence matrices9 (Reed et al. 2009). These matrices classify the stakeholders into four groups based on their willingness to be involved in the planning process:

-Key players are the most critical stakeholders for any development. They must be fully engaged throughout the whole process because they have both high interest and influence;

-Context setters may be a significant risk for the development and should be monitored because they are highly influential but have low interest;

-Subjects have low influence but high interest. They will be supportive of the development and they should be kept informed and involved in discussions because they may become more influential by establishing alliances with other stakeholders; and

-Crowd, who have both low interest in and low influence over desired outcomes. A low priority is given to engaging with these groups (Bryson 2004; Reed et al. 2009).

Although these analytical techniques offer quick and useful ways for prioritising the stakeholder involvement, there are some limitations to their practical application that should be considered: i) often there is a lack of quantifiable measurement of the stakeholder attributes, as only whether an attribute is present or absent is checked (Currie, Seaton & Wesley 2009); ii) these techniques deal with stakeholder attributes as static, while their interventions in and interactions with, the issues are changeable over time. Therefore, in any collaborative planning process, including ecotourism development, the stakeholder analysis needs to be updated at every stage of a project’s lifetime to match the dynamics of the stakeholder needs,

9 _{These matrices have three popular forms: i) power-interest matrix to classify the stakeholders based on their}

level of authority and their level of concern with development or the outcomes; ii) power-influence for classifying based on the level of the power and level of their influence (active involvement) in the development; and iii) influence-impact matrix which is based on the their active involvement in the development and their abilities to effect changes to the development planning or implementation (impacts) (Rodriguez 2012).

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interests and priorities; and iii) there might be a lack of required knowledge, skills and resources to proceed with the stakeholder analysis (Reed et al. 2009).

Secondly, investigating the stakeholder interrelationships by analysing and understanding the stakeholder interactions within the network and the relative power and responsibilities of the stakeholder representatives and their respective parent bodies is one of the most important pillars for building and strengthening the partnership, to improve collaboration in the making and implementing plans. So, a relationship analysis needs to be conducted when building a stakeholder network in order to understand the interdependencies and the levels of interactive communication between the stakeholders. Such an analysis will help to provide useful information describing the existing form and quality of the relations between each stakeholder (whether conflicting, complementary or cooperating, or formal or informal) (GIZ 2011; Renard 2004). It may also clarify the main reasons for any interruptions, tensions or damages to these relations, thereby helping the convener promote relationships during the process.

There are two main methods to analyse stakeholder relationships: i) Social Network Analysis (SNA), which uses matrices to organise relationship data with regard to the presence or absence of ties (both negative and positive) and their strength. It uses a quantitative form to record this information so it can be summarised and analysed easily. SNA exposes the structure of the stakeholder network through identifying the focal node and marginal actors and defining the different stakeholder clusters, including how these clusters have been built. SNA can therefore be important to ensure that key stakeholders are involved and identify any conflict between different stakeholder groups; and ii) Knowledge Mapping (KM), which is a more flexible approach to enhance the communication and facilitate the learning between the stakeholder groups when used in conjunction with SNA. It maps out and evaluates the knowledge systems and exchange information mechanisms in order to widen them to include less knowledgeable stakeholders, thereby fostering effective collaboration and social learning (Reed et al. 2009).

Dialogue between stakeholder representatives (SRs) and their constituencies (respective parent bodies) are also critical in enhancing the parent body’s support and

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commitment to any final agreement. Gray (1989) suggested that this ideally takes place during the implementation stage. However, based on the international examples of collaborative planning (such as Brazil, Peru, Nepal and Zambia), mutual dialogue between SRs and their parent bodies should take place throughout the whole planning and implementation process. This keeps the parent bodies informed and understanding of the rationale for the trade-offs made and then they can share in the construction of the solutions that meet the needs of all relevant stakeholders (Araujo & Bramwell 2002; Cluck 1997). So this research proposes that the mutual dialogue needs to start at the same time as the stakeholder network building and the convener should continuously monitor these dialogues. Moreover, such dialogue provides a good opportunity to widen the support and the ownership of the stakeholders to the outcomes. It is important to prevent any surprises and dissatisfaction from the general public (Bentrup 2001). Dialogue should also improve the performance of representatives because they are usually expected to be accountable to their parent bodies during the planning process and ensure that their requirements are reflected in the outcomes (Araujo & Bramwell 2002). A rich body of literature such as Araujo (2000) and Healey (2006) offers some advice on good techniques for building an effective dialogue between SRs and their parent bodies. These include establishing consultation seminars to explore and discuss the outcomes of each phase of the process and getting feedback so that representative contributions to further activities can be better informed. Moreover, there should be regular reports about the process to keep the all parent bodies informed. Finally, the conveners should occasionally try to establish informal arenas with the main parent bodies, to ensure these bodies are informed and accept the outputs of the process.

Synthesis

The stakeholder network is the cornerstone to the success of collaborative planning because it is the most appropriate mode to facilitate effective negotiation between stakeholders and promote mutual learning. The legitimate convener has a critical role in building the stakeholder network, managing relations and building consensus through the collaborative planning process. Identifying and analysing the stakeholders is the first key step to network building. The main purposes of this step

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are clarifying who should be involved in the network, and understanding and analysing the relations between the stakeholder groups inside the network and outside with their parent bodies, which helps to define the stakeholder roles and most suitable methods of involvement.

Consequently, the research will investigate stakeholder network building during Egyptian initiatives of ecotourism development planning based on the following questions:

-How have the conveners been identified? What are their critical characteristics? -How have stakeholders been identified and analysed in Egyptian ecotourism initiatives? What procedures have been used to build the stakeholder network? -What dialogue is there between stakeholder representatives and their parent

bodies?

-What factors influence the efficiency of stakeholder networks in ecotourism planning in Egypt?