The LIFE Project

LIFE-Nature is one third o f the European Union’s LIFE® fund. Projects co-financed through LIFE-Nature, must contribute to the implementation o f European Community nature protection legislation, notably the ‘Birds’ Directive (79/409/EEC) and the ‘Habitats’ Directive (92/43/EEC). Project outcomes are expected to have a demonstration value.

® The acronym LIFE translates as ‘Financial Instrument for the Environment’. The fund was set up in 1992 and is now in its third phase.

enabling guidance to be disseminated to other areas of international conservation importance within the EU.

The 4-year LIFE in UK Rivers Project; ‘Safeguarding Natura 2000 Rivers in the UK’ (LIFE99 N A T /U K /006088) is managed by a partnership of Enghsh Nature, Environment Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Countryside Council for Wales and the Scotland & Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research. The project has a budget of 2.241.038,88 euros^ and is co-financed by the project partners and the LIFE-Nature fund. The primary objective is to develop river conservation strategies for 7 rivers in the United Kingdom that have been submitted by the UK as candidate Special Areas of Conservation (cSAC) under the Habitats Directive. These strategies will contribute to dehvering Article 6 (1) of the Habitats Directive by estabhshing a framework for achieving sustainable management of the river SAC, by identifying key issues affecting the SAC features and preparing action plans.. The project proposal states that the strategies:

‘will trial different mechanisms for the involvement of other bodies, both public and private, in the sustainable management of river SACs. They will also involve the local community, with a view to generating support for river SACs and the actions needed to maintain and improve them.’ (EN et al, 1999: LIFE-Nature 99-

11).

In addition, the project has the following aims. To:

• Identify conservation measures that meet the ecological requirements o f the designated habitat and species;

• Put together cost-effective assessment techniques; • Develop techniques for addressing key issues; • Disseminate best practice.

Seven catchments in the UK were selected for the projects, covering a cross section of river types, land uses, socio-economic issues and conservation threats. Five Project Officers were employed for an initial period o f 18 months (later extended to 2 years

9 The initial bid submitted to European LIFE-Nature Fund was ultimately cut in size by

approximately 50%. The effect of this was the removal of practical river restoration works from the project.

because of delays caused by the 2001 outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease), to develop and write the strategies’

Project Officers were provided very little guidance as to how the stakeholder participation aspect of their role should be interpreted, with the Project Board keen to highhght the experimental nature of LIFE demonstration project. However, this also suggests a lack of institutional understanding amongst the project partners o f ‘participation’:

Kate — ‘Were the Project Officers given any sort of guidance at aU about partnership processes and community involvement?

Project Manager — No...we’ve left it very open. Probably too open, I think that was symptomatic of the fact that we didn’t quite know what we meant by stakeholder engagement, and therefore it wasn’t possible to be prescriptive about it. It was just something that we were going to do and the message got out — do what you think is necessary and we wül evaluate it afterwards.’ (LIFE Project Manager)

So what were the motivations for writing participation into the project bid? They appeared to be a mix of producing a bid attractive to funders, the realisation that effective dehvery of the Habitats Directive on complex sites requires multi-stakeholder processes, and a desire within the conservation agencies and the European Union to gain an understanding o f how participation could be apphed to the dehvery of EU legislation. This question was put to the principal author o f the project bid:

Kate - Why did you want to see parmership and community consultation? Why was that put in the project bid? I suppose it is touching on a lot of things we have aheady talked about.

Bid Author — It is but there is a more immediate reason, because the Habitats Directive requires it to a certain extent

Kate — Was it a requirement to get funding?

Bid Author — Not particularly I don’t think, but it is a general thing for ah — yes, they would encourage that for ah LIFE projects — pubhc involvement. And for instance it is even more exphcitly written into the Water Framework Directive. So now the European Commission are looking for best practice as to how to involve the pubhc in the Water Framework Directive which is going to go much wider than just SAC rivers. So it is a growing thing, and I don’t think that anyone has particularly solved it. It goes back to your question reahy of do you see a value in involving the local community in the SAC scene rivers. And I think that has yet to

^0 The Rivers Moidart, Kerry and Borgie in Scotland were covered by a single Project Officer because they ah contained the same SAC interest feature, were areas of simhar land use, and are only short rivers compared to others in the project (ranging from 3.4 — 14km)

be shown. Hopefully your work wiU show us and the LIFE project will show us possibly whether we’ve gone about it the right way or not.’ (EN Specialist)

Despite the free reign given to the Project Officers, there were critical factors affecting the parameters within which DIPs could be apphed to the production o f the strategies.

First, under the UK’s institutionahsed approaches to dehver the Habitats Directive, many of the decisions to be made relating to activities that affect the Avon’s conservation features, are undertaken through closed processes detached from the conservation strategy process. A decision was made by EN that favourable condition for the cSAC rivers would be defined at a national level, with some limited consultation with local ‘experts’ (i.e. EA). Once defined, favourable condition sets the ecological parameters within which all decisions made about cSAC management must he. Therefore, even prior to decisions made about the framing of the strategy, the abihty for local stakeholders to influence decisions made about cSAC management had already been highly constrained.

Secondly, there were hmited funds available for running participatory processes of ^5,000’\ Thus Project Officers had hmited funds to run workshops or employ facihtators. Thirdly, the Project Officers neither had expertise in stakeholder engagement nor were offered training in designing or running participatory processes^^. Good communication skiUs were seen as sufficient to run a stakeholder participation strategy:

Kate — were people selected [as Project Officers] who had knowledge or experience of working in that sort of way [stakeholder engagement]?

Project Manager — it was certainly one of the selection criteria — maturity and experience of working with other organisations, not specifically stakeholder engagement.’ (Project Manager)

The fourth factor was the timeframe within which the strategy had to be developed. The Project Officers had 18 months to produce a final strategy document that had been through a more traditional process of pubhc consultation, as well as fulfil the other requirements o f their posts (i.e. the development o f a monitoring protocol for the cSAC). From the perspective of participatory processes, this represents an extremely hmited time

As a point of comparison, the NE Kent mSAC Stakeholder Dialogue process carried out in 1999 cost around /^30,000.

for the Project Officers to build trust, enrol stakeholders and to run a deliberative and inclusionary process.