Simulation exercise: A consensus building forum

Paola Salmona and Valeria Granelli

ICCOPS (IT)

This exercise can be considered as a sort of following of the one presented during the Lisbon training course, where the participants were invited to deal with the delimitation of a coastal area and the identification of its organisation. Then, a general view of how to proceed has been given, now we are going more into the detail, to have "a taste" of the actors, the interests, and the issues that are likely to occur when defining a coastal management plan.

In particular, this exercise has the final aim to present and make the participants think about a point often critical in Integrated Coastal Management. This is the passage from the statement phase, that above all involves the decision makers and the scientific circle, to the more practical planning and implementation phases, that have to concern as well te local communities, and specifically the different stakeholders. It is actually important to understand the relationships between these different phases, to avoid to get to an impasse or to spend too many resources in projects bound to remain unfeasible because it has not been properly considered how to transfer them into the reality of a specific coastal area, or all the many and different interests at the stake, even if some of them often conflict with the principles of sustainable development or with the common sense (for example, the building of large estates in high environmentally valuable areas). On the other hand, programmes elaborated according with a minimalist policy, that only address one specific issue without a serious and coordinate scientific and decisional base, are likely to supply a solution suitable for the matter at issue, but also to leave other ones open. Moreover they are not easy to widen to an actually comprehensive approach.

In this view, a kind of role game is proposed, where the participants have to act the parts of the different stakeholders involved in the drafting of an integrated management plan for the coastal Province of "Posidonia Bay". The aim of this simulation game is to get to an agreement about the main objectives of the plan, as well as the actions needed for their achieving. In this process, each carachter has to pursue his intersts, but, at the same time is obliged to take into consideration also the others's, to come to compromises, to create alliances, and to propose alternative solutions, even daring, to achieve the comprehensive objective of the sustainable development of the Province.
The proposed setting has been adapted for the game. As a matter of fact, it presents a situation where the plan priorities are already drafted and the main stakeholders are gathered together without particular "a priori" grudges, that is quite unlikely in real conditions. Moreover, it is assumed that a detailed analysys of the area has been already made, and on this base, a specific intervention area, its present organisation and the main actors involved in the drafting and the implementation of the plan have been identified. Strictly speaking, the plan is based on a "mixed" top-down and bottom-up appoach. It is infact proposed by the central Authorities, but its drafting and implementation depends on the contributions of the local communities and the stakeholders.

A management plan can be either imposed or agreed upon with the the directly oncerned parts. In the first case, the drafting and approval phases are likely to develop in a rather rapid way, but it is not sure at all that the plan would not meet with opposition or stonewalling when becoming effective. All the same, real obstacles might come out, that have been disregarded or considered of little importance by those pepole charged with the plan drafting and approval.
On the contrary, in the case of an agreeded plan, the drafting and approval process is considerably slower, but there is a good chance that the implementation phase could proceed quickly and without resistance from the inside.
Presently, at least in theory, the trend is trying to find an agreement upon the different management plans. In fact, the procedures for the involvement and the consultation of stakeholders are so complicated to discourage the public participation along the process and, at athe same time, to rise the resentment of several cathegories that quite rightly would like to be consulted, but actually feel excluded.
Such management tools, namely "consensus based", are actually imposed and have the same problems for their implementation as those that do not foresee any consultation at all. A discussion among the different categories that should be involved in an integrated management plan, even if only simulated, can be a useful tool to get a live overview of all those elements that should be taken into consideration to ensure the effective public participation and therefore an essential contribution for the plan's success.

It is important to point out that in this phase, besides the technical skills such as land planning, the different branches of natural sciences, economy, etc., more classical disciplines have an important task, first of all sociology, history and communication sciences. Moreover, some relevance should be given also to a range of elements definively little scientific and quantifiable, such as grudges and dislike either personal or by categories, gossip, urban legends, bad tempered partners, any kind of unexpected events... In some cases, these fuzzy elements conflict with the technical / scientific approach that carachterises a plan, stirring misunderstandings, resentments and, finally, delays during the implementation and dissatisfaction with the plan itself. For this reason, during the exercise, participants are asked to use a good deal of immagination and irony, either to recreate real situations, with all their contradictions and tortuousness, or to propose solution, also not really ortodox, to get out of impasses.
Such attitute, anyway, should be kept also in the real work, to overcome a range of obstacles to the management, as "stupid" as time and patience consuming.