Participatory Planning

Bringing stakeholders together: participatory planning

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Figure 12.7: Residents of Pimpri Gawali, India gather to discuss management of grazing and biodiversity in their village. Similar community meetings are an essential part of participatory planning for sea level rise.
Credit: By Yogeshmanage09 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Bringing together a diverse set of stakeholders that operate across several scales and have different levels of power, interest, and vulnerability can prove challenging – especially for discussion of politically charged issues such as sea level rise. Participatory planning is one approach for bringing diverse and marginalized groups into the planning process while also avoiding conflict. The participatory planning approach emphasizes the participation of local stakeholders – that is, those people who live and work in the communities that will be directly affected by the adaptation or mitigation measures under discussion. Participatory planning empowers local stakeholders by directly involving them in the planning process. Facilitators not only share all relevant information with stakeholders, but also encourage stakeholders to participate by brainstorming, investigating, and analyzing options for preparing for sea level rise (or other hazards). Stakeholders are generally asked to break into small groups to discuss these options before sharing their ideas about them with the facilitators and other groups. As discussed later in this module, stakeholders may then use cost-benefit analysis to choose which of these options are most suitable for their community.

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Figure 12.8: Participants in the planning process can use overlays and markers like those shown here to annotate sea level rise maps with questions, concerns, and other notes.
Credit: by preston.rhea https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ CC BY-SA 2.0

For hazards such as sea level rise that have a strong spatial component, participatory planning exercises often use an interactive map to help stakeholders better understand both the hazard and the options for addressing it. In participatory mapping, stakeholders are shown maps with information relevant to the planning task; often many different maps are created to illustrate what the mapped area might look like under different hazard scenarios and planning options. Stakeholders then use these maps to explore these scenarios and options. Using pens or markers (for printed maps) or a mouse or stylus (for digital maps), stakeholders annotate the map with questions, concerns, and other notes about how each combination of scenarios and options might affect a particular stakeholder or area of the community, making it easier to share these ideas with facilitators and other stakeholders. For sea level rise, these maps will often show: which areas of the community are susceptible to flooding under different amounts of sea level rise (either on its own or in combination with storm surge); and how planning options (such as building a seawall or restoring wetlands) may affect the extent and distribution of this flooding. As discussed later in this module, in addition to helping communities prioritize planning options, these interactive sea level rise maps can be useful in determining where in the community these options are most needed or appropriate.