You are here: Home > Orientation Hall > Exchange of Experience Modules > VI Stakeholder participation

VI. Stakeholder participation

There are cases which provide good examples of governments involving a wide range of participants in their policy making processes. Public hearings have been in common practice in many countries for a long time, but the new trend is to go beyond simple hearings to inviting the public, private enterprise, and NGOs to actively participate in developing policy options and implementing programmes on the environment.

The goal of participatory programmes is to make people responsible for the decision making process and thus responsible for their behaviour, which have a significant influence on ways they use their resources.

In many developing countries in the region, there used to exist some traditional decision making processes that ensured the sustainable use of resources within a community. However, such a system does not necessarily work in the economic systems today where countries are interdependent with each other.

Sustainable Development is everybody's responsibility

Everybody or anybody who is affected by or benefits from any development endeavour must take active part in its planning, decision-making, and implementation. Development is after all everybody's business. It is something that each one must attain for one's self. Everybody must take responsibility and get involved in the pursuit of sustainability, as it is the people's right to have a sustainable life. Individual actions, however, are best coordinated and taken together to attain synergy and optimum results. Operationally, therefore, development must be pursued in a way that involves and benefits from the complementary actions of the three key stakeholder groups, namely, public institutions (government), private enterprises (business), and civil society. There is a fourth stakeholder group, particularly in the context of developing countries, the resource providers.

Next