stakeholder participation

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Stakeholders have intertwined roles and interdependent relationships

The stakeholders ...

Government...

Legal and regulatory framework
Order & directions
Resources

...provides the legal and regulatory framework that sets order and directions to environmental management and development. Actions by civil society and business are governed and influenced by the policies and regulations imposed by government. Government also takes the lead in crafting the future and setting development directions. Governments are able to effectively play these roles as it also has the mandate and capability to generate and allocate resources necessary for environmental management. The actions and solutions to sustainable development challenges do not lie with government alone. Corollarily, government is not the only agent of development neither is it solely responsible for developmental problems such as poverty and environmental degradation. Development concerns are created by, hence responsibilities of, people. When people engage in unsustainable consumption habits and lifestyles, a lot of problems emerge. Necessarily, the solutions to these problems would have to lie on them. For instance, environmental management entails nothing less than changes in people's attitudes, behavior, and lifestyles, both as consumers and as producers. Governments, especially in developing countries, would have limited capabilities to regulate or influence unsustainable practices that mainly cause environmental degradation.

Civil society...

Advocacy
Public service
Community work

...has rapidly become a critical actor in the development arena. More and more, governments have relied on civil society to handle areas where their reach and services are limited. Civil society has the ability to work for and with local communities. It has better flexibility and can easily adapt to various situations including venturing on innovative approaches in the pursuit of set goals. Civil society has served as the voice of its beneficiaries and bridge between government and beneficiaries and among stakeholders. Through these linkages, it is quite effective in awareness raising and advocacy. It could demand improved environmental management by government and business through its wide reach, strong voice and active engagement. It has the capacity to convince or put pressure on the other two sectors to meet its demands.

Civil Society Organizations have increasingly been given direct access to resources that they are able to tap to implement their own programs designed to build capability of the grassroots in generating sustained benefits from natural resources. Civil society has the advantage of being able to organize and work at different levels, from grassroots to the global arena, to address wide areas of concerns, to adopt a wide variety of constituents, and to execute its work with greater flexibility. These attributes allow civil society to work more effectively with the people and better influence their thinking. These notwithstanding, civil society cannot pursue the tasks of development alone. It needs government to provide the structures of authority within which policies will be defined and appropriate rules of behavior enforced. It needs government, which has greater access and better capacity to generate resources from both local and external sources, to provide said access to and share these resources. It also needs the cooperation and assistance of the business sector in undertaking development initiatives in various geographical and thematic areas of environmental management.

Private enterprise...

Influence
>Resources
>Technology
>Organization

...dominates the production sector where jobs, goods and incomes are generated. Thus, the sector directly determines the sustainability of production activities, and influences the sustainability of the consumption behavior of the public through the goods and services they produce, and the manner by which they promote and package them. Private firms could either be ignorant or unconcerned about the negative impacts of their production practices and management systems. On the other hand, it also has the capability and resources to promote and influence sustainability. The participation of the sector in all sustainable development initiatives is thus critical. As part of the problem, they must be part of the solutions, including in the planning and execution of such solutions.

Resource provider...

Influence
Resources
Technology

...they are not normally considered a major stakeholder in the global definition of tri-sectoral or tripartite dialogues. However, the lack of resources has been a critical limiting factor in the pursuit of sustainable development in most developing countries. Government and civil society in developing countries rely so much on external resources. This led many developed countries to commit in UNCED to increase their official development assistance to 0.7% of their GNP by year 2000. As this commitment has largely remained unfulfilled, private resource providers have taken on the slack in resources. Since the need has become greater while the resources from developed countries dwindled, the number and level of resources of private resource providers have rapidly increased over time.

Through their resources, resource providers substantially influence, even control, the courses of development at the local, national and global levels. These resources come in the forms of

funds
expertise or technical know-how
equipment and technology

This influence makes resource providers a major actor that plays a critical role in sustainable development arena. In view thereof, it is imperative that resource providers are actively involved in tripartite discussions.