Stakeholders' climate perception and adaptation in coastal Uruguay

• Pages: 63-84
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-03-2013-0035
• Published date: 11 March 2014
• Date: 11 March 2014
• Author: Gustavo J. Nagy,Leonardo Seijo,José E. Verocai,Mario Bidegain
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Environmental issues,Climate change

Stakeholders’ climate perception

and adaptation in coastal Uruguay

Gustavo J. Nagy, Leonardo Seijo, Jose

´E. Verocai and

Mario Bidegain

(Information about the authors can be found at the end of this article.)

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to discuss the assessment and inclusion of stakeholders’

perception, and citizen participation instances to implementing management options to deal with

climate threats within the existing institutional framework in Uruguay.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach being followed has different directional

approaches and integrates them within a single assessment. First, a prescriptive climate change

top-down path. Second, stakeholders’ perception is assessed within a bottom-up risk-management

model. Third, institutional agreements, arrangements, and consensus are reached. Considering the

need for agreed and effective options, the approach is customized and turned flexible enough to accept

inputs from scientists, managers, and stakeholders.

Findings – The co-production of knowledge and the achievement of agreed and feasible options is

achieved by means of a consultation process which results in adaptive co-management agreements

and collective decisions. This process is seen as both an empowerment of local actors and a

multi-stakeholder learning-by-doing experiment. This allows for both an increase in coping capacity to

climate threats and facilitates long standing conflict resolution.

Originality/value – Much literature discusses the importance of the role of social power in inclusive

processes towards adaptation, and how difficult is ceding a genuine voice to stakeholders. The

co-production of knowledge is a way to achieve the rapprochement of scientists with institutional and

community actors. Thus, the participatory process gives stakeholders responsibility for identifying

their specific needs and priorities and helps to establish community ownership.

Keywords Participation,Climate change, Empowerment, Implementation, Climatethreats,

Coastal lagoon

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

1.1 The relationship between stakeholders’ perception and public participation

The process of inclusion of stakeholders’ perception towards a participatory

adaptation to climate change and variability threats in coastal areas is discussed in

recent literature (Eisenack et al., 2007; Tompkins et al., 2008; Scally and Wescott, 2011),

and advocated by national and international agencies (UNDP, 2004; IPCC, 2007).

Here, we use the term participation in the sense of securing active involvement of a

broad range of stakeholders in decision-making and action (Few et al., 2007). Public

participation encompasses a range of procedures and methods designed to consult,

involve, and inform the public to allow those that would be potentially affected by a

decision or policy to have input into the process. The latter are also known as

stakeholders (IFC, 2007):

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1756-8692.htm

The research was carried out within the project “Implementing Pilot Adaptation Measures to

Climate Change in Coa stal Areas of Uruguay ” (www.cambioclima tico.gub.uy), UNDP

URU 07-G32. Funding under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is gratefully acknowledged.

International Journal of Climate

Change Strategies and Management

Vol. 6 No. 1, 2014

pp. 63-84

qEmerald Group Publishing Limited

1756-8692

DOI 10.1108/IJCCSM-03-2013-0035

Stakeholders’

climate

perception

63

Community empowerment is more than the participation of communities. It

implies community ownership and action that explicitly aims at social and political

change. Community empowerment is a process of re-negotiating power in order to gain more

control. It recognizes that if some people are going to be empowered, then others will be

sharing their existing power and giving some of it up (Baum, 2008).

Stakeholder inclusion is deemed to be important in exploring adaptation responses

because ultimately community “buy-in” and support from those affected will be

required (Tompkins et al., 2008). Citizen participation during the design and

formulation of a public policy provides value and legitimacy (CLAD, 2009). Some key

elements are the experiences that communities have regarding their culture,

understanding of the threats, local capacity, and external support from agencies to

the process of implementation, that is to say understanding climate change from below

(Sajid Raihan et al., 2010).

Here, we present a case study of stakeholders’ perception of current and expected

climate threats, and citizen participation instances within the existing institutional and

legal framework towards adaptation and management in an inhabited coastal protected

landscape in Uruguay.We discuss the strategy being followed to implementing feasible,

politicallyand socially agreedmeasures to deal with theevolving climate. Thesemeasures

are both, adaptation goals and learning-by doing actions. We prioritise stakeholders’

participation through communication and the assessment of their perception so that

top-down (prescriptive) and bottom-up(diagnostic) approachesmerge. We aim to achieve

effective institutional agreements and feasible measures by means of informed citizen

participation instances in decision-making, local publicmanagement, and monitoring.

1.2 On-going adaptation initiative

The adaptation process presented in this article is undertaken by GEF project

“Implementing Pilot Adaptation Measures to Climate Change in Coastal Areas of

Uruguay” (PRODOC, 2008; UCC, 2011; Nagy et al., 2013; Seijo et al., inpress), from now

on the project. Its main objective is to increase the resilience of coastal ecosystems as

defined by Chapin et al. (2009):

[...] the capacity of a social-ecological system to absorb a spectrum of shocks and to sustain

and maintain its identity and feedbacks as a result of recovery in a new context.

The means chosen for achieving this purpose is to implement measures of adaptation

in two pilot sites. One of them is Laguna de Rocha (the lagoon), a coastal protected area

in Eastern Uruguay because of its biodiversity of global relevance (PRODOC, 2008;

SNAP, 2010; UCC, 2012a; Nagy et al., 2013; Seijo et al., inpress). To this aim, we have

focused on the incorporation of climate issues into the lagoon’s management plan.

1.3 The socio-ecological system of Laguna de Rocha

The Laguna de Rocha (the lagoon) is one of the four estuarine coastal lagoons along the

Uruguayan Atlantic East coast (Figure 1).

The lagoon and surrounding wetlands has an area of 260 km

2

. It comprises

19 environments that are the habitat for 109 species, including migratory birds from the

Northern hemisphere, as well as a variety of marine invertebrates and

fishes which sustain subsistence small fisheries of shrimps and fishes

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