Strategic Planning for Species Conservation: A Handbook - IUCN

Strategic Planning for Species Conservation
conservation specialists, and representatives of major NGOs (there may of course be
overlap in these categories). These regional workshops should then be followed by a series
of national or local action planning workshops (see Chapter 9), which will be attended by
many more range State participants, including additional government staff (e.g., lower-level
staff such as park wardens), as well as national and international NGO staff and other
species specialists.
Box 4.1 Who are stakeholders?
A stakeholder, in the present context, is defined as an individual or institution that demonstrates
some combination of concern (about the outcome of a SCS process), expertise (i.e., has
information or resources required to conduct the SCS process), and/or power (i.e., is able to either
block or facilitate recommendations which result from the SCS process). Taken together, a
potentially valuable stakeholder can either significantly affect the formulation of recommendations
at the workshop, and/or be significantly affected by them. This concept is represented by a simple
matrix (Figure 4.1), whereby individuals can be assessed for their relative value as SCS workshop
participants. This approach is particularly valuable when a large number of potential invitees must
be reduced to a more manageable size for optimal workshop conduct.
Figure 4.1 Simple matrix-style approach for categorizing stakeholders during early stages of SCS
workshop design (adapted with permission from Frances Westley, University of Waterloo)
4.3 The role of IUCN/SSC Specialist Groups
IUCN/SSC Specialist Groups can and, in most cases, should play a number of roles in the
SCS process. For example, a Specialist Group will, as a result of its Red Listing activities,
have a clear idea of priority species for which to prepare SCSs. The Specialist Group may
also organize the collation of data for the Status Review, and convene the strategic
planning workshop in which the Status Review will be reviewed and/or revised and the rest
of the SCS developed. Specialist Group Chairs and other members should be involved in
identifying the most appropriate participants and ensuring good representation from range
State governments and other key stakeholder groups.
Another role that particularly lends itself to Specialist Groups is maintaining an up-to-date
database on the species’ status and distribution following the Status Review. The IUCN’s
neutral inter-governmental status has in the past given governments confidence about
submitting data to SSC-maintained databases, which they would probably not have done
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