Estratègies per al desenvolupament sostenible - Generalitat de ...

It is also important to identify stakeholder interests, relations and powers. Onan issues basis, it is necessary to understand questions such as stakeholdermotivations and interests in relation to the issue; the rights, resources, and othermeans and powers that are available to them (or that are missing) to pursuetheir motivations and interests; the external pressures on them to change; theirdegree of acceptance of need for change –or resistance against it–; the constraintsto making changes, such as regulatory, bureaucratic and resource constraints.Particular sustainability issues are usually characterized by stakeholder conflictor, alternatively, alliances. Such relationships may need to be explored further.Particularly, in relation to structuring an NSSD it is useful to ascertain whichstakeholders have similar positions on an issue and work together to pursuetheir common interests –the “policy communities” or networks that may existin formal or informal senses– and the kinds of initiatives they have worked ontogether. Such policy communities can often provide much momentum for astrategy process if linked to it.An assessment of the particular powers (or lack of them) of stakeholders is alsocrucial both to an understanding of each sustainable development issue (whoare the dominant and the marginalized), and to the structuring of strategyprocesses (who needs to be involved to remedy problems and realizeopportunities). For strategy analysis, a useful first step is to identify the relativedegree of stakeholder power, the source of that power and the means by whichpower is exercised. It is important to address the question of how stakeholdersgain or lose power to influence the direction of the policy process.The next challenge is to relate the power of stakeholders to their potential toaffect, or be affected by, strategies and related policies, institutions and initiatives.Assessing which individuals and groups have power over which others will helpto piece together power chains –often the potential to affect policy, institutionsand initiatives is not derived through one direct link, but through a chain–. Ofparticular concern are those stakeholders with high potential for sustainabledevelopment but little power (such as landless people). If progress towardssustainable development is to be made, some stakeholders need to beempowered to make more positive contributions, while others need to berestrained from making destructive contributions.144