Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

For the last fifteen years the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) provided financial support to environment and development initiatives in the Baltic Sea region (BSR). One of these initiatives, the "Agriculture and Environment in Leningrad Oblast" program (AELO), was pointed out as successful in establishing a multi-stakeholder pilot activity in North West Russia (NWR).

This thesis work is taking the reader on a research enquiry through the second phase of the AELO program, named "Agriculture, Environment and Ecosystem Health in North West
Russia" (AEEHLO), exploring the interactions between multi-stakeholder processes with communication and coordination, based on the concept of "Multi-stakeholder platform" (MSP) as a "space for change". For this, Soft System Methodology (SSM) methods and techniques are used to appraise the second phase program's communication and coordination imprints and its MSP.

The quest for program communication and coordination is interesting because of the complexity of the human interactions involved and because of the program's structural uncertainty as it is in a constant development flux. The evidence material for this research is based on secondary data, focus group discussions, oral interviews, a multi-stakeholder program meeting, and all this wrapped in the SSM enquiry process used for navigation. As emergent of this work is the hope to bring home contribution to the knowledge area of multi-stakeholder processes and platforms governed by communication, negotiation, and coordination.

The results of the research show that the success of the AEEHLO program as a multi-stakeholder platform depends on the ability of its stakeholders, from the authority and nonauthority side, to collaborate in mutual sharing and understanding, and in collaborative definition of interrelated issues. Another result is that AEEHLO as a program can be viewed as a "space for change" in which coordination and collaboration between the stakeholders generate a spirit for commitment to take actions, and as a try to resolve pressing environmental and social issues by fostering an atmosphere of constructive and focused manner of work.

Communication and coordination in the context of the AEEHLO program should be considered in broad terms. In this regard, coordination, to which communication is linked, means coordinated use of resources such as information, and financial or professional experience. The research findings also show that communication and coordination at the AEEHLO program act as a mechanism for bringing Swedish and Russian stakeholders together to work on environmental and rural development issues, issues which cannot be single-handed
by one of the stakeholders only.