The Cooperative Participatory Evaluation of Renewable Technologies on Ecosystem Services (CORPORATES): Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Vol 7 No 1

4 Conclusions and Recommendations

4.1 What worked, what didn't and why

What worked well and should be used in a MSP ( MSP) decision-support system to better incorporate ES ( ES) knowledge and values into MSP decisions are the following:

The mapping and collation of Benefits in Workshop 1 (Exercise WS1-1 and WS2-2)

The linking of Benefits and ES (Exercise WS2-1)

The Conceptual Systems Models (Exercise WS2-2).

All formal and informal feedback showed that these exercises and the fact that we worked a lot in mixed sector groups were the most useful of exercises across the 2 workshops.

However, stakeholders found it difficult to switch from conceptual issues of ES, benefits and ecological trade-offs to discussing local specifics. There is a clear lack of knowledge and quantifiable information about what specific actions/policies will mean to local ES /benefits in terms of economics, ecology and cultural & social changes. The use of and creation of maps in the 1 ^st workshop was appreciated by stakeholders. However it was decided not to bring those maps into use in the 2 ^nd workshop because of difficulties anticipated to arise from the lack of specific knowledge and quantifiable evidence in the marine regions of what ecological changes will occur with the introduction of large scale windfarms, MPAs and climate change.

One has to ask the question 'Does this process allow all stakeholders to have a voice?' Could workshops such as these be helpful in getting stakeholders to discuss what really needs knowing (economically, ecologically and socially) and provide the background to inform where strategic research could then be launched by governments? The main point being that these interactions are real information exchanges and that involve a lot of knowledge transfer and active listening from both sides. A better understanding of the most important issues, as agreed by a range of stakeholders, can then be turned into action by government, filling in the needed knowledge gaps. This action needs to include some level of attempting to study and quantify the ecological trade-offs that will occur in any particular change in marine spatial usage.

There is clearly a need to explain the legal requirement of the decision making process, now part of the marine planning regulatory framework. There was much benefit derived by the participants in learning and understanding the role of law and policy. The methods used were also clearly a way of fulfilling existing legal requirements.

The participatory processes, where shared values around cultural ES can be elicited, can form an important avenue for bringing both ecological and legal understanding into the decision-making and marine planning process. Specific mechanisms need to be provided to allow values that are often subtle and implicit to become explicit; mapping and deliberation is a starting point but can be complemented by interpretive and artistic approaches to achieve this more profoundly. The CORPORATES process demonstrated clearly that the range of stakeholders present all shared and agreed on many of the same benefits and ES that were important. There were more similarities between groups than differences. Therefore there needs to be better methods to allow people to realise they share/or at least recognise what others are concerned about losing.

Also, while the CORPORATES process provides a suitable methodological template for exchange of social-ecological knowledge and values, and provides a basis for trade-off analyses through mapping of uses and conceptual modelling, a limitation of the tool thus far is that it omitted a more formal evaluation step, where, e.g. through multi-criteria analysis, different policy options could be appraised across different ES, uses, and types of values elicited. In other words - there needs to be information on the direction and quality (and quantity) of the links between ES, activities and benefits.

4.2 Timing and number of workshops

Due to the need to classify the long list of benefits defined by stakeholders and the need to identify ES of importance that are linked to those benefits, it would be difficult to run a pair of workshops using these methods on consecutive days. However, they could be run a few days or weeks apart now that the necessary methods have been identified and implemented. Preparation time, and the large amount of time we needed to digest the information generated in the 1st workshop and to re-design the 2nd workshop would be greatly reduced. Also, we suspect that some amount of time for reflection is good for stakeholders, as we were very pleased to see some stakeholders coming back for the 2 ^nd workshop talking with terminology, such as terms like ' ecological trade-offs', introduced in the 1 ^st workshop from our Ecological and Law/Policy Interludes.

4.3 When in the MSP process to have this sort of exercise

Ideally, these workshops should be performed very early in the process of spatial planning. This could include workshops site development considerations, with a wide range of stakeholders at the start of the process for site development considerations. The sooner the full range of stakeholders can engage in this process the better, as it helps to build common understanding not only of the ecological system, but also an understanding of the importance of which aspects others find valuable. The workshops need to be run in a context where this process can actually support a spatial management decision, and where there is enough time that a component which is deemed essential to know more about could be added or even go so far as fully quantify the effects a decision could have, in order to be able to more explicitly weigh ecological trade-offs.

4.4 The team facilitating the workshops and the experience level of stakeholders

From our experience as a team, from a wide array of disciplines and several of us also very experienced in multi-disciplinary work, we found working together very stimulating. The mix of natural scientists, lawyers, social scientists, government researchers and policy makers allowed a sharing of knowledge and advice that we think made a potentially good project into an excellent project. Having highly experienced stakeholders, with a range of areas of vast knowledge, also made a difference in the depth of discussions. Both of these factors are important, and need to be thought about for the success of future workshops.