Stakeholder analysis in support of sustainable land management: Experiences from southwest China.

Land management includes the actions of different stakeholder groups at different scales, from local measures to regional land use strategies to land use policies. For sustainable land management (SLM), particularly in its planning stage, it is essential to know stakeholders and, ideally, to involve them in decision-making, or at least to understand a given situation from their perspective in an attempt to target their problems and interests in solution development. Although stakeholder analysis (SA) has been adopted in various projects with the aim of grasping stakeholders' perceptions and encouraging their deeper involvement in land management, the "how to" remains unclear. Current guidelines for SA remain vague and fail to lead practical application. One reason is the complexity of land use itself. SA is case specific for each project and requires highly flexible project management that adjusts methods and instruments according to given conditions. This article provides a practical example and discusses experiences from a sustainable rubber management project in Southwest China. This case study shows how, to a certain extent, "usage-oriented" SA can support joint decision making in SLM. With a more general aim, we reflect on the process and its management. As a result, we identify some core management issues: the heterogeneity of stakeholder groups with their multiple interests, stakeholders' involvement in decision making, the necessity of iteration, and adjustments with respect to cultural context.

Transdisciplinary research in support of land and water management in China and Southeast Asia: evaluation of four research projects.

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) aims at identifying implementable solutions to difficult sustainability problems and at fostering social learning. It requires a well-managed collaboration among multidisciplinary scientists and multisectoral stakeholders. Performing TDR is challenging, particularly for foreign researchers working in countries with different institutional and socio-cultural conditions. There is a need to synthesize and share experience among researchers as well as practitioners regarding how TDR can be conducted under specific contexts. In this paper, we aim to evaluate and synthesize our unique experience in conducting TDR projects in Asia. We applied guiding principles of TDR to conduct a formative evaluation of four consortium projects on sustainable land and water management in China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In all projects, local political conditions restricted the set of stakeholders that could be involved in the research processes. The set of involved stakeholders was also affected by the fact that stakeholders in most cases only participate if they belong to the personal network of the project leaders. Language barriers hampered effective communication between foreign researchers and stakeholders in all projects and thus knowledge integration. The TDR approach and its specific methods were adapted to respond to the specific cultural, social, and political conditions in the research areas, also with the aim to promote trust and interest of the stakeholders throughout the project. Additionally, various measures were implemented to promote collaboration among disciplinary scientists. Based on lessons learned, we provide specific recommendations for the design and implementation of TDR projects in particular in Asia.