Stakeholder Consensus Building in Multiobjective Environments

Abstract

This paper introduces a method that assists in the evaluation of project and policy alternatives by identifying stakeholder reactions not only to the predicted economic, environmental, and social impacts but also to the distribution and balance of those impacts among all stakeholders. Gross impact (GI) and degree of impact imbalance (IB) evaluation criteria are adopted for multiobjective analyses in two water resources planning studies. In both studies, stakeholders converted various quantitative and qualitative indicators of economic, environmental, social, financial, institutional, and technical project objectives into GI and IB measures for the evaluation and ranking of alternative projects or policies. In these two studies, having both the GI and IB measures helped the stakeholders during the project formulation and screening, ranking, and consensus-building phases of the studies. Although applied to water resources planning projects, this approach to multiobjective stakeholder-driven planning or policy analyses could be applied in various other fields where stakeholder participation in decision making is involved.