News from the CEPA e-mail list

The Calabash project (12/04/05)

Dear CEPA list members:

The Calabash project is managed by the Southern African Institute for Environmental Assessment (SAIEA) with its headquarters in Windhoek, Namibia, and funded by the World Bank with support from Canadian CIDA. One of its main objectives is to increase the effectiveness and ability of civil society to participate in environmental decision-making. A recent output that may be of interest to list members is a handbook on civil society engagement developed specifically for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

The handbook "A One Stop Participation Guide: A Handbook of Public Participation in Environmental Assessment in Southern Africa" offers helpful tips and the process to follow for public participation from the perspective of the four key stakeholders who are part of any public participation process:

Practitioners - those who are appointed to design and implement public participation processes Civil Society - those who will become involved in public participation processes as a development may affect them or it may be of interest to them Government - those who must make a decision about whether a development should proceed on the basis of information arising from the environmental assessment process; and, Developers - those who wish to undertake a particular development.

This approach was used as the four stakeholder groups used in the handbook research found that handbooks with a generic and universal design sometimes do not have any relevance to the day to day reality of the respective stakeholder groups. Providing a perspective of public participation from the point of view of each of the four groups also enables each group to appreciate the other groups' actions and views in a public participation process.

In addition to the four chapters targeting the four stakeholder groups, there is also a useful chapter on conflict management and some helpful sections in the annexes on communication techniques, useful contacts in the region etc.

The Handbook can be accessed here http://www.saiea.com/calabash/handbook/index.html. It is usefully divided into a series of PDF files which can be viewed on-line and downloaded.

With best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat

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