ESTUDIOS

El problema de la definición de los interesados en un contexto de Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible, examinado a través del análisis de proyectos de conservación ambiental.

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING STAKEHOLDERS IN A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL CONTEXT, EXAMINED VIA THE ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION

Elena Bulmer
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid) EAE Business School (Madrid), España

El problema de la definición de los interesados en un contexto de Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible, examinado a través del análisis de proyectos de conservación ambiental.

Ihering, núm. 4, pp. 40-73, 2021

Fundación Universitaria Española

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Recepción: 13 Julio 2021

Revisado: 30 Septiembre 2021

Aprobación: 18 Octubre 2021

Publicación: 23 Diciembre 2021

Resumen: Hasta hoy, no se había tenido en consideración a los actores no humanos dentro de la disciplina de gestión de proyectos. Sin embargo, la inclusión de estos tipos de partes interesadas es fundamental cuando implementamos, por ejemplo, proyectos en el ámbito de la conservación medioambiental o en el mundo corporativo que dependen de recursos naturales para el core de su negocio y el desarrollo de sus productos. A pesar de esto, los recursos naturales tienden a pasarse por alto en los mapas de interesados de los proyectos.

En este estudio, se usaron los proyectos de conservación de la naturaleza para investigar el contexto de las partes interesadas no humanas. Los actores primordiales de estos proyectos no son objetos sociales y, por lo tanto, van más allá de lo que en la actualidad se considera generalmente como los límites de la teoría de interesados en el mundo de la dirección de proyectos. El estudio en cuestión de este caso se ubica en Valencia (España), y se ocupa de la conservación de tortugas marinas, que son los actores primordiales del proyecto. Desafortunadamente, las tortugas son actores que no pueden expresarse y, por lo tanto, rara vez son incluidas en los análisis de partes interesadas. Este estudio puede extrapolarse y aplicarse al Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) 17 de las Naciones Unidas, “Asociación para los objetivos”, y hace referencia específica al ODS 14, que trata sobre la conservación marina. para los objetivos”, y hace referencia específica al ODS 14, que trata sobre la conservación marina.

Palabras clave: Proyecto de conservación, Actor no humano, Gestión del proyecto, Parte interesada, Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible, Sostenibilidad, Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible 17.

Abstract: There has been to date only limited consideration within the project management discipline of nonhuman actors as primordial stakeholders in projects. However, the inclusion of the roles of nonhuman actors is essential, when we consider that many projects in many areas, both within and outside the field of environmental conservation itself, such as for example in the fields of business and management, depend on natural resources for the development of their products. Despite this, natural resources tend to be overlooked in the stakeholder maps of projects in this wider context. Environmental Conservation projects are themselves especially interesting to study with regards to their stakeholder context and have been used as the experimental setting for the empirical work of this study. The primordial stakeholders of these projects are not social objects and therefore go beyond what are currently generally regarded as the limits of stakeholder theory. The study that has been used to analyse this concept is a marine conservation project based in Spain, whose primordial actor is not human. Unfortunately, these stakeholders being non-human are therefore not able to express themselves, and therefore are rarely purposely included in stakeholder analysis and management approaches, thus limiting comprehensive stakeholder mapping analyses ab initio, and handicapping realistic consideration of nonhuman actors. This study may be extrapolated and applied to the United Nation´s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17, “Partnership for the goals”, with reference to SDG 14, which deals with marine conservation.

Keywords: Conservation project, Non-human actor, Project management, Project stakeholder, Sustainable Development Goal, Sustainability, Sustainable Development Goal 17.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed by the United Nations at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. Eight goals were developed in order to set up social global timebound and attainable objectives to be complied with and achieved by the year 2015[1]. At the end of those fifteen years, there was widespread feeling among different stakeholders such as policy makers and civil society that “progress against poverty, hunger and disease (was) notable; (and) that the MDGs (had) played an important part in securing (this) progress and that globally agreed goals to fight poverty should continue beyond 2015”[2]. Consequently, world governments decided to continue and to develop a new set of global priorities that are today known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The United Nations (UN) Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, was held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) between June 20th and June 22nd, 2012. The main objective of this summit was to create planetary goals that would resolve global environmental, social and economic challenges. Rio+20 marked the launch point for the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known today as the “Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development”. The seventeen SDGs were an urgent call for action by all countries to create a global partnership to put an end to global problems such as poverty and inequalities, besides improving health and education, all while working to preserve our planet.

The seventeenth SDG titled, “Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”, entails the creation of inclusive partnerships at all levels (i.e., global, regional, national and local) to successfully attain the rest of the sixteen goals. At present, such stakeholder collaboration is needed more than ever to ensure that countries have the means to recover from the Covid 19 pandemic and attain the SDGs. This is especially so for developing countries that have been struck harder than developed countries due to the lack of healthcare facilities and means. Inclusive partnerships should therefore be promoted between different stakeholders at all levels, such as between private companies, NGOs and local and national authorities, as well as civil society. These partnerships should be built upon a shared vision and shared goals having people and the planet at their centre.

The United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has highlighted the urgency to find project solutions to these global challenges. At present, there do not appear to be the tools, methods, leadership or propitious business-society environment at the project level to attain meaningful Sustainable Development Goal success. This may well therefore lead to a potential knowledge gap, in relation to the SDGs, in learning reliable lessons from successes or failures in project delivery. Project managers therefore find themselves at the “grass-root” level in this regard and a grand challenge lies ahead in the SDG context.

The Project Management Institute in its most recent version of the PMBOK, the Project Management Book of Knowledge[3], describes project management as embracing ten knowledge areas: Integration, Scope, Schedule, Cost, Quality, Resource, Communication, Risk, Procurement and Stakeholder Management. In the SDG 17 context, stakeholder management is of special relevance and will be the knowledge area that will be analysed in more detail in this study.

In this article, a brief theoretical background will firstly be presented regarding stakeholder management. Secondly, the hypothesis will be presented regarding whether the existing project stakeholder management theory that only takes into account human beings may be extended to include non-human stakeholders. This “extended” version of the definition of a project stakeholder may prove beneficial in SDG contexts and provide a more global perspective, especially for those SDGs that entail the protection of specific natural resources, such as SDG 14 “Life under water” and SDG 15 “Life on land”. This article analyses this hypothesis in an SDG 14 context using a marine turtle conservation project as the basis of the empirical study of this study.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: STAKEHOLDERS AND THE POTENTIAL INCLUSION OF NONHUMAN ACTORS IN PROJECTS TO ATTAIN THE SDGS.

Stakeholder management is a topic in which research interest has been gaining momentum since 2005[4] although early research dates back to the early 1960s[5]. A stakeholder in an organization is defined as “any group or individual who can affect or be affected by the achievement of the organization´s objectives”[6]. The connotation by which the stakeholders can be affected by or can affect a project may be either positive or negative. What is very important however, is for all these stakeholders to be identified, prioritised (with regards to their power and influence in the project) and mapped in what is known as a stakeholder map. The stakeholders themselves may be either or both internal or external to the project[7] .

It is interesting to mention at this point in the discussion, the concept of project stakeholder complexity. Project stakeholder complexity can stem from, for example, project size such as in megaprojects, where the number of stakeholders is very large, or from the difficulty there may be in determining the position of the specific stakeholders within the project. Deciding whether they are for or against the project (when they could be both) is often difficult in some project scenarios. A further point that may contribute to the complexity of the stakeholder management panorama is the potential identification and inclusion of stakeholders who may not normally be considered to be part thereof (i.e., but who nevertheless do have a strong protagonist role in the project; such may be the case for nonhuman actors, ranging from mountains to natural resources. In this respect, it is not easy to deal with nonhuman actors as they are not able to express themselves and therefore not able to communicate with us whether they are for or against the project.

There are many authors who argue against the inclusion of nonhuman actors in the stakeholder map of projects. An example of such a nonhuman actor is the natural environment (i.e., natural resources) on which so many corporations and companies depend for the conception and development of their projects[8] . The question here is whether the natural environment should be a project stakeholder (i.e., and in many cases a primordial project stakeholder). “This is a radical extension to Freeman´s definition above, yet the natural environment is both clearly affected by (e.g., pollution, global warming) and affects (e.g., depletion of exploitable natural resources; natural disasters) the corporation in the pursuit of its project and business objectives[9].

However, there is still some reluctance from academics to agree with the above[10] . Driscoll and Starik (2004: 55) argue that “while most stakeholder theories have progressed to the point in which the natural environment is given stakeholder status, some academics continue to be reluctant to include the natural environment as one of the…primary stakeholders”. Further reluctance has been demonstrated by corporations that tend to overlook the importance of the environment as a stakeholder and consequently place it low on the stakeholder list[11][12][13]. Other researchers seem to think that the global economic system and the environment are dissociated and independent of one another[14][15][16]. This last assertion is made independently of whether the environment is or is not the project´s primordial stakeholder. The same divergence of views is also very much apparent at the practitioner level. However, the existence of a mutually dependent relationship between the environment and business organizations has been identified[17]. Failure to include the natural environment as a project stakeholder may often lead to considerable monetary losses, as for example for an agriculture-based business should there be a serious drought or where the depletion of fish in the fishing industry may lead to serious financial losses[18]. After all, firms do depend on local ecosystems (i.e., raw materials) for their survival and the development of their products[19][20].

In addition to avoiding or reducing monetary losses, the inclusion of these primordial stakeholders in the project stakeholder map will also promote their conservation. An example of this is a river otter case study in Missouri, USA. In this example, Missouri´s Department of Conservation (DOC) wanted to reintroduce the river otter and did so; however, as the species began reproducing, conflicts started to arise between the DOC, the local residents, the animal activists and the scientists[21]. As nonhuman primordial stakeholders, the river otters in this project were not able to express themselves so as to have their say in the project. Their inclusion in the project as primordial stakeholders was key for the project to achieve a successful outcome. This kind of case study thus raises the question as to how these nonhuman environmental stakeholders may be taken into account and represented in a project. For these stakeholders, the “stakes are only relevant when they are inserted into a process where they influence the courses of action in the project”[22].

An example of a study in which nonhuman actors, in this case scallops, were given conceptual equality to the human actors (fishermen and researchers) is provided by Callon who analysed how researchers were trying to regenerate the scallop industry at St Brieuc Bay in France, in order that the fishermen could still make a profit from their trade. In this case study, it is interesting to note that the scallops were the project´s primordial stakeholders and how we can observe a process of translation, where the scallops are translated into larvae, the larvae into numbers, the numbers into tables, etc.[23].

Both of these studies may be translated to a number of other and different scenarios that involve the relationship between human actors and the natural world (fauna, flora, ecosystems etc.) in other project types, such as construction projects and engineering projects, where the environment is an important or primordial stakeholder. Many types of business organizations have a mutual dependency with the environment, however at present this is simply not recognized as being so[24].

To date the identification and planning of stakeholder participation in projects has involved the use of qualitative methods. The PMBOK´s definition of a stakeholder is very much aligned with that of Freeman as “an individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program, or portfolio” (PMI, 2017); however, the methods used are only applicable to human subjects and not to nonhuman collectives or subjects. This is particularly relevant when we analyse for example, the Power/Interest grid of stakeholders, where, depending on the positioning of a particular stakeholder, it is possible to determine how best to treat them in the future, such as keeping them satisfied, informed, etc. (PMI, 2017). This conventional method of treating stakeholders used at the project planning stage is of limited applicability to nonhuman subjects, and therefore an alternative solution is needed. This is especially the case when the primordial project stakeholder is, for example, a nonhuman environmental stakeholder. A possibility here would therefore be to have a human subject represent the nonhuman project stakeholder.

In this article the inclusion of nonhuman actors will be analysed through the evaluation of environmental conservation (EC) projects. Most EC projects have a rather complex stakeholder panorama. Firstly, the final beneficiary or customer of these projects, which is very often their primordial stakeholder, is not fully defined, and therefore it will be arduous to determine how the project will be able to best benefit these primordial stakeholders and thereby to determine the benefits realization of these projects. If the primordial stakeholders are not properly accounted for, then it is very difficult to determine what project objectives and methods will best benefit them. Secondly, the primordial stakeholders of these projects, tending to be nonhuman (fauna, flora and ecosystems), are often neglected and not properly managed in these projects. Thirdly, the wide range of human and nonhuman stakeholders (stakeholder multiplicity) with multiple interests can lead to eventual conflicts. This complex stakeholder panorama is evidenced, for example, in the river otter case study in Missouri, USA[25] and the Moor frog case study (although in the latter study the Moor frog was a secondary stakeholder)[26].

The study being analysed in this article is a marine turtle bycatch project based in the Valencian Community of Spain, located along the Mediterranean coast on the east side of the Iberian Peninsula, where the primordial stakeholder is the marine turtle. Marine turtles are animal species that are threatened worldwide. At present all seven species of marine turtle are classified as threatened species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one of the largest conservation organizations in the world and represented in almost every country. The IUCN strives to provide “public, private and non-governmental organisations with the knowledge and tools that enable human progress, economic development and nature conservation to take place together” [27].

The marine turtles are presently threatened by five main hazards which are all anthropogenic. Amongst these are the (i) impact of fishing, (ii) direct take, (iii) coastal development, (iv) pollution and pathogens, and (v) global warming. These elements not only affect sea turtles but also many other marine fauna and flora. Unlike hazards affecting terrestrial habitats, marine threats are not geographically bound, as all marine environments connect to each other, and thereby all marine fauna and flora are affected equally by them on a global basis. A recent example of this is the problem with marine plastic debris. A plastic bottle may be thrown into the Mediterranean Sea and end up in Latin America. Malpractice in waste management in a specific geographic area may therefore affect marine turtles everywhere as marine turtles are similarly not geographically bound and are affected everywhere by this now global problem. Sea turtles are presently globally distributed and are often present in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea, therefore the plastic problem is bound to affect them anywhere in some way or other.

Projects that are set in the marine environment pose challenges that go beyond national boundaries. It is for this reason that resolution of such large-scale environmental challenges has had to involve a realm of different actors, comprising not only governments (national and regional), but also non-state actors such as non-governmental organizations and private companies. Although a multi-actor partnership context may seem ideal to resolve these environmental issues as suggested by Sustainable Development Goal 17 and the 2030 Agenda Accelerator, it might entail conflicts of governance concerning different spheres of authority, especially when the project mission involves a nonhuman primordial actor. Furthermore, the inclusion of this non-human primordial actor in the project stakeholder map may be a way forward in the pursuit of more targeted solutions.

This article will explore the stakeholder context of a marine turtle conservation project via the inclusion of the marine turtle as a project actor in the stakeholder analyses, using a series of conventional project stakeholder analysis tools (i.e., which later be described in the Research Methodology section). In the results and discussion section, the outcome of the different analyses (i.e., stakeholder register, PI matrices and stakeholder map) will firstly be presented as well as then the general trends that were extracted from the narratives that were developed for this study.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A case study approach was undertaken for the data collection using desk-based research and semi-structured interviews. The case study analysed was a sea turtle conservation project based in the Valencian Community in Spain. The objective of this project was to reduce sea turtle bycatch off the Levante Coast.

This case study presents a very revealing stakeholder situation, where we see that there are conflicting interests among conservationists, fishermen, municipality representatives and others. The stakeholders interviewed are listed below:

  1. Project Holding organization: “Asociación Chelonia” is a Spanish conservation NGO based in Madrid that possesses over twenty years of experience in the world of marine conservation in the Iberian Peninsula. For this study, several of the organization´s members were interviewed.

  2. Other NGOs: the other NGOs included in this analysis, include “Xaloc”, which is a marine conservation organization based in Valencia, and “CEMMA”, a conservation organization based in Galicia.

  3. Funders: the project funders include the American Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the Spanish “Fundación Biodiversidad”

  4. State government: The General Secretariat of Fishing has a mandate from the Environment Ministry to develop the European Union´s fisheries policy.

  5. Local government: Represented by a technical specialist from the Environmental Department of the Generalitat (regional government of the Valencian Community)

  6. Fishermen: Only a representative of the local Gandía fishermen´s association was interviewed.

  7. Civil society

he interview process was performed between October 2018 and October 2019. In total, 21 different stakeholders were interviewed. Among the interviewees were public officials with environmental responsibilities, fishermen´s associations, NGOs and university professors. The interviews were performed in Spanish, transcribed (i.e., in Spanish) and subsequently analysed to enable the development of narratives.

The 21 semi-structured interview questions related to (1) the context and professional background of the interviewee, (2) their knowledge of each of the case studies being analysed, (3) their knowledge of project stakeholder analyses, (4) their perception of the marine species being conserved (i.e., the marine turtle), and (5) their definitions of the terms power and interest, along with a small power-interest matrix exercise through which interviewees had to value the level of power and interest of the following stakeholder groups with respects to the project´s mission. All interviews were transcribed in Spanish, and the narratives were then developed in English.

The stakeholder analyses were based firstly on the development of a stakeholder register (Table 1), which encompassed:

  1. Stakeholder identification information

  2. Stakeholder classification information (i.e., main expectations regarding the project, whether stakeholders were internal/external to the project, and whether they were supporters, opponents or neutral.

  3. Problems experienced by interviewed stakeholders.

  4. Solutions to identified problems.

Based on the information included in the stakeholder register, a stakeholder map[28] was developed. According to Callon[29][30] the definitions and role of a stakeholder in a project cannot be separated from their relationships[31]. Therefore, the conception of a stakeholder mapping exercise to better understand the project stakeholder relationships proved more than essential. Based on the information gathered in the stakeholder register a stakeholder map was conceived using the 2002 Bonke and Winch stakeholder mapping model. In this framework (Figure 1), the central asset is the project mission, and the identified stakeholders are positioned around it. Their position in the project is identified as being a proponent or opponent as well as the potential problems that may be experienced. In this map the marine turtle was not included as they were obviously not capable of being interviewed.

To complement these analyses, Power-Interest (PI) matrices were also developed to compile the PI matrix information collected in the different interviews. This tool enables the categorization of stakeholders according to their level of power and interest in the project. For the PI Matrix analyses, the stakeholders included in the PI matrices were grouped according to the stakeholder categories listed above. The exercise was carried out to include the perceptions that different project stakeholders had of the role (i.e., power of level and interest) of the marine turtle in the project. This is shown in Figure 3.

The results from the stakeholder register, PI matrices and stakeholder map, were further analysed via the development of narratives. Organizational narratives are temporal in nature and are defined as being “discursive constructions that provide a means for individual, social and organizational sensemaking and sense giving”. This sense of temporality is very adequate to this research for several different reasons: firstly, the nature of a project is temporal as a project needs to be completed in a defined space of time, and secondly, the stakeholder associations and networks that are created throughout the project´s progress are temporary; they will be created, and after some time disassociate or change. Furthermore, organizational narratives helped to analyse the interplay between all the project stakeholders, making therefore plausible the development of multiple narrative analyses. In the results and discussion section, the outcome of the different analyses (i.e., stakeholder register, PI matrices and stakeholder map) will firstly be presented as well as the general trends that were extracted from the narratives that were developed for this study.

4. RESULTS

The marine turtle case study analysed, aimed at reducing bycatch rates by Spanish fishing fleets with a pilot study on the use of Turtle Excluding Devices (TEDs) in Calpe, on the coasts of Valencia. Twenty-one project stakeholders were interviewed. The only two stakeholders’ groups that were not interviewed were the recreational fishermen and the civil society members.

From the interview information, a stakeholder register was developed as shown below (Table 1). For each of the identified stakeholders, his/her identification details were recorded, together with their main expectations, and problems they may have experienced with respect to the project mission, as well potential solutions to these problems. It is important to note here that the marine turtle was not included in this table as it was not interviewed as such.

Stakeholder register of marine turtle bycatch project
Table 1
Stakeholder register of marine turtle bycatch project
Own elaboration

Furthermore, the information compiled in the stakeholder register was further analysed via the development of a stakeholder map for the project shown below in Figure 1, where project defenders were characterised by stars and project opponents by hexagons. Although some of the trends extracted from the stakeholder map are described further in the Discussion section below, it is possible to observe that most of the interviewed stakeholder groups supported the project mission. These relationships/associations between the different stakeholders are important.