Stakeholders’ Social Network in the Participatory Process of Formulation of Natura 2000 Management Programme in Slovenia

Abstract

Stakeholder participation has become an important driving force in policy decision-making and implementation, particularly in the nature conservation sector, where complex interactions and conflict of interest between stakeholders are common. A stakeholder analysis, which was complemented with a social network analysis, was used to examine the cooperation and conflict network between stakeholders, their institutions, and sectors in the case of the formulation of the Natura 2000 Management programme in Slovenia for the period 2015–2020 (PUN). Using data from a web survey (n = 167), cooperation and conflict networks were analysed while using degree centrality, indegree centrality, betweenness centrality, and blockmodeling. The results of the stakeholder analysis showed that the highest number of stakeholders that are involved in the participatory process of PUN was from the forestry and hunting sector, followed by the agriculture and nature conservation sector. The results of the cooperation network showed that the network is highly centralized, with only few institutions taking a central position in the PUN process (Institute for Nature Conservation, Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, and the Slovenian Forest Service). Moreover, the nature conservation sector was, on average, a sector with the highest concentration of power. In addition, in the cooperation network, which was fragmented across sectors, there were institutions that belonged to the same sector, which tended to cooperate with each other. The analysis of the conflict network showed that institutions with a central position in the cooperation network also had a central role in the conflict network. In addition, conflicts between institutions more frequently appeared among institutions from different sectors. The exceptions were institutions from the fishery and water sector, as this sector seemed to have many conflicts within it. Based on a blockmodeling, four groups of institutions were identified according to their cooperation network (core institutions, semi-core institutions, semi-periphery institutions, and periphery institutions). Our finding suggested that the participatory process of formulating PUN needs to be improved in such a way that in the future various stakeholders, especially excluded local ones, are more actively involved and a balance of the power between the stakeholders involved achieved.

Developing Stakeholder Dynamic Assessment for developing wild animals conservation: an evidence from West New Guinea

“…During the research, we collected information and data related to organisational function and characteristics of the wild animal usages-related stakeholders, i.e. shape of the organisation, status of low, types of organisation, roles, effect, and importance of organisation (Gallo et al 2020;Engen et al 2019;Laktic et al 2020;Ahmad et al 2012). We also tried to collect data about threats and turn-back effects on wild animal development.…”

Analyses of interlinked actors in determining the potential business beneficiaries of small-scale pig farming systems in West Papua, Indonesia

“…Interlinked actors are shaped based on the existing mutual relationship ( Hendriks et al., 1997 ; Blok et al., 2015 ; Laktic et al., 2020 ), shared resources ( Holman 2008 ; Mandarano 2009 ), and similar administrative background. Each actor has its own power in determining which groups or institutions to be established.…”

Protected Areas in Forest Conservation: Challenges and Opportunities

“…The second theme of this SI analyzes issues of decision-making processes. Laktić et al [15] analyze links and relations between different stakeholders during participatory planning processes of the Natura 2000 management program in Slovenia. A main direction proposed by the authors is that groups of stakeholders from different institutions and sectors must be further empowered in order to be included in such processes.…”

“…However, poverty alleviation targets must not be completely ignored, as many West Africans rely on forest and catchment resources to support their livelihoods [19,22]. Finally, a common proposal in several papers of the SI, which brings us back to the second theme of the SI, is that forest conservation needs to become more inclusive and diverse by incorporating a number of local stakeholders in decision making processes [15][16][17][18].…”