Participatory planning of river revitalization projects:
What can it contribute to the transformation towards more adaptive socio-ecological systems?
Matthias Buchecker and Susanne Menzel
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf
Scientific summary
Recent theoretical literature suggests that a successful implementation of ecological enhancement pro- cesses implicates the involvement of the affected stakeholders into the planning process. This practice is proposed not just to avoid opposition against the project, but also to achieve further social effects that lay the ground for a more long-term transformation towards more adaptive socio-ecological systems. There is, however, little empirical evidence as to which are the main long-term social effects of participatory planning processes on natural resource management and which process features are most relevant to produce these outcomes. To answer these two research questions, we conducted two sub-studies both focusing on implementations of river revitalization projects. The first subproject aimed for revealing the long-term social effects of participatory river revitalization projects by conducting and analysing interviews with stakeholders that had been involved in one of total five completed Swiss river management projects.
In the second subproject we investigated the relationship between features of involvement processes and trust building in institutions by conducting a quasi-experimental evaluation of five ongoing planning processes of river revitalization projects. We found that the main social long-term effect was social learn- ing on benefits of river revitalizations and on how to plan together. Unexpectedly, trust-building and more generally relational effects appeared to be of rather low relevance. A most important social outcome of the involvement process for the stakeholders, however, revealed to be the avoidance of local conflicts and the maintenance of social capital. The quasi-experimental analysis of ongoing planning processes con- firmed that process features had a significant effect on trust-building in institutions. The significance of the single process features, however, varied depending on the analysis approach and the cases. Overall we found the quality of the process to be much more important than the extent of stakeholder influence; this is at least true for the dependent variable of our interest: trust increase in institutions. The overall findings of the project highlight that participatory planning of ecological enhancement projects have mainly the function to help mitigate the social aspects of this intervention by avoiding local conflicts and maintaining social capital as well as by providing a platform for social learning. A key feature for the success of those processes is the clear definition of the actors’ roles and the subject of and room for negotiation; this as- pect involves the clear communication of limits to influence by the stakeholders.
State of the art (pre-ENHANCE)
Conducting ecological enhancement projects in the public space (forest, water) require a societal con- sensus as other landscape functions are involved. Recent literature suggest that participatory planning of such projects not just facilitate a better consensus for the goals of the project but also promote societal effects that prepare the ground for the support of ecological enhancement strategies in general. Accord- ingly, participatory planning and co-management are discussed as key elements of socio-ecological transformation processes (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007).
Early work on social effects of collaborative planning and their contribution to managing complex adap- tive systems was conducted in the late 1990s. Innes and Booher (1999) presented a comprehensive but non-empirical account that distinguishes first, second, and third order social effects of collaborative plan- ning. These authors argued that participatory initiatives first produce social learning that, in turn, results in social and other capital forms and, after the implementation of agreements, in changes in perceptions
and practices. This seminal work implies solely positive social outcomes and favourable contributions of collaboration to managing complex adaptive systems.
More recent research has provided empirical evidence that participatory projects have positive effects on citizens and stakeholders acceptance of projects (Mannigel 2008; Luz 2000), creation of social capital (Buchecker and Hunziker 2006; Höppner et al. 2006; Höppner et al. 2007; Beierly and Konisky 2000) and social learning (Mosert et al. 2008).
Most of these studies focussed on short-term effects of rather short processes and thus did not consider higher order effects as suggested by Innes and Booher (1999). This lack is the more critical as a longitu- dinal study on a river partnership revealed that social capital as well as new collaborative initiatives only emerge after about four years of collaborative engagement (Leach 2002). Furthermore, recent studies found that there is not enough empirical knowledge on relevant process criteria for effective participatory processes (Row and Freewer 2004, Dougil et al. 2006). So, whereas in older participatory research, it was assumed that participatory processes are the better the more power is given to participants (Arn- stein 1969; Julian et al. 1997), results of recent studies question this assumption (Hoeppner et al. 2007;
Coney and Moote 2003). There is even some indication that social capital might be consumed as the result of collaborative efforts. More relevant than to contribute to this unresolved debate is according to Rauschmayer and Klauer (2006) to find out which context conditions and process features are related to which process outcomes. So far, studies on interactions between context factors, process factors and process outcomes have rarely been systematically evaluated (Mosert et al. 2008; Beierle and Konisky 2000; Abelson et al. 2003). One of the fewexisting evaluation studies of the social effects of participatory planning using a pre/post-design involved a 2-hours participatory workshop of questionable quality (Höppner et al. 2007).
Fig. 1. Working group in the context of the revitalization of the Thur river: © Matthias Buchecker.
Motivation and research questions
There is a general agreement among scholars that participatory planning, if well done, can considerably contribute to a successful implementation of ecological enhancement projects. Theoretical literature and first systematic evaluation studies suggest that participatory processes have effects on the acceptance of the project and additional social effects that might prepare the ground for the success of future eco- logical enhancement strategies. In this respect, social capital building and in particular trust building is considered to be of special relevance (Leach and Sabatier 2005; Pretty and Smith 2005). So far there is, however, little empirical evidence as to which long-term social effects participatory planning really has and which process features are most relevant for a positive outcome. As participatory planning is costly and time consuming, decision makers need this information to decide whether this investment will pay or not.
In order to provide this lacking information, we tried to answer two main research questions:
– What long-term social effects have participatory planning processes on ecological enhancements?
– Which process features contribute best to positive social effects, in particular to participants’ trust in relevant institutions?
As ecological enhancement projects related to river management are of especial public interest and will be a main political agenda in the next decade, we focused our research on river revitalization projects.
We define river revitalization as a combination of flood management and ecological restoration as defined in the new Swiss waters law (GSchG 1991).
Technical issues
To answer these two research questions, we conducted two sub-studies both focusing on participatory river revitalization projects: a) a retrospectivelong-term evaluation of completed participatory river revi- talization projects and b) a quasi-experimental evaluation of ongoing participatory processes related to planned revitalization projects.
a) Retrospective evaluation of completed river revitalization projects
To measure the long-term effects of completed participatory river revitalization projects, we conducted semi-structured interviews with members of advisory groups of five realised projects of combining flood- control and restoration. The river projects were sampled according to the following criteria: The planning of a project had to be finished at least three years prior to the study, the project had to be well document- ed, and the implementation of plans had to be terminated. A further criterion for selecting a project was that it had to be in the German- or Rhaeto-Romance-speaking area of Switzerland due to the language preferences of the investigators. The search resulted in 22 cases. From these we selected those cases with some level of public interest and where the project leader was willing to collaborate. To qualify for the criterion of public interest, the planning process had to involve at least representatives from municipal agencies and representatives of the fields of conservation, fisheries and landowners; also the restored river stretch had to be longer than 1 km. The sampling process to select the cases resulted in five river engineering projects along the streams of Flaz, Kander, Langente, Thur, and Wyna.
In a second sampling step we selected the interviewees within the cases. Here we applied purposeful sampling to get interviewees who would be able to provide us with rich information from a wide range of perspectives (Patton 1990; Coyne 1997). We partly based this sampling on information the project lead- ers provided us. For each case we selected five to six interviewees to represent the following functions:
authority in charge of the planning process, conservation (governmental or civil society organisations [CSO]), fishing, landowners, and the municipalities. Thereby, we preferred participants who were continu- ously involved in the planning process (if possible, from the beginning).
The interviews were guided by a list of key questions and optional sub-questions that allowed a deeper consideration of interesting issues. The guideline addressed the role of the interviewee in the process, characteristics of the planning process, context features, power of stakeholders to influence the process;
the effects of the participative/collaborative planning process on the interviewee him- or herself, and on other participants of the planning group, and beyond the group, and the characterising aspects of the relationships among the participants and their changes over time.
Overall, 26 interviews were conducted. Only one of the interviewee was female; the age of the majority of the interviewees ranged between approximately 45 and 65 years.
The interviews were all digitally recorded, transcribed and coded. Two researchers developed the coding scheme in an iterative process after thoroughly reading a random sample of the interviews based on the research questions. Following the development of the coding scheme one investigator coded every para- graph of every interview. A second investigator coded a fraction of the interviews to enhance reliability of the coding.
b) Quasi-experimental ex-ante – ex-post study on ongoing participatory processes related to planned revitalization projects
To conduct quasi-experimental evaluations of participatory river revitalization projects we first identified respective projects that were at the very outset of the participatory planning phase. We did so by calling leader of cantonal agencies responsible for the field of water engineering. We also interviewed experts with specific knowledge about the river engineering scene in Switzerland about river projects in the early planning or constituting phase. By this way we identified seven cases of river revitalization projects. In one case the leader was not willing to collaborate. In the other cases, namely, AA – Alte Aare (close to Worben, Studen, Dotzigen), BUE – Buenz (close to Hendschiken), HA – Hasliaare (Aare between the Aare canyon close to Meiringen and Brienz), REU – Reuss (from Reussegg to the boarder of the canton), Ron – RON (close to Ebikon), and TOE – Toessegg (water mouth of the river Toess into the Rhine, clos- est municipality: Teufen), we proceeded as described below.
In order to measure the interrelations between process qualities and process outcomes, we distributed questionnaires among the members of advisory groups of river related planning processes listed above.
To allow for repeated (i.e., pre-post) measurement, these questionnaires were distributed at two occa- sions in each involvement process, one in the beginning, shortly after the group had been constituted (wave 1), and one after about one year of operation and at least two meetings (wave 2). Depending on the project leader we got or did not get access to the addresses of the participants. In some cases we sent the questionnaires ourselves per mail, in one case the project management sent our questionnaire with the invitation to a group meeting, and in other cases we were allowed to distribute the questionnaires at group meetings. The groups consisted of about 6 to 40 people, depending on the size of the project and the number of interests affected. However, not all of them attended every workshop organized by the project management. We likely received less questionnaires than there were people involved in the group, since either, not all participants showed up for the meeting or not all participants filled in a ques- tionnaire. Unfortunately, for the case RON, no second wave could be completed, because the process came to a halt and hence the project management spoke against a second survey round.
In the questionnaires, we measured five main concepts, a process outcome concept, two process quality concepts, extent of stakeholder influence, and one concept on the expected (substantial) outcomes of the project. For each concept (process quality variable, extent of stakeholder influence, outcome variable), a number of questions were asked in the questionnaire. We operationalized each concept by comput- ing an index from the answers to the related questions. The indices were computed by summing up the values of the items applied and then dividing by the number of items. So we achieve quasi-interval scaled data of the concepts needed for the empirical analysis. The concept of the process outcome, trust in the institutions (2 questions: local and cantonal institutions) were measured using an 11-point scale. The extent of stakeholder influence (three items on participants’ perceived influence in the process), concepts of process quality included appreciation and efficiency (four items on participants perceived emotional incentives and costs) and transparency and fairness (two items). Finally, the concept of the expected outcomes was measured with five items on the participants’ assessments in terms of the implementation of the project.
We analyzed the data in three different ways. First we conducted a visual analysis of the aggregated data of the five cases (group analysis). This aggregated analysis was conducted to explore the data and to replicate a similar approach to data analysis (compare Wagner et al. 2008, 2009). Secondly, we conduct- ed a regression model using the individual data of the persons who answered both the pre- and the post questionnaires; accordingly (repeated measurement analysis). It is the preferred approach in our case since it allowed us to restrict the independent variables to the values of the second wave. However, only 28 individuals (of about 130 individuals, who represent the full sample) responded in both, the first and second wave. The third analysis consists of a multiple regression analysis to observe the relationships between our explanatory variable and the dependent one on the basis of the full (pooled1) data set, i.e., all questionnaires from the first and second wave (pooled data analysis). The analysis of the data in three different ways allows us to see which results are backed up by different ways of scrutinizing the data and which results contradict each other.
Main results and key insights
Long-term social effects of participatory river revitalization projects:
The analysis of the interviews in the five case studies revealed the most relevant social effects and pro- cess conditions for these effects.
The most relevant long-term social effects we found was social learning on three aspects: learning about the benefits of ecological measures, leading a participatory process and interacting appropriately with others.
A very notable result of the interview analysis was that trust-building was mentioned by only few stake- holders. Trust was mainly emphasised as outcome of participatory planning when conflict had occurred in an earlier phase of the process. In particular governmental and municipal actors reported about changes in relationships. Most often, however, trust was mentioned in an inverse sense, namely that conflicts and loss of trust could be avoided through the participatory process.
Furthermore, we found no evidence of participatory planning process extending into the wider regional population. A couple of interviewees, however, spoke of a preparatory value for other revitalization pro- jects in the same watershed.
Our results challenge earlier research as we could neither identify relevant trust-building nor extension of social effects into the wider population (as have been suggested by Innes and Booher 1999). Our results, however, confirm earlier findings on time requirements of social learning (Leach et al. 2002).
In terms of favourable conditions for effective participatory river restoration projects, we found three main aspects: that the stakeholders received the relevant information on the projects directly from the project leaders (and not from newspapers), that participation takes place directly in the field and (also) in the implementation phase, and that the leaders clearly state which topics are subject to negotiation and which not. We thus confirm the crucial role of leadership as noted by earlier researchers (Carr et al. 1998; Ols- son et al. 2004; Mosert et al. 2007).
Fig. 2. The new course of the Flaz river (March 2010): © Matthias Buchecker.
Fig. 3. The revitalized Kander at Augand (February 2010): © Matthias Buchecker.
Interactions between process qualities and trust building:
The three different analysis approaches to the data gathered in the pre/post survey revealed different relationships between the process qualities and the process outcome in terms of trust building.
The regression analysis based on repeated measurement data of assessments of 28 individuals – the most reliable approach – highlighted the variables of the concepts “expected outcome” and “appreciation and efficiency” as significantly contributing predictors of trust building. When, however, “appreciation and efficiency” was included into the model, the effect of “expected outcome” was no longer significant. The variables of the concepts “transparency and fairness” and (in a stronger degree) “extent of stakeholder influence” appeared to be not-significantly negatively related to trust building.
The regression analysis based on the pooled data across time revealed again the effects of the variable
“expected outcome”, but also the one of the variable “extent of stakeholder influence” as significant. The effects, however, referred to referred to trust and not to trust building, and the time effects were found to be not significant for both variables.
In the group analysis based on the aggregated data of the single case studies, the variables of the con- cepts “expected outcomes”, “extent of stakeholder influence” and “transparency and fairness” showed all a positive bivariate relationship to the outcome variable “trust building”. For the variable “appreciation and efficiency”, this relationship appeared to be negative. Overall, the trust-building was only in two cases positive and in the three others negative.
Our data suggest that different process features are of particular importance in a particular setting. A may be as justified interpretation is that trust-building in institutions is in many cases not a relevant outcome variable.
Key insights
The results of the two sub-studies suggest that trust-building is at least in the Swiss context not a very rel- evant social effect produced through participatory river revitalization projects. More relevant social effects appeared to be learning processes in terms of a better appreciation of river revitalization and acquisition of procedural knowledge regarding the organisation of successful participatory planning processes. On the other hand, avoiding and rebuilding the loss of social capital appeared to be a core motivation and value-added of participatory processes for the involved stakeholders. This finding emphasises that imple- menting ecological enhancement projects is always an intervention into established social structures, and avoiding a major social damage seems to be a main challenge. Another challenge is to give stakeholders a chance to understand the value of ecologically motivated interventions and to give them the opportunity to identify their benefits on the personal level, e. g. through the new and attractive recreational spaces they provide. This avoids the impression on the side of stakeholders of being colonized from outside and associated feelings of helplessness. Participatory processes can help, if well done, to soften and locally digest these interventions but also to transform them into an impulse for innovations and learning. This learning concerns in particular how to communicate and collaborate. Implementations of ecological en- hancement projects therefore always implicate chances for social learning and social enhancement.
A second key insight of the two sub-studies is that the success of participatory ecological enhancement projects depends considerably on the quality of the participatory processes. The analysis of the pre-/
post-measurements of participatory planning projects could not determine a clear ranking of the main influence factors. But in combination with the findings of the retrospective evaluation of completed revitali- zation projects, the analysis suggests that, most importantly, the roles and competences of the involved actors should be clarified and respected. All thus connected aspects such as appreciation of actors’
contributions, a clear definition of non-negotiable givens and an efficient negotiation process appeared to be of particular relevance. A meaningful participatory learning process also requires a certain openness of the outcome from all sides. This implicates for the side of the natural scientists that for each ecological enhancement project, it should be clearly differentiated which the core and which the more marginal and thus negotiable aspects are.
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