Identify affected stakeholders and involve them in the adaptation process

Cooperation with relevant stakeholders, including interest groups, NGOs or those from the private sector, can be set up with different levels of involvement, e.g. access to information, consultation on specific issues of concern to participatory involvement throughout the whole process. The level of involvement can also change over the course of the adaptation process (e.g. high level when defining objectives vs. low level when working on an evaluation scheme). But when starting the process, the aims of the process as well as the role of stakeholders need to be clear and communicated in order to manage expectations.

Some key points when involving stakeholders should be taken into account:

Every stakeholder involvement process is different and thus, a diversified skill set (e.g. moderation, mediation, adaptation related knowledge) is needed to deal with the various possible developments in the phases of involvement;
Stakeholder involvement processes are resource intensive (e.g. human, financial) and thus, a clear process design should be available right from the start in order to calculate resources needed by stakeholders as well as the organization team;
Short handouts about the process as well as minutes documenting the discussions and key results within the process should be prepared in order to guarantee the continuous information exchange and transparency;
Stakeholders need to be informed about the intended use of results and give their approval in case of planned publication.