Natural Justice’s co-facilitator of the African BCP Initiative, ETC COMPAS, has released a significant new publication, “Power Dynamics in Multi-Stakeholder Processes: A Balancing Act,” together with six other Dutch development NGOs. The publication, which has been released together with a web portal with relevant resources, summarises lessons learned from 12 multi-stakeholder process case studies in eight nations across Africa, Asia and Central America. The report includes documentation from two biocultural community protocol processes in Ghana and Kenya that Natural Justice supported. The web portal includes country case reports, videos and evaluation reports from the research programme.
From the report, “this publication is a result of the Thematic Learning Programme (TLP) ‘Strategically dealing with power dynamics in multistakeholder processes’ (2011-2012) in which seven Dutch development NGOs investigated how they could address and incorporate a deeper understanding of these power dynamics in their work. This topic is important, because MSPs involve issues in complex contexts: land conflicts, natural resource conflicts or farmers at the bottom of the value chain. MSPs are not always harmonious; the stakes are generally higher for some than for others and the various actors may not necessarily have the same level of representation at the table. This TLP aimed to draw lessons for the different organizations involved and to enable them to deal better with power dynamics in MSPs.”
