Engaging stakeholders in water-energy-food-environment systems assessment and planning: A FutureDAMS guide

This guide proposes a series of steps and principles
for conducting stakeholder engagement in decision
making around water–energy–food–environment (WEFE)
interventions, whether building or repurposing new
infrastructures or implementing policies. It outlines a
5-step process that can be run alongside multi-criteria
assessment and design of natural-human systems like
river basins. The guide is our attempt to describe an
ideal process that can be adapted to each place where it
is being used. Our approach is underpinned by the idea
that better decisions will be generated if a broad range
of stakeholders are included in a genuinely participatory
manner to allow for a holistic, system-scale consideration
of development options. Conducting such a stakeholder
approach can even generate consensus across a
diverse set of representative actors on a short-list of
interventions to make in WEFE systems; it can also help
build more useful environmental simulation models. This
document therefore sets out the process for achieving
stakeholder engagement by describing an ideal standard
for undertaking participatory WEFE assessment
modelling using established stakeholder methods.