FROM STAKEHOLDER TO SHAREHOLDER - ORGANISING STAKEHOLDER COMMITMENT FOR THE SCHELDE ESTUARY OF THE FUTURE -

The Scheldt Estuary provides the stage for a broad range of stakeholders and (conflicting) interests. These diverging interests led to complex decision-making on estuarine policy and management. The EU Interreg project ‘Estuaries on the MOVE’ (EMOVE) aims to bring stakeholders together and organize bottom-up commitment for a sustainable Scheldt Estuary of the future, by turning them into shareholders, implying ‘ownership’ of a particular development or project. Crucial in the approach were: 1) generating a shared understanding on the physical and ecological functioning of estuary and the different perspectives stakeholders have on the estuary and 2) collectively formulating projects and organizing coalitions. The result of the approach was both successful and promising. Five different projects were formulated – ranging from a change in polder regime (‘growing land’) to a cross-border nature reserve, environmental-friendly sediment disposal techniques, silt agriculture and governance opportunities. The applied methodology of bottom-up project formulation, combined with Group Decision Modelling provided a fruitful ground for measures towards a sustainable Scheldt Estuary that have sufficient support to come to implementation and also important generic lessons for organizing stakeholder commitment in sensitive decision-making environments like estuaries.