From informing to involvement

During the resent years the focus from environmental awareness raising has changed more towards involvement of stakeholders. This means that the skills demanded from the employees of the local authorities are changing. Employees should be able to handle challenging communication, understand the dynamics of involvement and different methods of involvement.

A lot of cities have tested a number of stakeholder involvement methods and some have proven to be good practices in their local surroundings. A good number of these cases, can be found from a Good Practice Database in the Baltic Sea Region . The diversity of topics approached through active involvement is very wide. Nearly everyone of the practices evidence a more effective implementation of the topic developed through an involvement process. This is very important.

Solutions local, together - conference offers you a change to be involved as much as you would like to. Involvement requires an active approach from both sides. At the moment, we are trying to develop different ways for involvement. It will be challenging as the conference has tree languages to work with. If you have good ideas - let us know them.

Future is ours

Recent days have made me think about the different levels of involvement, starting from informing to involvement. In an ideal world, everyone would get their voices heard on the topics that affect them. When there are many stakeholders, like now in COP15 meeting, it is nearly impossible to come to a satisfactory decisions when the process of participation is not thought through well enough. This is the case now, when physical participation of relevant NGOs is being denied and demonstrations are considered as negative actions.

It is frustrating to see even though everyone talks about the same thing, but when it comes to actual decision-making - the decision-makers still think the individualistic way - not ours, but mine (my country, my world). Involvement is about us, future is ours - therefore we should remember the common benefits. What is left if it is not our common concern?

Very often we know only afterwards that we had a change to influence, for a limited time. Therefore I want to point out to you that influence now when there is a Public consultation on the future EU 2020 strategy ongoing until 15.1.2010. This is about our common future guided by the EU. EU 2020 strategy is about a new sustainable social market economy, a smarter, greener economy where our prosperity will result from innovation and from using resources better, and where knowledge will be the key input. The strategy is about the transformation needed in Europe. If COP15 does not do the trick - at least give your opinion at http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/secretariat_general/eu2020/consultation_en.htm