Stakeholder involvement

Sustainable development requires decisions that change the future. Considerations on stakeholder involvement and barriers for implementation are a strategic background in all our activities, but in some projects this aspect is more explicit.

Projects

• Carbon Footprint Tool for Milk May 2016
  We developed a tool, which can be used for calculation of carbon footprint of milk both at farm level and at national level. The tool is used by Danish dairy farmers and to review selected historical national productions.
• The Socio-Economic Consequences of Environmental Advices December 2013
  The project looked at the socio‑economic consequences of 7 environmental advices given by the government. The purpose of the project was to investigate the value if such advices are followed by the general public and to visualize the benefits of a personal effort to the society.
• Holiwast June 2007 and closed 2017
  The Holiwast Decision Support Tool was a web‑based tool that allowed simultaneous comparisons of up to five stakeholder views or scenarios of municipal waste management policies.
• Stepwise EPD September 2006
  Making it easier for Small and Medium‑Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to produce EPDs for their products was the focus of the Stepwise‑EPD project.
• Consumer Demands on EPD’s February 2006
  The aim of this project was to identify the main consumer concerns on Type III environmental declarations and give recommendations on how to address these.
• LCA as a Tool in the Learning Bakery March 2003
  The purpose of this project was to test the implemention of a product‑oriented environmental management system at all levels in a large bakery enterprise. Peter Senge's concept of a learning organization was an inspiration for the project.
• Indirect Land Use Change Model (iLUC)
  How to model of indirect land use change (iLUC) in LCA? The iLUC Club develops and further refines a generic, simple and science‑based model for including iLUC in LCA.

The purpose of stakeholder involvement

• to ensure that all relevant questions are addressed, especially when other stakeholders than the immediate decision-maker have influence on the decision or its consequences,
• to identify barriers to implementation of the recommendations from a study, and finding ways to overcome these barriers, already as a part of the study. Barriers to implementation are typically financial, technological or psychological.

Financial barriers arise when the benefits of a sustainable solution falls at a later time than the costs, or when the benefits are received by another organisation than the one carrying the costs. Overcoming financial barriers typically involves the creation of a mechanism for transferring payment from the recipients of the benefits to those carrying the costs. For example, an innovation that reduces car accidents (e.g. an alco-lock) is an immediate cost for the consumers but lead to a later reduction in hospital costs and insurance payments. A subsidy for the consumer of the innovation, financed by hospital and insurance companies based on their future reduced costs, may be a way to overcome the financial barrier for the consumer to invest in the innovation. To arrive at such a solution obviously needs the direct involvement of those that receive the benefits.

Technological barriers arise when a new technology, with a large theoretical potential for sustainability improvements, competes with an old, optimised technology. For example, composting and biogasification of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste has taken a long time to develop to the level where it is now competitive to incineration. An assessment based on the early prototypes would have shown that it would be both economically and environmentally better to burn the organic waste, and would result in an overinvestment in combustion capacity. To avoid such technological lock-ins, it is important to include representatives of innovative technologies, and to avoid undue influence from those stakeholders that are likely to loose from the introduction of new technologies.

Psychological barriers arise when the implementation of a new technology requires a shift in behaviour or values. For example, both alco-locks in cars and the sorting of household waste requires changes in behaviour and also in values, i.e. acceptance of public interference in “private” decisions. Involving car owners and those managing wastes in the households could give ideas on how to design and introduce the innovations in such a ways as to minimise the opposition to the implementation. The psychological barriers related to introduction and maintenance of environmental management systems are treated on our page on employee participation.