Stakeholder Analysis for On-Scene Coordinators and Area Committees: A simplified multi-step technique to understand grassroots participation

Abstract

ABSTRACTState and federal On-Scene Coordinators (OSCs) and Area Committees acknowledge the benefits of engaging stakeholders to help support environmental protection goals and objectives. Whereas existing stakeholder management tools provide guidance to enable well-organized volunteerism during operational phases of oil spill response, incident lessons learned suggest there is less guidance on the broader stakeholder engagement process that occurs during planning and preparedness phases. The tendency to re-live conditions resulting in lessons re-learned indicate that tools designed to resolve those lessons are either ill-equipped to address the problem, not feasible to employ, are glossed over as someone else’s responsibility, are not incorporated into regional or area contingency plans, and/or are not integrated into incident command system design and functionality during drills and exercises.This paper provides OSCs and Area Committees a simplified multi-step technique to analyze and evaluate a range of stakeholders prior to conducting actual stakeholder engagement and well before stakeholders are engaged during a response. Although stakeholder engagement during response is critical and can benefit mutual goals, initiating these efforts during response is not optimal, especially when incident realities shift emphasis from grassroots capacity building to risk communications. Stakeholder engagement should begin well prior to a response with deliberate analysis of stakeholders as part of the planning and preparedness process.The multi-step technique may improve the efficacy of Area Contingency Plans, the primary conduit implementing National Contingency Plan aims of nongovernmental participation, by enhancing the design and functionality of stakeholder engagement. The outcomes achieved may help to deliver fundamental tenants of public policy and service— where problems are framed so that available solutions are fiscally, technically, and politically feasible, advance the common good, and include a broad array of stakeholders through proactive public participation.