Mind over matter: cultivating stakeholder commitment to Sustainable practices.


When your project is funded during our fundraising service, or in an other way, the actual project implementation always start with a stakeholder consultation round.

About this service

Experience tells us that Sustainable Resource Management is only achievable with stakeholders who feel knowledgeable and committed. To put it differently, stakeholders will only comply with sustainable practices if they understand and agree with the rationale behind. Ignoring this has been a recipe for project failure around the world. For many years, FSG has applied this principle in preparing and informing stakeholders for Land⁺ related projects.

Land⁺ is in compliance with rules for Corporate Social Responsibility. Where possible, activities are certified in accordance with international standards.

Land⁺ is also integrated into local customs and designed to meet local needs, such as food, fuel and forage. Each Land⁺ system is developed in such a way that Bioproducts and ecoservices (e.g. ecotourism) provide financial and non-financial benefits. Local jobs are manifold, generated in production, processing, commercialization and service provision. Read here a summary of social benefits achieved with the Land⁺approach.

FSG’s expertise

Our multi-stakeholder approach aims at achieving maximum stakeholder commitment in Land⁺ projects. This works in a double way. On the one hand, we tailor our project design to the abilities and needs of specific stakeholders rather than vice versa. These needs and abilities are identified during our opportunity assessment.

On the other hand, we consult key stakeholders again before the real project implementation to make last (small) adjustment to the project design.

Targeted stakeholders are found throughout commodity chains. These include landowners, managers, harvesters, policy-maker, traders and many more. Stakeholders are usually grouped according to their level of importance for the project or for a certain certification standard.

A particular focus group consists of trainers; people committed to training others in specific fields of interest. Trainers may work for governments, companies, NGO's, Business Support Organizations or be members of local communities. Trainers will be used in the next step in project implementation; training.

Service aspects

Joint analysis

These sessions with multiple stakeholders are to result in a representative and realistic description of a project context. Thus, they serve to inform adequate project decisions. This is what we usually do during an opportunity assessment. It forms the basis of every Land⁺ system.

Joint design fine-tuning

Joint design fine-tuning happens at the start of every project. The project will be presented to a well- selected group of stakeholders. Comments, remarks and suggestions are taken into account in the project design. After that the project proposal or business plan will be adjusted and the project is ready for the rest of the implementation.

Certification standards consultation.

For many certification standards stakeholder consultation is needed a well. For each standard FSG has its own checklist with questions and discussion topics to discuss. This to make sure we comply with the standards. For some standards actual stakeholder involvement is needed in the project. We will make sure the right stakeholders are selected and their involvement is guaranteed.

Next steps?

Stakeholder consultation is also used to assess the training needs with every identified stakeholder group. This training need assessment is used to train stakeholders in the next step pf project implementation; training.