D4.3 Stakeholder Engagement Strategies: Closing the Gap Between Fork and Farm for Circular Nutrient Flows

Stakeholder engagement (SE) is an essential yet complex aspect of governance and organizational practice. The methodology for SE was developed through a community-led, co-creation approach, drawing on established literature and practical experience from other EU projects. The primary goal of task 4.2 is to co-create strategies that empower and engage local businesses and stakeholders in the development of regional networks necessary for the operationalization of P2GreeN’s innovative systems.
This task, which spans the entire project timeline (M1 to M48), aims to develop and implement community-led strategies to facilitate stakeholder engagement and carry out a market assessment of the pilot regions.
The first section of the report covers the market assessment, which was conducted in the three pilot regions, examining socio-economic factors, regulatory obstacles, cultural perceptions, and potential growth opportunities for source-separating sanitation systems. The initial search was conducted on Web of Science and Google Scholar, including articles, reports, and legislative text published between 2003 and October 15, 2023 (Moons et al., 2021). Based on predefined inclusion criteria, we developed a string of search terms adopted from related reviews and the Project material (Lam et al., 2015; Corrin & Papadopoulos, 2018; Gwara, 2021). Key identified concerns include low user acceptance of P2Green technologies, as well as regulatory barriers at regional and EU levels, particularly for human excreta-based fertilizers in Sweden and Germany.
The second and following sections of the report cover the SE strategies, which focused on crafting core messages to attract public, private, and business stakeholders while adapting to the local contexts of each pilot region.
The key objectives of the co-creation process include:

• Understanding the specific national and regional contexts of nitrogen and phosphorus (N&P) recovery in pilot regions.
• Mapping, ranking, and analysing relevant stakeholders in these regions.
• Developing actions to engage stakeholders and address their needs and challenges concerning N&P recovery.

In total, seven co-creation workshops were organised across pilot regions, starting with an initial cross-consortium workshop in M1, in January 2023. The workshop helped identify key stakeholders. The stakeholder list was fed into a document to serve as a live database, which has been continuously used by the pilot partners and overall consortium to track and expand their local networks. Additional three online and in-person workshops held in May and June 2023 (M5 & M6) facilitated engagement with local stakeholders in Spain, Sweden, and Germany. These workshops highlighted challenges, needs, and benefits relevant to stakeholders, and helped assess their levels of engagement. For example, a lack of clarity and safety in the envisioned outcomes of the transformation was highlighted by the stakeholders in the German pilot. In the Spanish pilot governance issues and mediating with administrative bodies were highlighted as challenges.
Subsequently, during the M11 in November 2023 Consortium Meeting, three sprints were held to address early-stage stakeholder engagement challenges, focusing on developing strategies and tools to overcome these barriers. These events led to the creation of concrete guidelines for crafting and adapting core messages to maintain and further spark stakeholder interest. Additionally, communication strategies were refined to effectively communicate without overburdening stakeholders.
This report presents the co-created, community-led stakeholder engagement strategies developed for the three P2GreeN pilot regions, which cover aspects of knowledge and awareness, communication activities, resources, and administration of stakeholder management. These strategies offer practical guidelines for sparking interest among diverse public, private, and business stakeholders, ensuring effective and sustained engagement throughout the project's timeline.
The final section of the report presents the outcome of a feedback survey that was carried out internally within the consortium, to evaluate the stakeholder engagement methodology, offering valuable insights into the effectiveness and areas for improvement within the SE process.