The use of policy scenarios for water quality in stakeholder consultation

The paper describes an innovative approach to stakeholder consultation about agricultural land uses and water quality in rural waterways. In mid-2012 the authors prepared a number of policy scenarios from published regional council planning documents, addressing sediment, nutrients and pathogens. These examples were intended to stimulate stakeholders to consider the attributes that they desired in the regional council interventions to be included in the next regional plan. Stakeholders from a range of agricultural and environmental organisations were invited to attend a one-day workshop. At the workshop they reviewed the proposed policy problem and objective, as well as the policy scenarios. Workshop participants then used post-it® notes to complete a template that described the attributes underlying the policy scenarios. The results were used to describe areas of convergence between the different stakeholder groups and areas where there were differences. These results are now being used in the next phase of the regional plan for the Wellington Region.