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Complex sustainability projects require a nuanced set of interpersonal and strategic capabilities alongside technical acumen. The ability to manage and engage with a mosaic of stakeholders – including communities, regulators, NGOs, investors, and internal teams – is indispensable. This holds true whether the lead party is public or private sector.
Stakeholder management skills have long been recognised in the project management profession, and many environmental reporting frameworks recommend or provide guidance on stakeholder engagement. Indeed, it’s a requirement in some specific situations, for example, environmental impact assessments or community consultations.
There are essential skills and steps that can be taken for effective stakeholder navigation, which must be purposeful and tailored to a specific project. This is illustrated in four complex EU sustainability projects, outlined below. Typically, complex projects span sectors and geographies - requiring cultural intelligence, empathy, and the ability to integrate across public, private, and non‑profit networks.
A strategic vision will help to provide a long-term horizon and framing for the project objectives.Systems thinking helps provide an understanding of all the interdependencies across environmental, social, and economic domains. Both these help to identify the full range of stakeholders whose buy-in and alignment needs to be secured for successful outcomes.
Effective stakeholder engagement hinges on comprehensive stakeholder analysis - mapping actors by influence, interest, and expectations. Detailed segmentation can be helpful and validating any categorisation with stakeholder groups will confirm shared understanding of roles. The Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) emphasis on “rights holders” – not just those with power, but those with legitimate interest – provides a broad and inclusive definition of who should be considered. Other terms like “stake partner”[1] might useful if they authentically reflect the project vision.
Robust communication – and the ability to tailor messages across mediums – is important. Sharing a communications calendar when inputs will be requested and when updates will be provided gives stakeholders reassurance and the ability to adequately plan their inputs which supports the smooth running of complex projects. Forward planning is especially important when there are short feedback windows at specific milestones. Emotional intelligence plays a key role: active listening, empathy, and trust‑building help to detect underlying concerns and foster meaningful relationships. Time invested in relationships is rarely time lost, but of course this will need to be balanced with overall time and capacity constraints. Communication needs to be appropriate and fit for purpose, taking into account the stakeholder group, their capacity and constraints. Stakeholders benefit from understanding how their inputs have shaped the outcomes so it’s important to ensure engagement findings are communicated back out in a timely and user-friendly format. There are a wide range of “data crunching” tools available to capture, collate, analyse and summarise inputs so it’s helpful to consider ahead of time how feedback will be shared as this may inform the engagement route.
For many sustainability projects, stakeholder landscapes often represent fundamentally conflicting interests. Leaders must mediate through negotiation, finding mutually beneficial outcomes and fostering open dialogues that encourage collaboration rather than confrontation. Often “good” outcomes compete with each other and this needs to be fully recognised to move forwards. Engaging diverse voices transparently is important, especially being open with mechanisms and governance of how opinions and interests are balanced, how the decision making process is set up to enable decisions to be reached. Transparency on any implicit or explicit hierarchy of interests should be carefully considered and communicated – including which feedback is considered material. Communicating clearly on challenges and progress will deliver credibility for the project and appropriate, robust governance will support stakeholder engagement.
Sustainability projects often operate in uncertain, shifting contexts, including policy/regulatory, commercial, and social. Adaptive leadership, driven by agile methodologies and proactive risk management, lets teams recalibrate plans through iterative feedback and stakeholder input where this is possible.
Recent EU projects [2] ARSINOE, IMPETUS, REGILIENCE, and TransformAr collectively aim to enhance sustainability and resilience in water management and urban environments across Europe. Each project focuses on innovative solutions and stakeholder engagement to address interconnected challenges such as climate change, resource management, and urbanisation. These complex projects are multidisciplinary, with a need to balance various stakeholder interests, geographical diversity, and the integration of innovative technologies.
ARSINOE focused on climate change adaptation solutions. In this project, 41 partners from 15 countries collaborated to shape pathways to resilience by delivering regional innovation packages to build an ecosystem to develop and implement innovative climate change adaptation measures and solutions across Europe. Stakeholder mapping was led by case-study leaders who used an influence/interest matrix to guide the selection of participants.
IMPETUS aligned adaptation by building ‘resilience knowledge boosters’. With 32 partner organisations based in nine European countries, it adopted a flexible and regionally adaptative four-step stakeholder engagement approach to identify, analyse, engage stakeholders and monitor results and lessons learned.
REGILIENCE had nine core partners working to deliver regional climate resilience development pathways. It carried out general stakeholder mapping and implemented activities to increase awareness, build capacities and enable the engagement of citizens, for instance through citizens surveys and providing environmental literacy training.
TransformAr focused on developing and demonstrating solutions and pathways for transformational adaptation. It used a multi-actor approach with stakeholder roles identified according to geographic and technical dimensions, and developed a playbook to organise co-creation workshops. Stakeholders’ engagement guidelines were published, demonstrating the transparency of the approach[3].
Leadership in sustainability transcends technical know‑how. Bridging divides and ensuring optimum benefits realisation, appreciation and understanding is key to engaging stakeholders more successfully on projects.
Elana Chesler, PISEP, ChMC, MSc, is a sustainability professional writing in a personal capacity
References
This article draws on thinking set out in:
European Commission. 2024 “Stakeholder engagement in climate adaptation & resilience” Learnings from EU Mission on Adaptation projects CLIMA - Full policy brief on Stakeholder Engagement in Climate Adaptation now available
Hafferty, Caitlin. 2022 “Embedding an evidence-led, best practice culture of engagement: learning from the evidence) Natural England Commissioned Report NECR448 10 recommendations for best practice stakeholder engagement | University of Oxford ; Best practice stakeholder engagement: learning from the evidence - Research Repository
[1]Silvius, Gilbert, and Ron Schipper. 2019. "Planning Project Stakeholder Engagement from a Sustainable Development Perspective" Administrative Sciences 9, no. 2: 46. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci9020046
[2] European Commission. 2024 “Stakeholder engagement in climate adaptation & resilience” Learnings from EU Mission on Adaptation projects CLIMA - Full policy brief on Stakeholder Engagement in Climate Adaptation now available
[3] TransformAr Stakeholders’ Engagement Guidelines (2022) D1.1-Stakeholders-Engagement-Guidelines.pdf
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