Results from the Wisdom stakeholder workshop on restoration management

Full text: A Workshop to extend the Involvement of Stakeholders in Decisions On restoration Management (WISDOM) will be held in Oxford in September 2003. The aim of the workshop is to promote awareness and interest in the wider application of stakeholder involvement in the formulation of strategies for the management of contaminated agricultural land and produce following a nuclear accident. A network of stakeholder groups has already been set up under the auspices of the European Communities 5th Framework Programme (FP5). The network, given the acronym FARMING, involves more than 100 stakeholders in UK, Finland, Belgium, Greece and France. Membership tends to be at a senior level and comprises a wide range of Government and non-government organizations, including the farming sector, the food, milk and water industries, consumers and green groups. The stakeholder groups have met regularly since 2001 and have advanced contingency planning and emergency response, both nationally and on a European basis. A compendium of countermeasure options produced by another FP5 project, STRATEGY, has helped provide stakeholders with a common focus for discussion and evaluation. The 2 1/2 day workshop comprises a mixture of invited and proffered papers as well as facilitated group discussions and plenary sessions that will address the following issues: lessons learnt from stakeholder engagement; influence of regional characteristics on countermeasure selection; practical aspects of countermeasure implementation; crisis management; maintaining consumer confidence; acceptability of intervention limits; social, ethical and economic consequences; future prospects for stakeholder networks. More than 30 FARMING stakeholders and facilitators have expressed an interest in attending the WISDOM workshop. GOs and NGOs will both be represented. There will also be representatives from the STRATEGY project and the European Commission. Invitations have been issued to representatives of a further 10 member states not currently part of the FARMING network. This paper will describe the main results from the WISDOM workshop including any recommendations that the participants would like national governments and international bodies to consider in the context of emergency management of food production systems. (author)