Panel 2. Learning from Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSP) issue framing for enhancing resilience and transforming governance

There is a wide range of experience of multi-stakeholder partnerships that are formed in response to crises, shocks and stressors, aiming to build transformative capacities for sustainable and inclusive change. These MSPs help partners to recover from these crises and contribute to wider and deeper transformation, e.g. by organising collaborate learning processes.

MSPs in the domain of agriculture, food and nature are set up with different issue framings in mind: some take a value chain or commodity approach and organise their partnership around it. Others may opt for a place-based approach, organizing actors in a particular landscape to collaborate towards joint sustainability goals. Others yet again may take a specific food system as an organising concept for learning and action. Each of these issue framings have their pros and cons. Whereas some of them have evolved into solid partnerships with a certain level of formality, others remain informal, searching for legitimacy within their jurisdictional context, their commodity chain or their landscape. New ideas on social acceptance, ecological integrity and local food security as sources of legitimacy are being explored, but many of these face difficulties regarding the legitimacy of their actions, and therefore the impact of their work. Many capacity development initiatives are focused on stakeholders’ abilities to facilitate processes. But few are focused on strengthening stakeholder abilities to institutionalise their actions, embed these in policy networks, increase their impact, and contribute to a wider transformation of governance.

Active MSPs from Argentina (integrated river basin planning and governance), FAO Fish Network, and multiple landscape governance arrangements in the Amazon, the Horn of Africa and the Congo Basin can be discussed, but the panel invites research and practice contributions on existing multi-stakeholder partnerships, networks and arrangements.