One of the major components of the Ocean SAMP process was the development of the stakeholder process.

There were three main objectives in bringing together as many interested groups and individuals as possible:

• Identify and prioritize stakeholder and client issues
• Design a public process that would provide stakeholders with both access and influence over decisions
• Collect available information to direct research and policy development

What the stakeholder process confirmed is that Rhode Islanders strongly and enduringly value the waters off their coast. What takes place in these waters is important to life in Rhode Island. The Ocean SAMP is more than a scientific and technical document; it is an expression of the interests of the State.

Ken Payne, Stakeholder Facilitator

What we learned

Strategies for stakeholder involvement

• Consider both traditional and non-traditional stakeholders.
• Ask others to identify stakeholders.
• Determine if anyone on the team had a personal relationship with specific people or organizations.
• Research prior to meetings what stakeholders’ interests were, and anticipate and respond to their questions.
• Listen and understand.
• Prove you are listening.

• If stakeholders are not engaging, call them and meet again.
• Meet frequently with legislators and federal representatives.
• Make the public aware of your shared efforts.
• Cultivate strategic partners.
• Develop diverse communications.
• The most important strategy of all: take care of the team!

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One Stakeholder’s Story

Doug Harris is the Preservationist for Ceremonial Landscapes for the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office. These comments were taken from an interview with him at the 2012 Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium on international marine spatial planning.

“In the first stakeholder meeting at the University of Rhode Island, I was one of the first people to stand up to present, and I explained to the rest of the stakeholders there that the oral history of the Narragansett Indian Tribe says that more than 15,000 years ago, the ancient villages of the Narragansett were out where the ocean is now. And that, as the story goes, the ocean waters began to rise and the people had to evacuate. So what I presented to the stakeholders was, ‘What will you do or what will this process do about these ancient sites that may, in fact, still be intact down under the sediment of the ocean floor out on the continental shelf?’

That question sort of floated around the room for a number of sessions, and a year and a half later, the ocean geologists came back and said that their studies had determined that not only 15,000 years ago, but as long ago as 24,000 years ago, what is now the ocean was an open and grassy plain out on the continental shelf.”