Students:Final outcome of student stakeholder mapping and analysis in the Ore Mountains: Difference between revisions

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 * National government
 * Regional government
-* Mining companies
+* Mining companies (Czech Coal)
 * Local businesses
 * Environmental NGOS
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 * The '''media'''  interact with the '''local citizens''' as conduits, filters or even interpreters of information about regional sustainability impacts, while also interacting with all other stakeholders to source their information
+See Fig. 1 for the initial draft of the map.
+=== How were the relationships characterised? ===
+Apart from visualising the actors relevant to the issue at stake and important for any proposed intervention, a further aim of the mapping exercise was to establish how the relationships and networks were characterised, i.e. were they genuine coalitions of like-minded actors working towards a shared goal, or were the relationships and networks of a different nature?
+The students determined that practically all of the relevant relationships were to some extent unequal and sometimes defined more by pecuniary interest which had the potential to act as a barrier to finding a common solution to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the region. As noted above, several broken relationships between regional actors were also defined (as depicted in the map by the black lines with crosses through them). Of primary important here is that students found '''there is no common or joint search by two or more actors for solutions''' to the region's sustainability problems.
+The wealth of Czech Coal, in the opinion of the students, for example, tended to have a distorting effect on some relationships. For example, it is able to fund and publish its own free newspaper, ostensibly for Czech Coal employees, but in reality available to all. It is able to fund or subsidise cultural and sporting events, such as attendance at the city of Most horse racing track, built on reclaimed land, and which might otherwise be beyond the financial means of the majority of local inhabitants. Czech Coal also dispenses its largesse to local educational institutions, the University of Finance and Administration based in Most, and is a significant contributor to primary education in the city of Litvinov through its sponsorship programme, Spolužití pro Litvínov (Co-existence for Litvinov) – Litvinov being a crucial stakeholder in the plans to mine lignite right up to its border. A further example is Czech Coal’s ability to finance and commission independent scientific research from its own research institute, Výzkumný ústav pro hnědé uhlí a.s. (Research Institute for Brown Coal).
+As passions over the future of the region and whether to expand mining operations or not can become heated, relationships between the opposing camps have sometimes broken down altogether, e.g. Czech Coal and representatives of the town of Horní Jiřetín regularly clash over interpretation of statistics and research results, and accuse each other of intrigue and underhand tricks to win their arguments. Czech Coal representatives also refuse to deal with unnamed NGOs because of what they allege to be aggressive and dangerous anti-mining tactics. On the other hand, Czech Coal PR representatives told students that the company’s relationship with the state government was fraught with difficulty which left it unable to influence national policy on mining in the region.
+Given the complexity and diversity of the relationships involved in the issued of lignite mining in the region, the students then simplified their stakeholder, as depicted in Fig. 3.
 === References ===
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