Maltese environmental company wins International Best Practice Award for stakeholder engagement on Natura 2000
Maltese company Adi Associates Environmental Consultants, together with Epsilon International of Greece, has been awarded the top prize in an international award for stakeholder engagement, by the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management. The awards ceremony was held on 30 June at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham, UK.
The CIEEM Best Practice Awards are a celebration of achievements in ecology and environmental management, recognising lifetime achievement, best practice and individual excellence.
Between October 2012 and May 2014, a Consortium formed of Adi Associates and Epsilon undertook an EU-funded project on behalf of the former Malta Environment & Planning Authority focusing on the Natura 2000 sites of the Maltese Islands.
The project, Management Planning and Implementation of Communication Measures for Terrestrial Natura 2000 Sites in the Maltese Islands, involved the formulation of 22 management plans and eight conservation orders for the Maltese terrestrial N2000 network. Integral to the Project was a communications programme involving a multi-media awareness-raising campaign and programme of national and locallevel stakeholder engagement activities.
The communications programme was delivered through a Communications Action Plan, aimed at engaging stakeholders to optimise participation in plan formulation and to ensure buy-in to maximise subsequent implemen- tation. Together with the media campaign, the Action Plan involved the roll out of Stakeholder Involvement Plans for each N2000 site.
The Action Plan was a unique approach to environmental consultation in Malta, in terms of its engagement of those less commensurate with consultation, as well as in successfully bringing together antagonistic interest groups and providing a platform for shared debate on important land conservation matters.
Addressing the ceremony, Dr Stephanie Wray, president of CIEEM said: “The CIEEM Awards are one way that we can do our bit to raise the profile of the natural environment on the national agenda. I am thrilled to see such a wide range and scope of entries again this year. Congratulations to all who have entered and I hope that you will continue through your work, to raise the profile of nature conservation and its importance to the economy and our social wellbeing.”
In total, 14 different categories were awarded this year. The Best Practice Awards are reserved for projects that have been completed and have not been funded or managed by CIEEM itself. The categories for the Best Practice Awards included: 1) Best Practice Awards for Large
Scale Nature Conservation 2) Best Practice Awards for Small
Scale Nature Conservation 3) Best Practice Awards for Inno
vation 4) Best Practice Award for Knowl
edge Sharing 5) Best Practice Awards for Stakeholder Engagement In the Stakeholder Engagement category, the Maltese N2000 project competed with a project for the Strategic Land Use and Development Plan for the Seychelles, nominated by Arup, the Seychelles Planning Authority and the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, which was also highly commended by the judges.
Adrian Mallia, managing director of Adi Associates, accepted the award on behalf of the Epsilon-Adi Consortium. Mr Mallia commented that the Consortium members are extremely pleased with this international recognition of a project of such importance for the natural environment of the Maltese Islands. “When we first embarked on the project, we were determined to deliver a successful project and were committed to engage with the general public, with NGOs and other stakeholders across the localities where the Natura 2000 sites are located. The project implementation gave us immense pleasure as we could interact with so many stakeholders to create the first set of management plans for these important sites. We now hope that the next stages leading to implementation of the plans and the conservation orders will be embarked upon soon. Hopefully, this international recognition for the work we did will provide the impetus required for this to happen.”
The CIEEM is the leading professional membership body representing and supporting ecologists and environmental managers in the UK, Ireland and abroad. Its vision is of a society that values the natural environment and recognises the contribution of professional ecologists and environmental managers to its conservation.