Difference between revisions of "ASI:Reflection on Challenges and Lessons Learned in Negotiations over the Western Scheldt Estuary"

• There was a history of mistrust between the parties, and thus no mutual faith or willingness to take risks to get agreements going

o This mistrust was not ameliorated by any shared trust-building tasks (i.e., research or JFF processes) until the establishment of the LTV

• Negotiations excluded relevant stakeholders, and were then either ultimately unable to lead to agreement, or faced significant obstacles to implementation even when the parties at the table did agree.

o The regional governments in Belgium had blocking power (as evident by Wallonia’s multiple vetoes of agreements made between the Belgian and Dutch national governments), but were not consulted.

o Local and environmental stakeholders with necessary resources were completely denied participation – and later resisted implementation efforts.

• Internal conflicts within each of the countries at times stalled the negotiations (e.g., the Dutch parliament’s opposition to the further deepening agreed upon between the Dutch and Belgian ministers, Wallonia’s veto of agreements at multiple stages in the process.)

o Both environmental organizations in the Netherlands and the province of Zeeland strongly opposed the plans as the Dutch government negotiated them.  The fact that the Dutch signed agreements that in multiple instances were later rejected by their own internal stakeholders suggests that they did not anticipate the level of internal resistance they in fact encountered.  

• The use of linkages and packaging cut both ways in terms of contributing to the negotiations.  On one hand, they were a helpful strategy to get reluctant negotiators to the table (as was the case with the Dutch.)  However, packaging tends to be a successful strategy when it allows parties negotiating to exploit differences between their priorities and interests.  In the case of these negotiations, the linked items in some cases simply became another zero-sum issue to haggle over (as was the case for a period of time with the high-speed rail project in the negotiations between Flanders and the Netherlands.)

• The deals that were agreed upon did not include adaptive clauses or clear means to re-open negotiations if the parties found it to be necessary.  This caused the parties to expend more energy several times trying to re-open the conversation when there was no pre-defined space in which those reconsiderations could occur.   

• How did negotiations on Scheldt basin issues interact with negotiations in other forums on broader water policies, such as the Habitat and Birds Directives (addressed briefly in this paper), the international river policies of the UN-ECE, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands?

• There were multiple cases where national government negotiators did not address their own internal stakeholders’ resistance before trying to move agreements forward at the top level (i.e., environmental stakeholders and Zeeland in the Netherlands, Wallonia in Belgium).  Did the top-level negotiators not anticipate this resistance?  If so, what factors explain this breakdown in communication or stakeholder assessment?  If they were aware of this resistance, did they underestimate the blocking power these stakeholders had?

• How did the federalization of Belgium ultimately affect negotiating outcomes in region?  Was the more piecemeal process of negotiating with the regions separately beneficial to efforts to reach agreement?   

• Though the somewhat lurching nature of the negotiations over many years appears rather clumsy, was the incremental approach to negotiating perhaps the best strategy available?  Could it even have helped make agreements possible by building small degrees of trust between the parties?

• Will the LTV ultimately resolve the systemic negotiating problems for region?

o Will it succeed in incorporating other legitimate stakeholders that were excluded in previous iterations of the negotiations?

• What changed about the political and/or leadership context of the parties negotiating that caused them to decide to create the LTV?