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Deliberation

Subtask Description:
Deliberate with Deliberation Support Tools or Systems.

Action points of the implementation:

1. Deliberate with the KerDST on paper.

Area:
Chalastra Bay, Thermaikos gulf, Greece

Policy Issue:
Sustainable management of mussel farming activity

Human Activities:
Mussel aquaculture, agriculture, urban and industrial activities, fisheries.

General Information:
About half of the national mussel harvest is produced in the area. The unique environmental conditions resulted in mussels with very high condition index achieved in a very short time and also in two reproduction and growth circles in the same year. During the last 10 years, mostly due to excessive cultivation techniques, an annual reduction of the mussel production is taking place, both in means of quality and quantity along with an elongation of the growing period. At the same time due to a number of institutional failures, there is an important legal gap creating institutional problems and obstructing the management of the activity, allowing black market, illegal employment, etc. The main stakeholder concerns are connected to the design and implementation of the legal framework and the optimization of the mussel production.

Example of Implementation:
During the 1st Stakeholders Forum of Thermaikos gulf deliberations were contacted with the use of questionnaires that was used as “alternative Decision Support Tool” in which the stakeholders were asked to rate the scenarios in the bases of their opinion about the proposed management decisions and the outcomes according to the management tool.
During the process of the questionnaires it was soon realized that the first part, referring to the scenarios presented (Table 1), was quite confusing for the stakeholders as several forms was left blank and in others there were comments that suggested that either the results of the scenarios were not clear enough or that the questions were not stated in an understandable way (I don’t know – I don’t understand). In order to clarify that and as the organization of a second forum was under planning the team contacted several of the participants and tried through several questions to understand what went wrong. The outcome of that process was that although most of the stakeholders understood the scenarios as presented, they found the “alternative DST” confusing.

Table 1: Evaluation of the scenarios with the use of Decision Support Tool on paper.

Table 2: Evaluation of the meeting from the stakeholders.

Contact: Zoi Konstantinou, zkon@civil.auth.gr.