Regional Mountain Conference

Within the European project MountResilience, regional demonstrators test experimental climate change adaptation solutions. In the Alpine canton of Valais in Switzerland there is a need for more efficient, informed and transparent decision-making and stronger involvement of stakeholders in water management. What lessons can we learn from our research phases to involve stakeholders in an ethical manner? What were the needs, obstacles, strategies, benefits, and areas of improvement for their inclusion?

Participatory approaches overcome Decision Support System limitations, yielding three benefits: tailored content and usage, trust, and agency. Social sciences have long critiqued participatory ethics—symbolic violence, power imbalances or result restitution. In design, prioritizing user needs employs user-centered approaches and research-through-design (e.g., workshops).

We conducted online semi-structured interviews and workshops, and in situ meetings. We also ran an online evaluative study of our prototype. The latter includes crowdsourced features: field observation reports, and proposals for best practices and nature-based solutions.

Our poster synthesizes our empirical experience throughout the project, with the help of local partners. Understanding local characteristics (economic, hydrological, etc.) has enabled us to better address the specific issues facing each valley. Snowball sampling was an effective method for accessing difficult-to-reach stakeholders but introduced other biases, such as gender parity or the prevalence of interested people. We recommend anticipating seasonal absences (e.g., hay season), the main barrier to including farmers. Online exchanges were efficient, required less investment from both parties, and participants often exceeded the allotted time. Participants were informed that not all their ideas could be included and we noted who wished to be contacted for further studies or results. Showing app sketches allowed them to move beyond concepts to shape the design, features, and UI. Within the app, open participation by posting observations and solutions was considered quite useful, but there was a real need for visible moderation.

This retrospective view will help us propose an ethical tool implementation strategy and provides some guidelines for future design work involving stakeholders for environmental awareness in mountain areas. It would be interesting to measure participants’ perceived benefits after app delivery.