Our ULaaDS stakeholder engagement experts – Melanie Troppe and Günther Illek from IFZ – took part in the Civitas FastTrack Capacity Building Week. The session focused on Setting up logistics fora, an approach for stakeholder engagement developed and tested in the 3 ULaaDS lighthouse cities – Groningen, Mechelen and Bremen. Representatives of eight cities attended the session: Riga, Munich, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Brno, Gdynia, and Murcia.

Engaging with stakeholders is an essential step for public authorities to achieve their decarbonisation goals. Measures and policies for zero-emissions city logistics can have adverse impacts on different actors, making them unpopular, so early dialogues can help prevent resistance to change.

Stakeholder mapping offers a systematic and robust start to effective multi-stakeholder collaboration. To start with, cities should first identify their main stakeholder groups. Generally, categories and their approximate representation in the fora can be split between:

• Public authorities (local, regional, national, etc.) – 28%
• Supply chain stakeholders (e.g., freight forwarders, transport operators, shippers, major retail chains, shop owners, etc.) – 28%
• Other stakeholders (e.g., Industry and Commerce Associations, Consumers Associations, Research and Academia) – 36%
• Experts (e.g., IT service providers, residents) – 8%

After identifying and mapping stakeholders, stakeholder fora require careful planning. The main steps include both internal and external activities:

• The city should first identify its objectives and establish achievable goals for the fora;
• The time and place should be sensibly chosen, accounting for the stakeholders’ schedules;
• The invitation should be sent well in advance;
• The event itself can be either online or in-person and depending on this, there are different approaches and methods. One of the ULaaDS fora contained the following activities:

Sjouke van der Vlugt from the City of Groningen complemented the Civitas FastTrack session, offering practical advice to the participating cities:

• be aware and appreciative that everyone’s time is precious, and stakeholders use their spare time to attend the forum;
• be clear on the city’s objectives, as well as the urgency of behaviour change;
• think of possible incentives that encourage stakeholders to participate (e.g., the potential for further paid research for academics) and to support measures (e.g., lower parking fees for zero-emission vehicles);
• be prepared to adapt your initial plans to the stakeholders’ ideas, needs and preferences;
• concepts might be new for some of the stakeholders, and they might need time to digest them beyond the forum. You can always split the fora in smaller meetings and engage in the meantime differently (e.g., Groningen collaborated with students to interview business owners).

The results of this approach have been positive in Groningen. As the city learned, the initial stakeholder ratio can often be hard to reach, and it might be more important to ensure all groups are represented, regardless of their number. So far, Groningen has hosted 3 logistics fora which have helped shopkeepers surpass initial anxiety to even become drivers of the new initiatives.

If you’d like to learn more about the ULaaDS multi-stakeholder approach, check out D2.2 ‘Local ecosystem stakeholders’ needs and requirements & prioritisation of use cases’ on our Resources page.