Q: How do you manage to involve all governments and stakeholders in this BGG programme?

Barbara Goličnik:
“We invite the ministries and conservation groups. And sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t. It is difficult to get everybody on board, but we have a good relationship with them.

Between Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 we additionally did some interviews with representatives from the government and conservation groups to get insights. But especially people from the government don’t always have time to attend. We also try to use other meetings that people are already attending for other reasons, but we prefer not to have separate meetings for Italy and Slovenia. For Workshop 3 we will send out the invitations even earlier.

Economic stakeholders are not always easy to involve. The Port of Koper has not participated in any BGG events, but we usually have opportunities to meet with their representatives and understand their opinions and approaches at other events that we both attend. Tourism businesses seem to find it not so relevant, they don’t speak the same language.”

Q: What do you find is the biggest problem in coastal governance?

Barbara Goličnik:
“At the institutional level the biggest problem is fragmentation. Many agreements have been signed on cross-border collaboration between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, for example on environmental issues, but they don’t go further because of fragmentation. In real life things only happen bottom-up. Another problem is that people, from government and organisations, are not always used to looking at problems in the long term.”

Q: Did you get the chance to use the e-tools in the workshops?

Barbara Goličnik:
“Unfortunately, the data weren’t prepared yet, and we didn’t want to use incomplete data, so we couldn’t use the dashboard. But we showed the participants what it can do, and hopefully we’ll be able to play with it in Workshop 3.

We did, however, use the strategic foresight tools. We showed different scenarios and had a very lively discussion about them. It took some more time every now and then, because we had Slovenians and Italians. We spoke mainly English, but sometimes we had to translate.

We focused on a policy driven scenario, with a nicely drawn map, a drone image, which indicated certain spatial characteristics and which policy level applies to the places or activities there, European, national, regional or local.

Then we discussed how change can be achieved as a compromise scenario, using the star-shape approach: sticking circular notes on a figure with star-shaped arrows, to indicate relevance and increase or decrease compared to the present situation. For example on an issue like green tourism.”

Q: What would you like to achieve with Workshop 3?

Barbara Goličnik:
“Like Workshop 2, we will hold WS3 as a live meeting in Triest. We hope that stakeholders keep in touch, and that they get the chance to meet at an informal level. Solving fragmentation is a second step, but we think that it already helps when people know and find each other.”