This presentation was made at the Sustainable Palm Oil: Challenges, a Common Vision, and the Way Forward Symposium conducted by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) in London, UK, in May 2011.

Participation is commonly accepted to be a process that brings stakeholders together to de?ne issues and create mutually bene?cial outcomes. In the ?elds of development and natural resource management, participation is such a widely accepted part of policy that it is rare to ?nd a project or programme that does…