Participation is easy to stage and hard to prove.

The organised involvement of the individuals and groups an organisation affects, or that can affect it: neighbours, employees, suppliers, customers, authorities, associations. It covers identifying them, understanding their interests, and involving them in decisions that touch those interests.

A great deal. Stakeholder analysis weighs interest and influence, stakeholder mapping makes both visible, an engagement plan names objectives, channels and feedback, and international guidance such as ISO 26000 embeds engagement in social responsibility. Two-way symmetrical communication describes the ideal: dialogue rather than broadcasting, with the possibility that the organisation changes its mind.

The vocabulary for the hard cases. The settled account describes how participation is organised, and stops before the terms that say whether it worked: which groups actually count, what exhaustion does to a process, when consent is a legal right rather than a courtesy, and what the difference is between a changed policy and a changed press release.

Salience is the attention an organisation grants a group, usually along three lines: how much power it has, how legitimate its claim looks, and how urgent it is. It explains why an investor with a telephone number is heard before a neighbourhood with a petition. Naming it turns an invisible ranking into a decision that can be argued about.

The exhaustion of people who have been consulted repeatedly without seeing a consequence. It matters for a practical reason: the dropouts do not appear in the result. A process that started with forty objections and ends with four can be reported as consensus, when it is attrition.

The informal acceptance a project holds in the community around it, beside the formal permits. It has no document and no expiry date, and it decides whether a legally approved project proceeds or stalls. Organisations notice it only when it is gone.

Communication that presents an organisation, a product or a policy as environmentally better than the evidence supports. The term names a communication practice, and it applies to a claim rather than to a company. In an engagement process, the question is narrow and answerable: does each environmental claim made in the consultation have a source that a participant could check?

“is a form of advertising or marketing spin that deceptively uses green PR and green marketing to persuade the public”

Reference: Wikipedia, Greenwashing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing

Participation that is presented as grassroots while being organised and funded by an interested party. It matters here because it is invisible in a headcount: a consultation can show broad public support that was assembled. The check is procedural: who registered the participants, who paid for the mobilisation, and is that disclosed in the report?

“the deceptive practice of hiding the sponsors of an orchestrated message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from”

Reference: Wikipedia, Astroturfing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

The gap between what an organisation commits to in public and what it does in its operations. It is the reason a stakeholder process can be honest at the table and meaningless in effect. It is also measurable, because a commitment names a date and a responsibility, and both can be checked a year later.

Activity designed to produce the appearance of engagement: the consultation that takes place after the decision, the advisory board without a mandate, the survey whose results are never published. Naming it is not an accusation. It is a category that a process can be tested against.

It describes a regulator acting in the interest of those it regulates. In multistakeholder settings it decides whether a neutral-looking platform is neutral. Where a process is convened, funded and staffed by one side, the result belongs to that side, whatever the invitation list says.

The formal route by which affected people raise a complaint and receive an answer, with timelines and an escalation path. It is the part of engagement that works after the consultation has ended, and its absence is the clearest sign that a process was designed for approval rather than for consequences.

The systematic selection of the topics that matter, ranked by their significance for the organisation and for those affected by it. It turns engagement from a general conversation into a list of subjects with owners.

The requirement to look in both directions: how sustainability topics affect the organisation financially, and how the organisation affects people and the environment. It matters because it moves engagement out of communications and into reporting, where a claim carries consequences.

A framework for the quality of participation itself, with principles of inclusivity, materiality, responsiveness and impact, and a way to assure the process. It gives an answer to the question an executive actually asks: how would anyone verify that this consultation was any good?

A right, in specified contexts a legal one, of indigenous and local communities to give or withhold consent before a project affecting their land proceeds. The three words carry the weight: free of pressure, before the decision, and with the information needed to judge it. A consultation is not a substitute for it.

The silence produced by the fear of consequences, legal, professional or social. It is the most misread signal in stakeholder work, because silence in a room is routinely recorded as agreement.

The reaction when an implicit promise is broken: not a clause in a contract, but the expectation a community formed from earlier statements. It explains outrage that appears disproportionate to the formal facts, and it is the reason a small change can end a relationship built over years.

By asking six questions. Who was named as affected, and who ranked them? What happened to the people who dropped out? Which claims made in the process carry a source? Who convened and funded it? What is the route for a complaint afterwards? And which commitment carries a date and a name?

A changed decision, a named commitment with a date, a published record of objections with answers, and a grievance route that stayed open afterwards. Attendance figures, photographs and satisfaction scores describe the event rather than its effect.