2593 authenticity. They expressed a way of working that had already been demonstrated in the way they were made. One principle is especially important for the argument of this paper: equal opportunity and equal access to relevant information. In complex public decisions, participation without information is symbolic. Informed participation is not an accessory to decision-making; it is a condition of it. 5. FROM CONSULTATION TO CONSENSUS TO PARTNERSHIP The distinction between consultation and consensus is not semantic. It goes to the distribution of influence and responsibility in decision-making. Consultation informs decision-makers who retain authority. It may be necessary, and when done well it can improve understanding and reduce risk. But consultation does not, by itself, build a decision with the parties who must live with it. Consensus-based processes do something different. They engage participants in constructing the outcome. Consensus is not unanimity; it is a condition in which participants can live with the total package and support its implementation. That understanding is drawn directly from the Guiding Principles, and is set out in full in the Appendix to this paper.³ This distinction is central to the progression from consultation to collaboration, consensus, consent and partnership. Each step changes the relationship to power. Consultation expands voice. Collaboration creates joint work. Consensus seeks agreement on an implementable package. Consent introduces a stronger requirement of acceptance, particularly in Indigenous rights contexts. Partnership embeds shared responsibility, and in some cases shared ownership, into the structure itself. Of all the dimensions of this progression, it is the Indigenous dimension that has risen most sharply. The expectations have changed fundamentally — not merely for consultation or even collaboration, but for genuine partnership, shared ownership, and relationships built to last. This is not a temporary pressure. It reflects a permanent shift in rights, law, and the moral expectations of the world in which the industry now operates. The Round Tables work was therefore not merely an early consultation framework. It was an early and systematic effort to build collaborative, agreement-seeking processes that produced outcomes. The processes developed in Canada and demonstrated in Lima in 1998 were early expressions of what is now described in many places as partnership practice. They showed that the way a process is designed can move parties from being sources of input to being builders of outcomes — which is precisely what The Art of How is about.
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