innovation platforms, power and representation: lessons from the nile basin development challenge

Solutions?

NBDC researchers, in collaboration with IP members, experimented with a range of approaches, tools and methods to tackle these issues,

with varying degrees of success.

These approaches helped stakeholders to:

• Critically discuss the use and management of natural resources from a landscape perspective

• Better understand the needs and priorities of different social actors within the landscape

• Facilitate collective exploration of alternative NRM strategies, tailored to biophysical and socio-economic conditions

• Implementation and testing of pilot interventions

Challenges that emerged included:

Conflict: Lack of common understanding

about NRM issues between the different

platform members, leading to competing

agendas and conflicting perspectives about

potential solutions.

Adequate representation: Community members often dominated by

more powerful actors; a range of

perspectives/needs to be considered for

both entry point selection and subsequent

pilot interventions

Facilitation: ‘innovation brokering’

required to address issues of representation

and power and work with actors to change

these dynamics. Questions about who should

act as broker- ‘internal’ or ‘external’ actors.

WAT-A-GAME

Aims: Natural resource management interventions in Ethiopia have historically been top-down in nature with little regard for the aspirations, needs,

constraints and livelihood realities of farming communities. Planning and implementation processes are often not sufficiently coordinated, and there is

limited communication between stakeholders. In 2011 the NBDC project established innovation platforms in three study sites in the Blue Nile Basin to

improve the planning and implementation of NRM strategies.

Platforms worked to prompt innovation in the following areas:

• Joint identification of challenges and appropriate interventions, considering technical, social and institutional factors;

• Improved linkages and communication between stakeholders;

• Increased community participation in planning processes;

• Co-design of interventions tailored to socio-economic and biophysical contexts

Lessons learned:

Use of participatory methods and approaches can play an important role in assisting stakeholders to consider issues of representation, participation

and power within innovation platform processes.

If such issues are not adequately addressed there is a danger that platforms give the illusion of increased participation whilst replicating existing

dynamics. This could result in platforms aggravating poverty and environmental decline rather than providing innovative solutions.

However, for meaningful change to take place such activities need to be conducted over a long time frame through continuous engagement with an

emphasis on building capacity of local actors.

AUTHORS

Beth Cullen (ILRI), Zelalem Lemma (ILRI), Josephine Tucker (ODI),

Alan Duncan (ILRI), Katherine Snyder (IWMI)

This document is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. May 2013

Innovation Platforms, power and representation: Lessons from the Nile Basin Development Challenge

Participatory Video Community engagement Capacity Development Events