Water cooperation in cities

By John Butterworth, Marieke Adank and Carmen Da Silva Wells, IRC

International Water and Sanitation Centre, the Hague, the Netherlands

The urban water challenge

• Growing urban population

• High demands for better services and pressures on

scarce resources

• Complex institutional setting

Urban water management: a “wicked” problem

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‘Wicked’ problems

• Unique and dynamic. Solutions cannot be simply replicated.

• Perfect solutions do not exist – rather more or less suitable options

• Can never be completely solved, only improved. And can continue

to be improved.

• Solutions require collaboration between multiple stakeholders

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SWITCH Project

Sustainable

Water management

Improves

Tomorrow’s

Cities’

Health

- Five year experiment (2006-11)

- Funded by the European Union

- Activities: demand-led research,

demonstration activities, training,

and multi-stakeholder learning

Beijing

Tel Aviv

Alexandria

Accra

LodzBirmingham

Zaragoza

Lima

Bogota

Belo Horizonte

Cali

Hamburg

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Learning alliances in SWITCH Project

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Global level

National level

City level

Community / end-user level

Donors

Line ministries

UniversitiesBanks

Companies

Local government

Offices of line ministries

Donor projects

Local NGOs

INGOs

Local private sector

Local Banks

Sewerage department

Water company

Donors Multilateral orgs.

Advocacy orgs. Learning orgs

Men/Women

Rich/poorDomestic

Productive

National Government

What is a learning alliance?

Multiple stakeholders at key institutional levels

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facilitated by an LA

facilitator

and vertical cooperation

Donors

Line ministries

National platform

UniversitiesBanks

Companies

Local government

Offices of line ministries

Donor projects

Local NGOs

INGOs

Local private sector

Local Banks

Sewerage department

Water company

Donors Multilateral orgs.

Advocacy orgs. Learning orgs

Men/Women

Rich/poorDomestic

Productive

Global platform

National Government

City platform

Community / local platforms

Brought together into platforms

Improving horizontal

Tools used by city learning alliances

• Stakeholder analysis

• Rapid urban water assessment

• Facilitating communication in learning alliances

• Visioning and scenario-based strategic planning

• Process documentation

• Action research

• Monitoring

• Creative workshop facilitation

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Facilitating communication in learning

alliances

Careful facilitation is needed to ensure effective communication.

Communication in the city learning alliances typically involves:

Diversity of stakeholders

involved in Learning

Alliances Diverse values, interests, language and world

views; possible conflicting interests

multiple sources of information, experience and

multiple users for it -> potential for new insights

and joint learning.

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• workshops with alliance

members,

• bilateral meetings,

• working groups,

• field visits,

• e-discussions,

• social events,

• reaching out to stakeholders

outside the alliance through

events and information products

and services.

Facilitating communication in learning

alliances

Basic principles for effective communication in learning

alliances:

• It is interactive

• It follows short cycles

• It is inclusive

• It is targeted

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Role of the learning alliance facilitator is central!

Visioning and

scenario-based strategic planning

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Visioning and scenario-based strategic

planning in SWITCH city LAs

• Almost all City Learning Alliances developed shared vision,

• Several developed scenario-based strategic plans

• It gave city learning alliances coherence and purpose, bringing

stakeholders together around a joint activity.

• Strategic planning processes built on existing processes

• It helped cities to broaden their focus and to take on emerging key issues

• The process was considered relatively non-threatening, new and

innovative to the individuals involved

• Strategic planning processes take time, resources and need to be well

facilitated

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Process documentation

• Tracks what happened, how it happened and

why it happened

• It provides insights into the course and outcomes

of an intervention.

• It triggers reflection and debate

• The main elements are:

– Capturing the change process,

– Organising the information,

– Analysing information,

– Disseminating the information quickly

enough to be most useful.

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Process documentation by city learning

alliances

• Learning alliance facilitators trained in process documentation:

– Regular documentation of activities and events

– Making this available in print and through the city websites

• City project teams with support from ‘outsiders’:

– Structured reflection twice during the project (in 2008 and 2010)

• Useful for helping city stakeholders and the SWITCH teams to take

a step back, reflect on changes in their city and decide on the way

forward.

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Lessons learnt

• It better to ‘go with the flow’ and put support behind things that are already

happening than to start projects from scratch.

• It takes a long time to bring stakeholders who are not already working

together into an effective learning alliance platform.

• Learning alliance processes require dedicated facilitation that must be

funded.

• Treat the existing structures with respect and work to gain credibility.

• In order to get people to participate in the meetings and ongoing activities of

the platform, you have to make it worthwhile for them to contribute their time

and energy.

• Five years pass quickly….. Change processes take more than the

conventional 3-5-year project timespan

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For more tools and city stories, please download “SWITCH and

the City” from http://www.irc.nl/page/62396