Water cooperation in citiesBy John Butterworth, Marieke Adank and Carmen Da Silva Wells, IRC International Water and

Sanitation Centre, the Hague, the Netherlands

Presented at UN-Water Conference, Zaragoza, Spain, 8-9 January 2013

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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National platform

Global platform

City platform

Community / local platforms

What is a learning alliance?

• Multiple stakeholders at

key institutional levels

• Brought together into

platforms

• Improving horizontal

and vertical cooperation

• facilitated by an LA

facilitator

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