Multi-Stakeholder Platforms for Integrated Water Management

Jeroen Warner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317093152
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

As they provide a negotiating space for a diversity of interests, Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) are an increasingly popular mode of involving civil society in resource management decisions. This book focuses on water management to take a positive, if critical, look at this phenomenon. Illustrated by a wide geographical range of case studies from both developed and developing worlds, it recognizes that MSPs will neither automatically break down divides nor bring actors to the table on an equal footing, and argues that MSPs may in some cases do more harm than good. The volume then examines how MSPs can make a difference and how they might successfully co-opt the public, private and civil-society sectors. The book highlights the particular difficulties of MSPs when dealing with integrated water management programmes, explaining how MSPs are most successful at a less complex and more local level. It finally questions whether MSPs are - or can be - sustainable, and puts forward suggestions for improving their durability.

Chapter 1
The Beauty of the Beast: Multi-Stakeholder Participation for Integrated Catchment Management

Jeroen Warner1

Introduction

Policymakers, donors, NGOs, water managers – all are intrigued by the sound of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) as new forms of cooperation in the face of (imagined or real) water conflict. MSPs appear as networks for cooperation and negotiation involving multiple sectors or actors within a watershed.

A widely accepted definition defines a platform as a ‘decision-making body (voluntary or statutory) comprising different stakeholders who perceive the same resource management problem, realise their interdependence for solving it, and come together to agree on action strategies for solving the problem’ (Steins and Edwards 1998: 1). It is like a roundtable, where people are gathered with very different perspectives. From a functionalist perspective, MSPs are perceived as problem-solving institutional innovations, to democratise water management, to manage conflict, even to make water management more efficient. Once people see the sense of involving multiple voices, it is felt, they will be broadly accepted as the way forward in dealing with the increasing complexity, diversity and dynamics of water management. But what is actually going on, and how do we approach our research and analysis? What are we actually talking about? Are ‘platforms’ even physical organisations or are they loose networks for planning?

Studying Multi-Stakeholder Platforms means zooming in on a phenomenon without very clear prior definitions (see below). Like the elusive ‘regimes’ of International Relations, they are not necessarily ‘things out there’, institutions with offices, bye-laws and secretariats, but inferred patterns of behaviour and interaction, singled out of a complex reality and labelled ‘MSP’ because having this class of constellations seems to add to our understanding of reality.

As a new phenomenon, Multi-Stakeholder Platforms are beset with problems, which are easy to expose. However, rather than dismiss the phenomenon out of hand, we propose a more constructive approach. Multi-Stakeholder Platforms for Integrated Catchment management (MSP-ICM), the Wageningen project on which much of the present volume is based, sought to study and analyse what MSPs are, how they came about (development) and what they do for stakeholders in practice (functioning): do they make a difference? Can their performance be improved and their sustainability enhanced? This latter objective includes the question whether MSPs bring on the kind of learning and empowerment their proponents expect. Rather than call out for the hunter as soon as we spot one, let’s look out for the beauty of what we like to refer to as ‘the Beast’.

Key research questions for this book:

1. Do multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) make a difference?

2. Are MSPs compatible with integrated water resource management (IWRM)?

3. Can (and should) MSPs be sustainable?

MSP, IWRM and ICM

Dialogue is now increasingly recommended and applied to the management of common-pool resources like coastal management, fisheries, land care (Campbell 1998) and, especially, forest resources (Grimble et al. 1995; Edmunds and Wollenberg 2001, Shannon 2003). In the run-up to the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto (March 2003) the International Water Management Institute, IWMI, organised the Dialogue on Water, Food and Environment and the Dialogue on Water and Climate especially to promote basin-wide deliberative platforms. Water supply companies now organise MSP-type consumer panels. A workshop at Wageningen explored the usefulness of MSPs for disaster response. While obviously an increasingly popular pet, MSP as a newly emerging social life form still requires proper determination.

The present study applies MSPs to integrated catchment management – a ‘holy trinity’ of three currently almost unassailable water governance ideals: integration (IWRM), participation and catchment management within hydrological rather than political boundaries. IWRM is about decompartmentalising water management, respecting the interactions and internalising the externalities that come with a sectorial approach. After Mitchell (1990, 1998) we can see it as a multi-layered systems approach to water management, integrating:

1. Relations between surface and groundwater, quantity and quality

2. Relations between water and land use

3. Relations between water and stakeholder interests

To which we would add

4. Relations between water institutions (coordination)

Combining these four seems a perfectly logical way forward for a water sector in need of modernisation. But they inevitably bring a multitude of daunting challenges: holistic management needs to take many aspects into account that are hard to model and to square with each other; and then they need to be squared with participation. First of all, it requires a radical change in management culture. IWRM is not just the sum total of all the isolated facets of water management, but a search for the added value of integrating relevant (f)actors. Nigel Watson (Chapter 3) decries the tendency of some to see IWRM as ‘more of the same’. He argues that IWRM requires a totally different institutional set-up along the lines of MSPs. The particular beast this institutional zoologist has spotted is a Cariboo – in fact an acronym for seven criteria: Common vision, Adaptive capacity, Resources, Interdependence, Balance, Output and Outcomes.

MSPs seem helpful in realising common visions, realising a balanced outcome of adaptive processes, once people realise their resource interdependence. Still, as Bruce Mitchell (Chapter 4), an early and authoritative champion of IWRM notes, integration and participation seem to pull in opposite directions – people are motivated to participate in a clear, single-issue, close-to-the-bone area, while integrated management, because of its complexity, seems to invite centralisation. There are clear similarities between the two, though: both IWRM and MSP are ways of managing increasing degrees of variety and variability. In that respect, MSPs are a logical companion to IWRM, reflecting the same variety of interconnected social uses and users that IWRM reflects (Grigg 1996).

As the third leg of the tripod, the catchment level is emerging as the natural unit for water management. Slowly but surely, these adopted dogmas are set to revolutionalize water governance arrangements (regimes), in Europe (under the Framework Directive), South Africa (the 1998 Water Act) and elsewhere. Water resource management has long been a top-down concern of many states, and water authorities followed administrative boundaries. Now that hydrology and ecology rather than territorial administrative or cultural boundaries dictate the management scale, states and regional authorities are forced to work together across boundaries, and treat water bodies as part of ecosystems. Involving stakeholders in decision-making, with the accountability and transparency requirements that brings, these developments necessitate a new phase in an already changing deal between the public, private and civil-society sectors, which, as Malcolm Newson of Newcastle University maintains (Chapter 5), challenges and revolutionises the prior ‘technocratic’ outlook.

The catchment as best practice is not without its detractors. Wester and Warner (2002) question its current unquestioned, ‘naturalised’ status. Not only may, as Allan has it, the ‘problemshed’ transcend the scale of the watershed, neither stakeholders nor decision-makers naturally gravitate to this level. Fischhendler and Feitelson (2003) argue that due to the common spatial discrepancy between benefits and costs of cooperation at the basin scale, other special scales are to be advanced in order to offset this discrepancy. Their US-Mexico case presentation includes similar denotations on the importance of issue-linking across river basin borders as Meijerink (1998) does in his dissertation on the multilateral rivers Scheldt and Meuse negotiations.

Fighting or Learning?

While nobody disputes the legitimacy of stakeholder participation, the writings on MSPs come from very different worldviews – one in which people change things by cooperative learning (‘cognitive school’), and one in which things only change by changing the power balance (the ‘power school’). These diametrically opposed worldviews are most clearly expressed in the view of cooperation and conflict. A conflict framework sees negotiations as zero-sum with winners and losers, a cooperation approach sees win-win.

On the cooperation side, the cognitive school is interested in whether joint gains can be obtained through learning. Aarts and Van Woerkum (1999) usefully contrast two types of negotiation – distributive and integrative negotiation. Distributive negotiation is antagonistic, interest-based, mainly concerns the cutting of the cake, actors keep their cards close to their chests. Integrative negotiation starts from a commonly perceived challenge, involves ‘baking the cake together’ and joint social learning.

The cognitive or Social Learning approach is deeply influenced by the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, who advocates aiming for an authentic speech situation. The idea is that as stakeholders start talking, a process of learning by doing takes place in which power gaps and institutional hindrances are broken down. The attraction of the Habermasian approach is that it presupposes that through dialogue, perceptions and problem definitions will change and converge (Poncelet 1998). An aversion to (party) politics and conflict informs this particular literature (Hemmati 2002). In a situation of complexity, actors are advised to leave their sectoral perspective behind to develop a shared perspective in a process of reframing (van Woerkum 2002). This requires skilful facilitation – if badly done, a reframing process can of course result in a totally strategic (or expedient) ‘vision’ with a high deal of equifinality (each interpreting the result in highly particular ways), without addressing the actual dilemmas.

In a genuine dilemma, each side is defensible from a particular perspective (Hoebeke 2004). The important thing is to bring the dilemmas, the conflicts, out into the open and discuss them. A good facilitator puts sufficient time into divergence before aiming for convergence. In fact, it may not be possible to converge and it may be necessary for all to accept a hard-won compromise. But that openness and responsiveness requires a great deal of social trust, something that for example in Perú, as in many other locations, is still developing. Thus, any ‘concertation’2 means a combination of conflict, negotiation and, where possible, consensus-seeking. The effect of multi-stakeholder participation, then, is not to depoliticize issues (quite the contrary), but to expand the legitimacy base beyond government, beyond ‘the experts’.

The ‘cognitive school’ of MSP sees facilitated social learning as a helpful modality enabling new forms of governance – as IAC Wageningen puts it, ‘between the extremes of top-down “expert”-driven decision making by government and “letting free markets rule” lies the idea of facilitated social learning’.3

The Århus convention expresses the belief that, in the environmental issue-area, improved access to information and public participation in decision-making will enhance the quality and the implementation of decisions and contributes to the public awareness of environmental issues (UN-ECE 1998). Indeed there are known cases where the stakeholders themselves collect, manage and interpret the information, using a joint information system.

Multi-stakeholder platforms may be set up to act as a sounding board rather than a policy-making body. They are like think tanks or focus groups, providing policymakers with ideas and feedback from selected social groups. This arrangement interestingly seems to bring enough benefits to both initiators and consultees. In addition to this outside-in benefit, platforms can help a better spread of ideas (within the platform and inside-out). Communication then may be a vehicle for two-way information/knowledge exchange, joint knowledge building and dissemination.

Indeed, Annemiek Verhallen’s Flemish case study (Chapter 6) shows that, when it is clear that the platform is only consultative, stakeholders are happy to give feedback and, crucially, be in the loop about what is going on. Her contribution discusses a platform in the Nete, a sub-basin of the river Scheldt, where 13 stakeholder categories were invited to join in developing a vision. She investigated attendance, adequacy and exchange of information and satisfaction with the process.

It should be noted that this was a situation in which savvy, well-educated stakeholder representatives negotiated. Yet it is hard to prove that any joint learning occurred due to participation. While no doubt people learn by doing, i.e. acquire new information and ways of thinking due to their participation, we find that the ‘social’, mutual, collaborative aspect, is not necessarily happening. The critical condition here is not only the recognition of interdependence, but also the willingness of all involved to take joint responsibility and learn their way into addressing the issue facing all. Negotiation that looked integrative may turn out to be distributive after all, but also free-riding, opportunism and double agendas are obvious pitfalls. In the Nete case, for example, there was very little social learning in evidence – several actors were listening in, but not really contributing.

What Should MSPs Do? Multiple Rationales

The definition of MSP that started the chapter off comes from the prescriptive end – the ideal-type MSP is imbued with a positive value connotation. The quest for preconditions for MSP success is related to the level of expectation and ambition as to what platforms should do. Expectations of MSPs are rather high. From the emerging literature, we take three key strands: MSPs as a mechanism of Alternative Dispute Resolution, for adaptive management and as a vehicle for democratisation and emancipation.

Dealing with Conflict

According to Jaspers (2003), a stakeholder platform plays a vital role in conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Resource conflict at different levels continues to ring alarm bells. In the mid-1990s, water discourse briefly became dominated by the literature on water wars. Water, it was claimed, is in crisis (Gleick 1993), and increasing scarcity would lead to violent conflict (Starr 1991). This came on top of an already widening post-Cold War security agenda, as new security threats were identified (Kaplan 1994) in a combination of Malthusian worries about environmental degradation and Hobbesian faith in the ‘strong state’. While Malthusian doomsayers still occasionally make headlines (McLoughlin 2004), the debate between the optimists and pessimists has progressed significantly. As Allan (2001) has put it succinctly: the optimists are right but dange...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1. The Beauty of the Beast: Multi-Stakeholder Participation for Integrated Catchment Management
• 2. The Nature of the Beast: Towards a Comparative MSP Typology
• 3. Collaborative Capital: A Key to the Successful Practice of Integrated Water Resources Management
• 4. Integrated Catchment Management and MSPs: Pulling in Different Directions?
• 5. Contrasting UK Experiences with Participatory Approaches to Integrated River Basin Management
• 6. Århus Convention in Practice: Access to Information and Decision-making in a Pilot Planning Process for a Flemish River Basin
• 7. The International Zwin Commission: The Beauty of a Mayfly?
• 8. Participating in Watershed Management: Policy and Practice in the Trahunco Watershed, Argentinean Patagonia
• 9. ‘Yakunchik’: Coming to Agreement after Violence in Perú
• 10. Multi-Stakeholder Platforms for Surface and Groundwater Management in the Lerma-Chapala Basin, Mexico
• 11. Less Tension, Limited Decision: A Multi-Stakeholder Platform to Review a Contested Sanitation Project in Tiquipaya, Bolivia
• 12. Multi-Stakeholder Dissonance in the South African Water Arena
• 13. Mekong Region Water-Related MSPs – Unfulfilled Potential
• 14. Against the Conventional Wisdom: Why Sector Reallocation of Water and Multi-Stakeholder Platforms Do Not Take Place in Uzbekistan
• 15. Unpacking Participatory NRM: Distinguishing Resource Capture from Democratic Governance
• 16. Towards Evaluating MSPs for Integrated Catchment Management
• Index