irc@zaragoza urban water cooperation without animations
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The United Nations proclaimed 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre supports this focus has a wealth of lesson on improving water cooperation through learning alliances. At the UN Water Conference 2013 in Zaragoza, IRC presented lessons on learning alliances for better water cooperation in SWITCH, a multi-country urban water project.TRANSCRIPT
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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
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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
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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.
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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!
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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