Participatory Research

Motivating Question: How can we institutionalize a participatory planning framework that will guide the operationalization of an effective and feasible participatory process, together with inclusive representation of stakeholders, to improve the knowledge assimilation, to build consensus, and ultimately to improve the sustainability and legitimacy of a project?   

“Water projects are more sustainable and yield higher returns when those impacted are involved.” This is a general consensus drawn from operational experience of the World Bank and other institutes. In the United States, the US. Clean Water Act also encourages both public and stakeholder participation in water resource management. Participation is an involvement that can be passive (e.g., receiving information) or active (feedback and contributions to plans or decisions) in a process. The motivation for enhancing participation comes from both supporting democratic processes as well as improving management of complex systems with different people and interests involved. Hence, a participatory approach provides opportunities to bring diverse viewpoints and objectives, learn from each other, and reach consensus in decision making. This mainstream view emphasizes the benefits of integrating a participatory process outweighs the risks.

A list of potential benefits include: (1) Information collected will be more accurate and representative. This helps scientists better understand the needs, priorities, capacity of those directly impacted by EWN, and the perceived impact of EWN. (2) Integration of local knowledge into scientific undertakings will adapt EWN to meet local conditions to allow better deployment of scarce resources. (3) Engaging different stakeholders (e.g. policy makers, community leaders, involved NGOs) will provide a pathway for more communication amongst these interested groups. (4) Participatory EWN will deliver better quality and demand-responsive services. (5) Inclusive and diverse participation will boost public recognition, transparency, legitimacy of EWN and will ensure more equitable distribution of the EWN outcomes. Legitimacy allows easier implementation because there is less resistance (van de Kerkhof, 2006). (6) Participation will also highlight the problems impacting local stakeholders to the awareness of scientists. (7) Participation provides a more holistic approach to understand and provide tangible solutions to the table.

By contrast, the risks of participation include: (1) High transaction costs (e.g., delay in project implementation) for initializing and sustaining the participatory process, especially being mindful of the costs associated with recursive participations; (2) Conflicts between technical knowledge and local information that may or may not be resolved by negotiations; (3) Disproportionate- or over-representation of a certain perspective, e.g., having personnel with more resources, skills, or power to drive the participatory components.

Driven by our goals of attaining the benefits stated above, we are implementing a participatory process with full awareness of the risks. However, idiosyncrasy of a water project dictates the design of the participatory process commanding any of the participation levels below: (1) Soliciting information for different uses, such as prioritizing needs, used as model inputs, formulating questions. (2) Co-developing scientific models in any of the phases, e.g., model selection, model parameterization, system formulation, scenario building, model evaluation. (3) Providing stakeholders opportunities to influence decision-making, e.g., of translating scientific evidence into water policies. (4) Providing communication channels where all involved parties can exchange knowledge, update information, build consensus to address environmental issues.