Sustainable Water Management in Cities.

Sustainable Water Management in Cities: Engaging stakeholders for effective change and action. 13-17 December 2010. Zaragoza, Spain

Stakeholder engagement

Tuesday 14 December: Stakeholder engagement - Experiences

For multiple reasons, stakeholder engagement is now a term that we enthusiastically embrace. The complexity of urban water management makes it almost a prerequisite for effective action. While we can identify similarities between cities, we also know that context is hugely important. Through exploration of detailed case studies from cities and many other urban experiences the first day of the conference aims to illustrate how effective change can be promoted. It aims to inspire and to highlight some of the crucial ingredients for success. But we will also identify some of the general and locally specific difficulties, challenges, barriers and failures that we cannot ignore and can learn from. The specific aim of the day is to explore how well planned and comprehensive stakeholder engagement strategies can lead to effective change.

Conference messages for the day:

  1. Stakeholder engagement leads to adapted and more effective solutions
    • Solutions that are generated locally with stakeholders are more likely to lead to appropriate actions, to promote flexible and adaptive working practices, and to foster and strengthen the development capacity of local organizations and communities.
  2. Learning Alliances facilitate change by building bridges between experts, implementers and policy makers
    • Learning Alliances facilitate change by building bridges between experts, implementers and policy makers. They facilitate integration and scaling-up of changed practices in urban water management. They facilitate learning considering that often there is more to learn from failure than from success: we can be successful for reasons we don't understand, but the roots of failure are usually more apparent.
    • The more representative the alliance is, the better it will capture the organisational complexities of water management in the cities. Narrower alliances around a specific issue or part of urban water cycle can over time broaden out to address city wide water issues.
  3. Social inclusion should be a core element of changes towards Sustainable Water Management. It refers to the actions and processes needed to transform the situation of those who are socially excluded.
    • Urban water management policies and practices always have a strong social impact, since access to water and sanitation is central to poverty, dignity and to the improvement of standards of living.
  4. Change towards Sustainable Water Management in Cities is possible is possible and stakeholders need to cooperate or collaborate in order to make a change. The most important element required for success is a desire for change or improvement among at least some stakeholders.
  5. Since sustainable development requires us to do more with less, we have to be become better at 'how' do we do more with less. This requires that we make more efficient use of resources. Still, efficiency is only a means and not an end in itself.

Programme:

09.00 - 09.45

Opening session
A look at the ocean
  • Welcome from the Mayor, national and regional authorities
  • Overview of the Conference
  • Presentation of the SWITCH Project
09.45 - 10.15 Streams to the sea: Stakeholders in the city: integrating and strengthening sustainable water management
10.00 - 10.45 Coffee break
10.45 - 11.30 Following the streams: Presentation of experiences in cities
  • Lodz, Poland
  • Belo Horizonte, Brazil
  • Zaragoza, Spain
11.30 - 13.30 Small group discussions
Discussion of other city experiences

Working Group A Asia | Working Group B Africa | Working Group C Europe | Working Group D Latin America 1 | Working Group E Latin America 2

13.30 - 15.00 Lunch and informal discussions
15.00 - 16.00 Streaming to the sea: Talk show on key lessons from city experiences of stakeholder engagement
16.00 - 17.00 Group discussions
Facilitated and reported by coordinators of the cities Working Group A Asia | Working Group B Africa | Working Group C Europe | Working Group D Latin America 1 | Working Group E Latin America 2
18.30 - 20.00 Open session
Cooperation in action: the Water Alliance

  Plenary room, ground floor
  Working group rooms
  Round table room, 1st floor
  Paraninfo of the University of Zaragoza, City Centre

Wednesday 15 December: Stakeholder Engagement - Tools and Approaches

Achieving important internationally agreed goals - in a sustainable manner - including the Millennium Development Goals in developing country cities, requires that we do better than we have in the past. It requires that we institutionalize and act upon lessons learnt in the arena of urban water management and urban development. Capacities to make change happen in water are typically diffused between many different stakeholders. Therefore, increasingly coming to the forefront are the holistic approaches, methods and skills needed to enable successful cooperation and collaboration. This day focuses on introducing a range to tools and approaches from institutional mapping to strategic planning, and learning from our experiences. Urban water management policies, processes and practices are always likely to impact strongly on social issues, so tools and approaches for promoting social inclusion are especially important. The specific focus of the day is learning about tools and approaches that are new to us, sharing our existing experiences with such tools and approaches, and exploring how to make interventions socially inclusive.

Conference messages for the day:

  1. Promoting public participation, supporting transitioning towards SWM, suing tools for rapid urban water assessment, engaging grassroots and neighbourhood level organisations, are all important tools for stakeholder engagement towards Sustainable Water Management in cities.
    • Promotion of public participation in decision-making is vitally important in urban water management, given prevailing unequal patterns of urbanization.
    • Changes in urban water systems can be made through the sustainable transition management cycle including building stakeholder platforms (transition arenas); co-developing visions and strategic plans (transition agendas); executing demonstration projects with emerging technologies and methodologies (transition experiments); and monitoring / (re)evaluation / learning process which effectively closes the activity loop creating an iterative process.  Strategic niche management is crucial for the advancement and development of environmentally sound next generation systems and practices.
    • Tools for rapid urban water assessment, visioning, scenario development and strategy planning stimulates social and organisational learning and provides a process for enhancing stakeholders' understanding of how to prepare for and manage change, risk and uncertainty.
    • Engaging grassroots and neighbourhood level participation in urban water management, including in participatory budgeting, helps put new urban water solutions into practice.  This can only be successful if community leaders have access to information on the alternatives and options available.
  2. Conflict resolution, empowerment of the social excluded, negotiation, managed learning and the role of change agents are all important in change processes
    • An integrative approach to sanitation and urban/social policies is of great importance.

Programme:

08.15 - 09.00

Keynote address
Biodiversity, Water and Cities - Outcomes of CBD-COP 10, Nagoya 2010

By David Coates, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

09.00 - 9.30 Recap and overview
Ripples and reflections
09.30 - 10.00 Interview to keynote presenters
A compass and a sextant: tools and approaches for stakeholder engagement
10.00 - 10.30 Coffee break
10.30 - 11.30 What the compass tells us: Highlights of the work with tools and approaches for stakeholder engagement
  • Engaging small industries and marginalized communities, the case of Bogotá, Colombia.
  • Transitioning and strategic niche management, the cases of Birmingham, United Kingdom and Accra, Ghana.
  • Visioning and scenario-based planning, the case of Alexandria, Egypt, Accra, Ghana and Lodz, Poland.
  • Promoting public participation, the case of Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre, Brazil.
  • The Future Cities Game, the case of Lodz, Poland.
  • Institutional mapping, the cases of Birmingham, London, Alexandria, Belo Horizonte, Beijing.
  • The city water information sharing platform, the case of Alexandria.
  • Water demand management, the case of Zaragoza, Spain.
11.30 - 13.30 Group sessions
In-depth presentation and discussion of different tools and approaches

Working Group A | Working Group B | Working Group C | Working Group D | Working Group E

13.30 - 15.00 Lunch and informal discussions
15.00 - 15.10 Introduction to pro-poor practices of local authorities in water management
15.10 - 16.00 Group discussions
Pro-poor practices of local authorities in water management Working Group A | Working Group B | Working Group C | Working Group D | Working Group E
16.00 - 17.00 Panel Session
Pro-poor practices of local authorities in water management and the cities' contribution to the MDGs.
18.30 - 20.00 Open session
Change in action: integrated solutions for the cities of the future
20.00 Welcome drinks by the Zaragoza City Council

  Plenary room, ground floor
  Working group rooms
  Round table room, 1st floor
  Paraninfo of the University of Zaragoza, City Centre

Engaging small industries and marginalized communities, the case of Bogotá, Colombia

This session will introduce a range of tools, approaches and concepts that were adapted and used to address problems of pollution by small-scale industry in Bogota, Colombia. It specifically deals with the engagement of marginalized communities, in this case focusing on tanners involved in household-level enterprise to process leather. Almost 100 of such businesses represent a serious pollution threat near the source of the Rio Bogota upstream of the city. Specifically the tools, approaches and concepts that will be introduced include conflict resolution, empowerment of the social excluded to engage in multi-stakeholder processes, action research, negotiation, managed learning and the role of change agents. Participants in this session will benefit from seeing how an appropriate set of tools and ideas can be used to develop a process to engage polluting informal sector businesses (in treatment and pollution prevention in this case), and other communities on the margins of society.

Transitioning and strategic niche management, the cases of Birmingham, United Kingdom. and Accra, Ghana

This session will present a framework for transitioning (defined here as 'a radical SWITCH from conventional socio-technical systems to next generation sustainable urban water systems'). The framework draws upon both current transition management research from the Netherlands and practical experiences in several SWITCH cities. The framework can be used by decision makers and practitioners working to promote or adopt more sustainable approaches and activities for managing the urban water cycle such as integrating next generation urban water systems into existing infrastructure. A supporting manual provides guidance to the key transitioning 'steps' required to achieve a SWITCH towards sustainable urban water management practices that better fit the new paradigm of 'city of the future'. The transition manual shows how to influence changes in the way urban water systems are managed through the sustainable transition management cycle which includes 'transition clusters'. The clusters include: building stakeholder platforms (transition arenas); co-developing visions and strategic plans (transition agendas); executing demonstration projects with emerging technologies and methodologies (transition experiments); and monitoring / (re)evaluation / learning process which effectively closes the activity loop creating an iterative process. Transition experiments include the concept of strategic niche management which is closely linked to the SWITCH demonstration projects. Strategic niche management is crucial for the advancement and development of environmentally sound next generation systems and practices. The transition activity clusters are broken down into ten transition management 'steps' to guide and influence a transition. These steps are supported by examples from SWITCH cities that have demonstrated strengths in the transitioning process.

Visioning and scenario-based planning, the case of Alexandria, Egypt, Accra, Ghana and Lodz, Poland

In the context of sustainable urban water management, the main aims of strategy development based on visioning and scenario building are to both develop a robust adaptable strategy that has the potential to achieve a shared vision under a whole range of different scenarios (i.e. different futures), and to encourage stakeholders to take the leading role in an urban water management strategy development process. This session will present tools for rapid urban water assessment, visioning, scenario development and strategy planning. The main steps covered are first, stakeholders develop a shared vision of the water services and environment that they would like to achieve at some specified time in the future. Second, stakeholders develop a set of plausible (although not necessarily equally likely) scenarios that describe different futures. Third, an overall strategy is developed that integrates various components so that it has the potential to achieve the shared vision regardless of which scenario, over time, turns out to be closest to reality. The advantages of this approach compared to more standard approaches to strategy development are many and varied. The use of visioning and scenario building stimulates social and organisational learning and provide a process for enhancing stakeholders' understanding of how to prepare for and manage change, risk and uncertainty. Equally important, the approach helps stakeholders think creatively about important and uncertain factors over which they have no or very limited control. The net result should be that stakeholders are less likely to fear or ignore these factors and are more likely to consider how they could thrive in a range of future settings. Some of these may be strikingly different to anything that they have ever experienced.

Promoting public participation, the case of Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre, Brazil

This session focuses on engaging grassroots and neighbourhood level participation in urban water management based upon experiences from Belo Horizonte in Brazil. This has included engaging communities in urban water management demonstration projects in rainwater harvesting and urban agriculture, especially schools. In Brazil, participatory budgeting also provides a tool to put new urban water solutions into practice but only if community leaders have access to information on the alternatives and options available in areas such as storm water management, sewerage and river restoration. This means "translating" scientific language and making new knowledge available through training and lectures with non-traditional audiences for a university, as well engaging these publics in experiments. Games and competitions around water are good ways to engage children, and special events such as around world water day can be designed to capture the community's interest.

The Future Cities Game, the case of Lodz, Poland

This game is played during a two-day event by city inhabitants from diverse backgrounds, representing various disciplines and led by a trained games-master. The aim of the game is to generate the best ideas on how to improve the quality of life either in a specific area within a city, the city as a whole, or in response to the common challenges facing cities around the world. It is therefore not specific to water. Players compete in teams to design, test and present their ideas to a group of city stakeholders, professionals, residents, and each other. The games-master leads the players through three stages - envisioning, testing and presenting - giving the players a set of tools to help them to work together and develop ideas. At the end of the game, the ideas are presented to the local stakeholders. Everyone involved votes on the best ideas and thinks about how they can be taken forward in the city once the game has ended. This session provides an introduction to the game, the inputs required to make it successful and examples of its application.

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Institutional mapping, the cases of Birmingham, London, Alexandria, Belo Horizonte, Beijing

This session will be interested in ideas behind what change is possible, and which stakeholders need to cooperate or collaborate in order to deliver on change. Sustainable development requires that we change what we do, and one definition of power is indeed the capacity to induce change. There can be no change without the appropriate forms of power existing, and anything which can be used to induce change is a form of power. Traditional organisations were created with the power to build and manage things, but delivering sustainable urban water management is increasingly about influencing the behaviour of others. Because water management is typically a transboundary problem, action increasingly requires cooperative or collaborative action in order to have the appropriate set of powers to induce change. Ad unless an organisation has the appropriate incentives to act to promote sustainable water management and to cooperate or collaborate with other organisations, change will not occur. Institutional mapping is a necessary precursor to making change. It involves the identification of what forms of power reside within which organisations, what are boundaries of their powers, and what incentives they have to use those powers. We may hope that the powers and incentives already exist in which case the problem is limited to achieving successful cooperation or collaboration. In other cases, it is necessary to change the powers or boundaries or incentives before change can be achieved.

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The city water information sharing platform, the cases of Alexandria, Birmingham, Lodz and Accra

City Water is a new web-based information sharing platform that is linked to a set of simulation models. It can be used as a communications tool for data sharing and/or support strategic planning across all the dimensions of urban water. Self-appropriation and less misunderstanding (and the related waste of energy) are the main key words associated with accessing and sharing information. In strategic planning, although not all stakeholders will or should use more advanced tools and linked simulation models, there are important stakeholder engagement issues relating to providing simulation results and indicators to support shared decision making. The City Water information sharing platform includes a database along with several data viewing tools that allow users to explore the physical space of a city (Gis Viewer), to explore its "logical" dimension by navigating its component elements (spatial and non-spatial) and their interlinkages (System viewer), and to access related detailed information in a web-like browser tool (Reporting tool).

Water demand management

Water management is increasingly faced with the problem of scarcity, which is caused by the imbalance between limited water resources, depending on their quality and location, and unlimited water demands (from agriculture, industry and households). Expansion and improvement of water infrastructure cannot meet all the demands at an acceptable social cost and it is therefore essential to pay special attention to instruments for water demand management in order to moderate pressure and optimize the use of the resource. This session will focus on two key issues related to residential water demand management: behaviour of households as water consumers and instruments available to public authorities for shifting to more sustainable use patterns which are acceptable from an equity perspective. Main results of a household research survey done in the city of Zaragoza will be presented. This survey was designed to respond to the following questions: How do households use water? How do the socio-economic characteristics of households affect their water consumption? How the consumption level responds to public education and awareness-raising policies and to the introduction of water-saving technologies? The water rates currently applied in Zaragoza will also be presented as a basic economic tool for demand management together with its properties from the perspective of sustainability, efficiency and equity. The session will demonstrate that the use of instruments for demand management is strongly affected by the socioeconomic context of each city and the nature of water availability problems.

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