Learning and change

Cover page of the proceedings

B. van Koppen, S. Smits, P. Moriarty, and F. Penning de Vries: Community-scale multiple-use water services: ‘MUS to climb the water ladder’

The Challenge Program on Water and Food-supported MUS project (PN28) developed and tested ‘multiple-use water services’ (‘MUS’). This new approach to water services takes multiple water needs of rural and peri-urban communities as the starting point for planning and design of new systems or rehabilitations. By overcoming the administrative boundaries between single-use sectors, MUS contributes more sustainably to more dimensions of wellbeing than single-use approaches: health, freedom from drudgery, food and income. The action-research took place in 25 study areas in eight countries in five basins. The project brought global, national, intermediate-level and local partners together who were champions of MUS at the time in five benchmark basins of the Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF). At community-level, the project identified generic models for implementing MUS. This was done through pilot-implementation of innovative multiple-use water services and by analyzing de facto multiple uses of single-use planned systems. It was found that by providing 50-100 lpcd, so doubling or tripling the common design norms in the domestic sector, multiple cost-effective benefits could be achieved from homestead-scale MUS. At the intermediate, national, and global level, the project’s ‘learning alliances’ engaged in the wide upscaling of these community-level MUS models, with the aim to establish an enabling environment to provide every rural and peri-urban water user with water for multiple uses. [authors abstract]

Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has gained international recognition as an appropriate framework for meeting the challenges of water scarcity. IWRM is fully supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), where experts asked themselves how they and their partners could learn together and in an innovative and forward-looking way from the wealth of existing experience in water and watershed management. This question triggered an initiative named “Water, Land and People – Voices and insights from three continents”, which was implemented in Bolivia, India and Mali, facilitated by Intercooperation. In each of the three countries, a learning group of 12 to 15 participants from different sectors – farmers’ and water users’ associations, project teams, NGOs, private sector, government, SDC staff – jointly defined a learning agenda and deepened topics tools like story-telling to ensure a high level of authenticity while capturing experiences. Participants and facilitators appreciated this innovative tool for enabling them to break with the usual formal setting, see complex issues from previously unperceived angles, and challenge fixed mindsets.

The learning groups concluded that the learning process was most effective and motivating when intermediate results were immediately put to use as inputs for decision-making in other ongoing initiatives (as opposed to working in isolation to achieve a final product). In India, the learning group was consulted by the authorities and thus contributed to the elaboration of revised watershed guidelines. The three learning groups exchanged and presented their preliminary findings during the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City in March 2006.

Moreover, each learning group presented its findings in an innovative and attractive manner, by putting video, audio and power-point presentations, short stories and comics into interactive presentation CDs. These country-specific products were then partially translated and assembled to form a global product available on DVD as well as on the Internet (www.waterlandpeople.net). This final product provides a rich resource base and is meant to be used by many actors on different levels, ranging from local stakeholders (e.g. water users’ associations and authorities), the SDC and partner institutions to policy-makers and the wider public.

Powerpoint presentation by Monique Mikhail, International Development Enterprises, given at the Thematic Group Meeting in London, 2007.