Dominique Rollin

Co-engineering Participatory Water Management Processes: Theory and Insights from Australian and Bulgarian Interventions

Broad-scale, multi-governance level, participatory water management processes intended to aid collective decision making and learning are rarely initiated, designed, implemented, and managed by one person. These processes mostly emerge from some form of collective planning and organization activities because of the stakes, time, and budgets involved in their implementation. Despite the potential importance of these collective processes for managing complex water-related social-ecological systems, little research focusing on the project teams that design and organize participatory water management processes has ever been undertaken. We have begun to fill this gap by introducing and outlining the concept of a co-engineering process and examining how it impacts the processes and outcomes of participatory water management. We used a hybrid form of intervention research in two broad-scale, multi-governance level, participatory water management processes in Australia and Bulgaria to build insights into these co- engineering processes. We examined how divergent objectives and conflict in the project teams were negotiated, and the impacts of this co-engineering on the participatory water management processes. These investigations showed: (1) that language barriers may aid, rather than hinder, the process of stakeholder appropriation, collective learning and skills transferal related to the design and implementation of participatory water management processes; and (2) that diversity in co-engineering groups, if managed positively through collaborative work and integrative negotiations, can present opportunities and not just challenges for achieving a range of desired outcomes for participatory water management processes. A number of areas for future research on co-engineering participatory water management processes are also highlighted.

Participatory analysis for adaptation to climate change in Mediterranean agricultural systems: possible choices in process design

There is an increasing call for local measures to adapt to climate change, based on foresight analyses in collaboration with actors. However, such analyses involve many challenges, particularly because the actors concerned may not consider climate change to be an urgent concern. This paper examines the methodological choices made by three research teams in the design and implementation of participatory foresight analyses to explore agricultural and water management options for adaptation to climate change. Case studies were conducted in coastal areas of France, Morocco, and Portugal where the groundwater is intensively used for irrigation, the aquifers are at risk or are currently overexploited, and a serious agricultural crisis is underway. When designing the participatory processes, the researchers had to address four main issues: whether to avoid or prepare dialogue between actors whose relations may be limited or tense; how to select participants and get them involved; how to facilitate discussion of issues that the actors may not initially consider to be of great concern; and finally, how to design and use scenarios. In each case, most of the invited actors responded and met to discuss and evaluate a series of scenarios. Strategies were discussed at different levels, from farming practices to aquifer management. It was shown that such participatory analyses can be implemented in situations which may initially appear to be unfavourable. This was made possible by the flexibility in the methodological choices, in particular the possibility of framing the climate change issue in a broader agenda for discussion with the actors.