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.

1. Water cooperation in cities
By 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

2. 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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3. „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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4. SWITCH Project - Five year experiment (2006-11)
- Funded by the European Union
- Activities: demand-led research,
Sustainable demonstration activities, training,
and multi-stakeholder learning
Water management
Birmingham Hamburg Lodz
Improves
Tomorrow‟s Zaragoza
Beijing
Cities‟
Bogota
Health Cali
Accra
Tel Aviv
Lima Alexandria
Belo Horizonte
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5. Learning alliances in SWITCH Project
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6. Global platform
What is a learning alliance?
• Multiple stakeholders at National platform
key institutional levels
• Brought together into
platforms
• Improving horizontal
City platform
and vertical cooperation
• facilitated by an LA
facilitator
Community / local platforms
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7. 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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8. Facilitating communication in learning
alliances
multiple sources of information, experience and
multiple users for it -> potential for new insights
Diversity of stakeholders and joint learning.
involved in Learning
Alliances
Diverse values, interests, language and world
views; possible conflicting interests
Careful facilitation is needed to ensure effective communication.
Communication in the city learning alliances typically involves:
• workshops with alliance • e-discussions,
members, • social events,
• bilateral meetings, • reaching out to stakeholders
• working groups, outside the alliance through
• field visits, events and information products
and services.
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9. 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
Role of the learning alliance facilitator is central!
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10. Visioning and
scenario-based strategic planning
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11. 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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12. 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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13. 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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14. 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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15. For more tools and city stories, please download “SWITCH and
the City” from http://www.irc.nl/page/62396
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