Research on institutions for agricultural water management under the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 144

water resource management in the Mekong region. It provided information to
support negotiations and social learning related to fisheries, flood control,
hydropower, land and water management in the region. M-POWER engaged
in various multi-stakeholder dialogues at the regional level and at the local level
in several distinct locations. One of the most important M-POWER con-
tributions was to negotiate support to convene the regional meeting Mekong
region waters dialogue: Exploring water futures together.
The final report for PN50 (Lebel et al., 2010) claims the following positive
impacts regarding negotiation support: (1) strengthening local representation
into planning and implementation; (2) improving the quality of deliberative
processes; and (3) enhancing the constructive interplay between state and non-
state actors at various levels. The report also acknowledges a central constraint
in the Mekong region that has limited progress toward the project goals.
Dominant political structures in the region vary from authoritarian, single-
party to semi-democracies. In this context, democratization of water gover-
nance is seen as a threat to those established powers (Lebel et al., 2010, p. 15).
Negotiation support activities of PN25
The title of PN25 is Companion modeling for resilient water management:
Stakeholders' perceptions of water dynamics and collective learning at the
catchment scale (ComMod). The objectives of the project were: (1) develop
multi-agent simulation tools for facilitating collective assessment of water
management problems; (2) build capacity to apply those tools; and (3) partici-
patory construction of concrete propositions to increase water productivity.
ComMod was implemented in three upper and three lower sites of the Mekong
Basin and in three upper catchments in Himalayan highlands in Bhutan. A
range of water management challenges were encountered in those nine project
sites. The ComMod project specifically focused on the challenge of integrating
multiple sources of knowledge into research for action in those different
contexts, addressing the following questions: (1) how to model different
stakeholders' perceptions; (2) how to integrate indigenous and science-based
knowledge to create a common representation of the system; and (3) how to use
models of multi-stakeholder decision-making to improve water management at
the catchment scale (Governance Author Team, 2010, pp. 3-10).
ComMod used conceptual models, role-playing games and agent-based
models and simulations in an iterative way, alternating field and laboratory
activities in loops, to represent how competing water use processes are
operating, and to search for acceptable solutions through better coordi-
nation and collective scenario assessment.
(Governance Author Team, 2010, p. 9)
The final project report concludes that the ComMod project contributed to
improved communication and trust among multiple stakeholders. Examples of