Research on institutions for agricultural water management under the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 145

multiple stakeholders were the forest authorities and villagers in one of the
Thailand sites and different groups of herders in one of the Bhutan sites. The
ComMod project also helped to strengthen or establish local institutions to
tackle natural resource management problems. Project activities led to: (1) a
new regulation on irrigation water use in the Salaep catchment in Thailand; (2)
the establishment of a watershed resource management committee in the
Lingmuteychu watershed in Bhutan; (3) coordinated use of water tanks in
Kengkhar village in Bhutan; and (4) a compromise between downstream
shrimp farmers and upstream rice growers on the timing of saline water intake
at an important sluice gate in a coastal site in Vietnam (Governance Author
Team, 2010, pp. 10-11).
Summary of negotiation support activities of PN20: Sustaining
Inclusive Collective Action that Links across Economic and Ecological
Scales in Upper Watersheds, SCALES.
The objective of SCALES was to contribute to poverty alleviation in the upper
watersheds of the tropics through improved collective action for watershed
management within and across social-spatial scales. SCALES was implemented
in one watershed in Kenya (Nyando) and two watersheds in Colombia (Coello
and Fuquene). SCALES included conceptual modeling, participatory assess-
ment of poverty and livelihood dynamics, participatory games that simulated
watershed interactions, pilot development activities and Conversatorio de Acción
Ciudadana (CAC). The CAC in the Coello watershed in Colombia was seen
as a particular success. The main source of information about the CAC process
used here is the impact assessment conducted by Córdoba et al. (2008).
The CAC method was developed by ASDES (Consultancies for
Development Corporation), an NGO based in Cali, Colombia. ASDES had
more than 20 years of experience in educating communities in citizen political
action. It was first implemented with WWF as a mechanism for managing
marine resources on the Colombia Pacific Coast. The CAC is consistent with
the Constitution of Colombia, which enshrines the rights of citizens to hold
their representatives accountable. In the CAC method, a community convenes
a meeting with public and private institutions with the purpose of (a) solving
social, political, economic, education or environmental problems, and (b)
negotiating conflicts in relationships between the community and the state,
the community and the territory, or between communities. Organizations that
can help to resolve these problems are invited to the event through an official
letter.
In the Coello watershed, the SCALES partners followed a three-step process
toward the CAC: (1) sensitization; (2) preparation and implementation of the
CAC; and (3) follow up. Loosely, the sensitization phase matches with the
research category described as better understanding, the preparation phase was
a decision-support activity, and the implementation and follow up can be