Research on institutions for agricultural water management under the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 146

described as negotiation support. To redress power imbalances in the Coello
area, the project focused its better understanding and decision support activities
on six community groups in the watershed. This helped those groups to
reach decisions about the most important issues to raise with the other
stakeholders in the formal meeting. The CAC process facilitated the exchange
of information generated in multiple ways, including a field trip in which
representatives of different agencies traveled together throughout the
watershed.
The CAC process unfolded in 2007-8 and led to a total of 30 agreements
between the communities and the other organizations involved. Several
examples of real impact were already noted by the impact assessment team in
December 2008 including: new opportunities for a local NGO to work across
the watershed; greater interest and participation by provincial authorities in
the management of protected areas; and mayors being more responsive to
community concerns resulting in new community alarms and bridges. A total
of US$665,000 was committed for projects agreed upon through the CAC
process.
Participation in negotiation support
All three of the negotiation-support projects reviewed in this section took
systematic approaches to the participation of key stakeholders in their research
and boundary-spanning activities. Goodwill and a systematic approach,
however, do not ensure the desired outcome. The PN50 report notes that
many government agencies in the Mekong region were cautious about being
involved in the types of multi-stakeholder platforms that the integrated
watershed-management approach promotes. It is a reality that power in many
countries is centralized and compartmentalized, making it very difficult to
achieve the objectives of integrated water resource management. From the
CPWF experience reviewed here, it seems that it may be much easier to
achieve effective multi-stakeholder platforms at the local scale.
Accountability in negotiation support
All of the CPWF projects reviewed in this section had management and
advisory group structures that attempted to increase accountability to stake-
holder groups. All were implemented in different ways.
PN50 was implemented through M-POWER, which is a knowledge net-
work of about 30 organizations. The partners in M-POWER are committed
to continuing the network beyond the life span of any particular funded project
such as PN50. M-POWER has annual Partners' Working Group meetings that
provide opportunities for partners to learn from each other. They share
experiences, synthesize results, develop new project ideas and jointly explore
governance issues in the region. A logical multi-stakeholder forum that is