Partnerships, platforms and power - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 160

Sometimes the best partnerships were those where partners co-invested.
Examples are NGOs and the private sector in goat auction sites in Zimbabwe,
hydropower companies in constructed wetlands in Laos, and the Ministry of
Environment in benefit-sharing mechanisms in Peru.
Platforms
The CPWF used several types of platforms, all focused on engagement,
including innovation platforms and multi-stakeholder platforms. In general,
an engagement platform is a space where individuals and organizations with
different backgrounds and interests can assemble to diagnose problems, identify
opportunities and implement solutions.
Engagement platforms redefine who we think of as decision-makers.
Decision-makers are normally assumed to be senior government officials. We
say assumed because despite the many references to decision-makers in the
literature, they are seldom identified. Adequate design of ToCs helps identify
decision-makers previously 'hidden' from development processes. By identify-
ing and including these under-represented people and positions, engagement
platforms help generate meaningful contextualized interaction among various
actors with power and mandates to address real issues.
Within the context of the engagement platform, however, everyone can be
a decision-maker. Decisions are made by the group, which may include senior
government officials, business owners, trade unionists, NGO staff, members
of farmers' associations and scientists. Other members of the group may not
consider that scientific evidence is superior to any other kind of evidence. The
research may point in one direction, but the group may have valid reasons for
going in a different direction.
“Innovation platforms” is the term used in the CPWF for very specific
engagement platforms in the three African basins, where they were used to
link researchers, end users and boundary partners with a range of technologies
(van Rooyen and Homann-Kee Tui, 2009; Duncan, 2012; Cullen, 2013). In
contrast, multi-stakeholder platforms are where people from different groups
with different interests meet to discuss contentious issues. The platform offers
them a neutral and safe environment in which they can discuss the issues, and
was a feature of the Mekong BDC (Geheb, 2012).
Assertions
The challenges facing water and food management in basins are complex and
require different types of platforms that bring together people with multiple
perspectives. Over its 11 years, the CPWF invested in engagement platforms
across a wide range of scales to address a wide range of challenges (Clayton,
2013).