Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Power, mandates and legitimacy
In R4D, outputs from research should be anticipated by strategic partners and
decision-makers and meet expressed needs. Engagement strategies aim to
modify decision-makers' knowledge, attitudes and skills and so influence policy
and practice, providing outcomes. Outputs can be used by individual decision-
makers to understand a problem better and devise better solutions. When
multiple decision-makers seek to engage in dialogue and negotiation to deal
with contentious issues, outputs can be used to support the negotiations (see
Chapter 6).
Power relationships, however, influence the course of dialogue and nego-
tiation and thus the process of moving from outputs to outcomes. R4D
practitioners must take account of mandates (who is responsible for what) by
including individuals and institutions with relevant mandates in the engage-
ment process. This is not easy. First, we must define relevance in terms of
relevant to whom or to what. R4D practitioners must be mindful that many
institutions have multiple and sometimes conflicting mandates and that several
institutions may have overlapping mandates.
In the Limpopo Basin, for example, the Limpopo BDC operated with an
acute awareness of mandates. The basin program sought to link its R4D with
on-going political processes such as policies and priorities set by the Common
Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Program, the SADC and basin commissions. This engagement
helped link local innovation processes to higher-level processes and initiatives.
In Andean basins in Colombia, national policy required government entities
to engage in negotiations with communities on contentious issues of resource
management. Regional autonomous environmental authorities were mandated
to facilitate negotiations. CPWF partners worked with communities to
strengthen their capacity to engage in these negotiations, which resulted in
binding agreements between communities and public sector agencies (PN20) 4
(Candelo et al., 2008; Johnson, 2009).
CPWF projects improved water control in polders in coastal Bangladesh,
which enabled farmers to grow three crops each year instead of only one.
Improved water control, however, involved local engineering departments
(LEDs), which control infrastructure within polders, and the national Water
Development Board, which controls polder development and maintenance.
The national Planning Commission prioritizes and coordinates the activities of
government entities. CPWF projects included LEDs, the Water Development
Board and the Planning Commission in their engagement strategies for water
control in polders (Ganges 3 and Ganges 5) 4 (George and Meisner, 2013).
A related issue is how to deal with accountability. Often entities with the
power to make decisions are not accountable to the groups who are affected by
their decisions. Worse, they sometimes also lack functional accountability.
Moreover, powerful individuals or groups can shift the agenda in their favor
over time, contributing further to the exclusion of the poor and vulnerable.
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