Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tutions “evolve through complex creative processes that adopt and adapt
diverse ingredients” (Merrey and Cook, 2012). Merrey and Cook's concept
of “ bricolage 2 is useful to promote and facilitate a creative approach to building
and strengthening water management institutions.
Learning selection by large numbers of people linked together often
produces innovation. The process is spontaneous, although it can be nurtured
by facilitators and guided by product champions who play distinct but
important roles. Champions of learning selection are more effective where
knowledge and experience are freely shared. The outcome of learning
selection depends on people's motivations and their ability to participate,
which depends in turn on a community's power relations and cultural norms.
Based on this analysis, research can foster large-scale change in the CPWF
basins by understanding and stimulating:
varying types of agents, strategies and artefacts, for example by introducing
novelty into the system, such as a new crop variety or other technology,
and fostering its local adaptation;
changes to patterns of interaction between agents, strategies and artefacts,
for example changing social norms; and
changes to selection processes by which the fitness of an agent, strategy or
artefact is assessed, and the subsequent processes that allow those judged to
be fitter to survive and spread.
Learning selection can foster large-scale change, but not necessarily change
that is equitable or sustainable. There is a role for research to anticipate and
monitor the consequences of change in production systems. See Chapter 5 for
further discussion on the consequences of change.
Cornerstone 2: Network weaving to foster emergence
Improved connectivity between actors relies on improved understanding and
mapping of networks. The CPWF used the concepts of social network analysis
(Cross and Parker, 2004), small world networks (Watts and Strogatz, 1998) and
network weaving (Krebs and Holley, 2002) to analyze and strengthen its
networks. For example, a map of a research network could show the organiza-
tions involved and how they are connected. Changing the ways in which
organizations and individuals are connected changes who interacts with whom,
how ideas spread and how decisions are made.
Figure 3.1 illustrates the concept of network weaving as applied to a
hypothetical river basin. Initially research takes place among scattered clusters
of individuals and organizations who do not know what the others are doing
(Figure 3.1a). This network does not have critical mass, learning selection is
slow, and the chances of innovation are low. We now add a network weaver,
who can be one or more individuals or organizations, to link and foster
communication between the separate groups and create a hub-and-spoke
Search WWH ::




Custom Search