Harnessing research for development to tackle wicked problems - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 67

In the Nile BDC, partners in Ethiopia used participatory video to allow
farmers who could not participate in meetings to have their say in imple-
menting sustainable land management. Local farmers (women) produced the
videos to voice their perceptions and opinions on unrestricted grazing, water
stress and government-led soil and water conservation. The video received a
highly positive response from the local government authority (Cullen, 2011).
Participatory video can help farmers communicate with decision-makers,
but alone it is not enough. Higher-level people and local community members
need to change their attitudes and be willing to listen to each other (see the
summary of the Colombia conversatorios in Chapter 6). This requires flexibility
and openness on both sides and trust, which is difficult to accomplish (Cullen,
2013).
Another form of communication was adapting scientific models for local
users who did not have access to the information. In the Nile BDC, KM
specialists and modelers matched land- and water-use practices to landscape-
specific needs. They developed a game, modeled on a popular children's card
game, which allowed local people to understand and discuss each others'
viewpoints on rainwater management more openly (Pfeifer et al., 2012). In the
Mekong, researchers used companion-modeling approaches for the same
purposes to foster evidence-based dialogue and negotiation by helping different
groups who share a water resource to understand each others' viewpoints
(Ruankaew et al., 2010).
A number of different communication processes and products were designed
for use by high-level decision-makers. In the Mekong, a State of Knowledge
series of publications was initiated to provide decision-makers with short
summaries of the key issues related to hydropower. They included: sediment
flows, impacts of hydropower on fisheries, corporate social responsibility
and China's influence on hydropower development in the Lower Mekong
Basin.
In the Ganges and Nile Basins, donor partners, government decision-
makers, and NGOs interested in CPWF research participated in reflection
meetings. The meetings tested whether messages met the participants' needs
or, if not, how they could be presented more effectively. This is very different
from developing messages at the end of the research and then transmitting
them to different actors.
We make the following conclusions on the role of communications and KM:

• Because R4D advances through continuous learning, continuous com-

munication and KM are needed to capture and harness what is being
learned;

• Because R4D takes place in complex adaptive systems, communications

and KM need to deal with ambiguity, learn from failure, value multiple
sources of knowledge and help accelerate feedback loops;

• M&E must be designed to capture learning as well as to check for com-

pliance;