Girl carrying water, Brazil The Dublin
Principles for Integrated Water Resources Management state that
‘Water development and management should be based on a
participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers
at all levels’ and that ‘Women play a central part in the
provision, management and safeguarding of water’.
At Mott MacDonald, we realise that the participatory bottom-up
approach which seeks out active engagement of all stakeholders,
complements the traditional top-down approach. The participatory
approach promotes respect for all community members regardless of
age, gender or socio-economic status and contributes to the
capacity and willingness of stakeholders to change.
In practice, this includes our recognition and employment of the
valuable traditional knowledge of land and water resources held by
local community members. Farmers are encouraged to form Water
Users’ Associations and contribute as supply teachers; women are
empowered when their contributions are seen as being equal to those
of men, while the acknowledgement of gender differences leads to
more equitable gender relations; school children participate in
resource monitoring and data processing and thereby learn to
appreciate the need for sustainable management. The involvement of
the whole community gives them a sense of belonging to the project,
while the project itself gains in sustainability.
But participatory approaches do not only include the community, who
are the end-users of the water. We work with all stakeholders to
ensure effective and appropriate participation at all levels. We
strive to take account of all interests - both positive and
negative. For the Water Resources Demand Management Project in
China, we have undertaken stakeholder analyses and used these as a
basis for communication and participation plans. The project teams
are using these plans to work with each stakeholder group in an
integrated manner.
In our work on environmental education, we identified
under-represented groups/genders concerned with the project goal
and established a basis for their integration into the
communication dialogue as well as conducting workshops, seminars
and participatory surveys. The communication strategies we
introduced were aimed at producing effective multi-channel
communication from the farm level to national level encompassing
farmers, water users' communities, appropriate NGOs, public bodies,
extension services and research organisations.
At a higher level, the approach includes provisions for
mainstreaming water into the national economy, ensuring
coordination between sectors and partnerships between public and
private sector management.
