Presented by Marieke Adank at The International Annual UN-Water Zaragoza Conference 2012/2013 'Preparing for the 2013 International Year. Water Cooperation: Making it Happen! With lessons from IRC's work in the SWITCH project on integrated urban water management.

1. Water cooperation in cities
By John Butterworth, Marieke Adank and Carmen Da Silva Wells, IRC
International Water and Sanitation Centre, the Hague, the Netherlands

2. The urban water challenge
• Growing urban population
• High demands for better services and pressures on
scarce resources
• Complex institutional setting
 Urban water management: a “wicked” problem
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3. ‘Wicked’ problems
• Unique and dynamic. Solutions cannot be simply replicated.
• Perfect solutions do not exist – rather more or less suitable options
• Can never be completely solved, only improved. And can continue
to be improved.
• Solutions require collaboration between multiple stakeholders
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4. SWITCH Project
Sustainable
Water management
Improves
Tomorrow’s
Cities’
Health
- Five year experiment (2006-11)
- Funded by the European Union
- Activities: demand-led research,
demonstration activities, training,
and multi-stakeholder learning
Beijing
Tel Aviv
Alexandria
Accra
LodzBirmingham
Zaragoza
Lima
Bogota
Belo Horizonte
Cali
Hamburg
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5. Learning alliances in SWITCH Project
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6. 6
Global level
National level
City level
Community / end-user level
Donors
Line ministries
Universities
Banks
Companies
Local government
Offices of line ministries
Donor projects
Local NGOs
INGOs
Local private sector
Local Banks
Sewerage department
Water company
Donors Multilateral orgs.
Advocacy orgs. Learning orgs
Men/Women
Rich/poor
Domestic
Productive
National Government
What is a learning alliance?
Multiple stakeholders at key institutional levels

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facilitated by an LA
facilitator
and vertical cooperation
Donors
Line ministries
National platform
Universities
Banks
Companies
Local government
Offices of line ministries
Donor projects
Local NGOs
INGOs
Local private sector
Local Banks
Sewerage department
Water company
Donors Multilateral orgs.
Advocacy orgs. Learning orgs
Men/Women
Rich/poor
Domestic
Productive
Global platform
National Government
City platform
Community / local platforms
Brought together into platforms
Improving horizontal

8. Tools used by city learning alliances
• Stakeholder analysis
• Rapid urban water assessment
• Facilitating communication in learning alliances
• Visioning and scenario-based strategic planning
• Process documentation
• Action research
• Monitoring
• Creative workshop facilitation
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9. Facilitating communication in learning
alliances
Careful facilitation is needed to ensure effective communication.
Communication in the city learning alliances typically involves:
Diversity of stakeholders
involved in Learning
Alliances
Diverse values, interests, language and world
views; possible conflicting interests
multiple sources of information, experience and
multiple users for it -> potential for new insights
and joint learning.
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• workshops with alliance
members,
• bilateral meetings,
• working groups,
• field visits,
• e-discussions,
• social events,
• reaching out to stakeholders
outside the alliance through
events and information products
and services.

10. Facilitating communication in learning
alliances
Basic principles for effective communication in learning
alliances:
• It is interactive
• It follows short cycles
• It is inclusive
• It is targeted
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Role of the learning alliance facilitator is central!

11. Visioning and
scenario-based strategic planning
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12. Visioning and scenario-based strategic
planning in SWITCH city LAs
• Almost all City Learning Alliances developed shared vision,
• Several developed scenario-based strategic plans
• It gave city learning alliances coherence and purpose, bringing
stakeholders together around a joint activity.
• Strategic planning processes built on existing processes
• It helped cities to broaden their focus and to take on emerging key issues
• The process was considered relatively non-threatening, new and
innovative to the individuals involved
• Strategic planning processes take time, resources and need to be well
facilitated
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13. Process documentation
• Tracks what happened, how it happened and
why it happened
• It provides insights into the course and outcomes
of an intervention.
• It triggers reflection and debate
• The main elements are:
– Capturing the change process,
– Organising the information,
– Analysing information,
– Disseminating the information quickly
enough to be most useful.
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14. Process documentation by city learning
alliances
• Learning alliance facilitators trained in process documentation:
– Regular documentation of activities and events
– Making this available in print and through the city websites
• City project teams with support from ‘outsiders’:
– Structured reflection twice during the project (in 2008 and 2010)
• Useful for helping city stakeholders and the SWITCH teams to take
a step back, reflect on changes in their city and decide on the way
forward.
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15. Lessons learnt
• It better to ‘go with the flow’ and put support behind things that are already
happening than to start projects from scratch.
• It takes a long time to bring stakeholders who are not already working
together into an effective learning alliance platform.
• Learning alliance processes require dedicated facilitation that must be
funded.
• Treat the existing structures with respect and work to gain credibility.
• In order to get people to participate in the meetings and ongoing activities of
the platform, you have to make it worthwhile for them to contribute their time
and energy.
• Five years pass quickly….. Change processes take more than the
conventional 3-5-year project timespan
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For more tools and city stories, please download “SWITCH and
the City” from http://www.irc.nl/page/62396