Rap, E.R.

English

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Interdisciplinary research and capacity building program on water policies and water management in Andean countries

Wageningen Yield 

Draft 12 February 2008 
 
  
Interdisciplinary research and capacity building program on water policies 
and water management in Andean countries 
 
Edwin Rap 
 
Background paper for the conference ‘Knowledge on the Move’,  
session on Climate, energy and environmental care, 27-28 February 2008 
 
 
This is a mini paper that describes the network of Andean institutions which cooperate in 
Concertación and other water-related programmes. After a general description of the 
network, we answer a set of questions about its modalities of knowledge generation, applied 
and academic research, capacity building and policy advocacy, which are central to this 
initiative and to the conference more in general. 
 
1. The Concertación programme and its extended institutional network 
 
Concertación is an interdisciplinary research, capacity building and policy advocacy 
network and programme that aims to improve the water- and livelihood security of peasant 
and indigenous water management in the Andes. This will be done through the 
development and support of democratic, equitable and sustainable water management 
policies and practices. Concertación is a cooperation between Dutch and Andean 
institutions (Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia).  
 
The urgency of the water problem is well recognized in the Andes. New water policies try 
to respond to the water management challenges. These have been and continue to be 
highly debated because of diverging visions, objectives and strategies of the different water 
use sectors and water use groups. 
 
One of the central issues in the debate is the effect these new policies have on the water 
access security of the Andean communities and organizations, especially those of the 
farmers, indigenous peoples and other groups of low economic resources that depend on 
water for their livelihoods. The present distribution of water and decision making power 
over water management is characterized by problems of justice, democracy and 
sustainability.  
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Draft 12 February 2008 
 
With special emphasis on the Andean communities, this project pretends to feed the debate 
over water policies through research, exchange, capacity building and policy advocacy. 
This will lead to the creation of new responses and proposals of actors at local, regional and 
national level. These actors will participate in the public debate over the present water 
policies with the purpose to develop water management strategies and policies that are 
effective, equitable, democratic and adapted to the local context. 
 
The strategy of the project is to:  
1. Educate practitioners in order to establish a shared network of water professionals in 
the Andean countries. 
2. Develop innovative academic research and stimulate social learning processes in the 
development and management of water resources.   
3. Develop a knowledge and knowledge exchange platform on sustainable and equitable 
water resource development and management.  
 
By comparing concrete experiences in water management and stimulating exchange and 
learning at an Inter-Andean level, Concertación aims to have an added value, both for 
policy and practice. This will be done together with  actors and platforms at local, regional 
and international level.  
 
The central themes of the project are: 
1. Legal pluralism, water management and recognition policies 
2. Local water management and the strengthening of authorities and organizations 
3. Integrated management of water in river basins 
4. Regional and international policies for integrated water management  
 
All of these four main themes have several sub-themes. These sub-themes are used to 
organise research, capacity building, and policy advocacy activities around in the Andes. 
For example, the collective water rights was one of the main themes for 2007. The 
collective rights of indigenous and peasant communities to water are under threat by the 
individualization of water rights, which increases the importance of the recognition of 
these rights in policy and law making processes. For 2008 we have identified  the sub-
themes of ‘local irrigation systems, their productivity and agrarian dynamics’ and the 
‘feminisation of water management’. Special knowledge teams are formed with expertise 
on these particular topics and they formulate a knowledge project.  The idea is that this 
knowledge project entails three steps: 1) action-research on the current state of affairs and 
problems in actual water management regarding this topic. The research findings have to 
be translated into 2) the improvement of capacity building efforts and subsequently in 3) 
advocacy and networking activities to improve water policy and water law.  
  
The programme is financed by the Dutch government and the network is constituted by a 
large number of Dutch and Andean partners that are active in the field of water 
management for marginalised groups. Our Andean network is coordinated by one 
institution in every country: in Peru the Institute for the Promotion of Water Management  
(IPROGA), in Ecuador the Inter-institutional Consortium for Capacity Building on the 
Sustainable Management of Renewable Natural Resources (CAMAREN) and in Bolivia, 
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Draft 12 February 2008 
the Andean Centre for  Water Management and Use (Centro AGUA). The lead 
partner/network coordinator in the Netherlands is  the Irrigation and Water Engineering 
Group (IWE) of the Wageningen University, which cooperates intensively with the Centre 
for Studies and Documentation on Latin American (CEDLA) of the University of 
Amsterdam (UvA). The counterparts with whom the coordinating institutions work form 
a much larger group of participants composed of organizations, institutes, platforms and 
networks at local, national and international level. Among the international associates are 
UN/CEPAL; CapNet/LA WETnet; CONDESAN, SNV, UNESCO-IHE, Waternet in 
Africa and Crossing Boundaries in South Asia.  
 
 
2. Questions about knowledge generation, capacity building and policy advocacy 
 
- Which modalities exist to ensure that local/regional demand for knowledge on specific topics 
that are important for local/regional policy, are delivered to the right researchers, receives 
financing and subsequently that the results reaches the right places to influence that policy?  
 
The modality that Concertación uses to link local knowledge demands with regional 
policy, is an inter-institutional water network in the Andes, which is active in capacity 
building, research and policy. This network with representations at the regional and 
national level has prioritized 4 main themes that are central to regional water management 
practices and policies. Every year we choose to work on one or two sub-themes that are 
currently debated in the three different countries. For example, in 2007, the InterAndean 
network selected the theme of ‘collective water rights’.  These collective rights to water are 
increasingly under threat by the individualization of water rights in the Andes, which 
shows the importance of the recognition and defence of these rights in policy and law 
making processes. Around these themes, special knowledge teams are formed. These 
knowledge teams are made up of Andean water specialists from connected institutions that 
know the specific regional water problematic and design a comparative knowledge project. 
International expertise may be called in at this point. The actual field research is carried out 
by giving five months fellowships to recognised or promising researchers and water 
professionals who often have problems getting their research financed or require training 
on the job. The action-research is initiated with a base-study by a regional or international 
expert on the research theme in question, who can also safeguard the quality of the final 
products.  
 
A knowledge project entails three steps: 1) action-research on the current state of affairs 
and problems in actual water management regarding this topic. The research findings then 
have to be translated into 2) the improvement of capacity building efforts and subsequently 
in 3) advocacy and networking activities to improve water policy and water law. In this 
way and together with national water debate and training platforms, the results of such 
action-based studies can be translated into proposals, methodologies and actions to improve 
water legislation and policies. 
 
To complement the picture of this modality, we have to mention a set of related research 
and capacity building initiatives on which Concertación builds. First, several Concertación 
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partners have joined to cooperate in capacity building on Integrated Water Resources 
Management (IWRM). This has lead to the organization of tailor-made courses financed by 
NUFFIC for a mass of promising mid-career professionals who are expected to become 
influential in water policy. In Ecuador and Peru these courses are delivering their first 
results and Bolivia will follow. This creates a base of professionals that contribute to 
regional Concertación research and policy advocacy initiatives. Concertación finds in these 
courses a natural vessel for the translation of research to capacity building efforts and in the 
longer term creates a critical mass for policy advocacy. 
 
Second, Concertación benefits from its support to the continuation of ‘Water Law and 
Indigenous Rights’ (WALIR). This program works towards the recognition of indigenous 
and local water rights and management rules in national legislation. WALIR attempts to be 
a kind of think-tank to critically inform debates on indigenous and customary rights in 
water legislation and water policy. Over the past 5 years, WALIR has educated a stream of 
young water professionals who will occupy important positions in the water management 
and policy frameworks of the near future. These up-and-coming professionals are activated 
through research grants that contribute to the central and regionally relevant Concertación 
themes. The most promising of these researchers receive a fellowship from Concertación to 
follow a Masters study especially designed for Concertación at connected Dutch 
universities. This has the additional benefit of teaching these students to participate in 
international policy debates, which are carried out in English and inform these debates 
with actual studies of the Andean water management practice.  
 
- What happens to the supposed trade-off between quality of research for research (more 
fundamental research) and research for development (more applied)? The assumption is that 
more applied research is of a lower academic calibre with which researchers ‘score’ less in de 
publish or perish carousel.   
 
There exists a trade-off between academic research and action-research for development, 
which is approached in the following manner. Around the prioritized water themes in 
Concertación, a diversity of Andean experts is grouped with research, training or practical 
interests, which work reinforce each other mutually. The products are then targeted to 
different audiences, from the traditional academic, to professional, policy and lay 
audiences. An Andean publication line is foreseen that  knows three levels of publication, 
with different exclusivity, accessibility and price: 1) Academic 2) Politicians, policy makers 
and practitioners and 3) Water users, their leaders and activists. Regional researchers can 
thus target their publications to different purposes and acquire prestige accordingly. For 
international researchers, these regional experiences in relation to international water 
policy debates provide significant opportunities to publish in order not to perish. Further, 
to guarantee the quality of the publication series, Concertación provides support to the 
continuation of the regionally much-appreciated WALIR academic series ‘Water and 
Society’, and builds on this initiative and experience within Concertación. The same occurs 
with a series of ‘professional publications’ in the NUFFIC financed course programmes on 
IWRM.  
 
Though fundamental research is not the primary objective of the program, the research 
network, its partners, the local and national study cases, and the different policy processes 
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it is ‘embedded in’ offer a wealth of data for critical analysis of water policy and 
intervention processes. Research time (for data analysis at meta-scientific levels), in this 
sense, is a far greater limitation than the production and availability of research data 
themselves.  
 
In addition, the question does remain if there should not be place for fundamental research 
that is not immediately tied to specific practical or policy interests in development. This 
allows for a more fundamental reflection on what occurs in actual development practices 
and policy processes and how these relate or not, questions which escape the attention, are 
not sufficiently instrumental, or are too controversial for development programmes or 
policy interests to engage in. In this sense, the abolishment of the individual projects of 
WOTRO is a loss in terms of the diversity of pragmatic and academic perspectives on 
development policy. Such innovative research will in the current set-up have less chance to 
be funded by NWO, where development, non-western, interdisciplinary, social science and 
qualitative perspectives are underrepresented. 
 
- How can you do research in partnerships (local/regional; north-south; south-south, n-s-s)? Which 
modalities work and which not? 
 
As described above Concertación has opted for doing research in regional teams of Andean 
experts with additional international expertise. We believe this leads to the identification of 
relevant water problems, the execution of necessary research, whilst at the same time 
training Andean researchers and involving international researchers. The latter can benefit 
from this by relating these research experiences with international policy or academic 
debates.  
 
An advantage of the extensive Andean institutional network of Concertación is further 
that it can also be used for academic purposes and further cross-fertilization. This was the 
basis under a research proposal: “Struggling for water security: Social mobilization for the 
defence of water rights in Peru and Ecuador” that will be carried out between 2008-2012  and 
is financed by WOTRO. This research project that combines academic with action-based 
research was defined together with local partners who expect to benefit from the insights 
that will be produced. At the same time, the four PhD’s included in this project will be 
mobilised to contribute their research experiences and expertise in strengthening capacity 
building initiatives, training courses and Masters programmes of network partners in the 
region, for example with contributions to the aforementioned tailor-made courses 
supported by NUFFIC.  
For research in partnerships it is vital to have well-established mechanisms to collectively 
decide about the research agenda, objectives and topics, to discuss and diffuse results, and to 
collectively engage in the translation process toward policy influencing. Rather than just 
one-level institutional interaction, these mechanisms need to ensure multi-level 
involvement, from the grassroots to the research institutes. 
 
- How can you stimulate capacity building of researchers from the North in an adequate 
manner?  
 
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Concertación and related initiatives support capacity building in Andean water 
management in different ways. In the foregoing we have mentioned the fact that a 
consortium of Dutch and Andean partners (Wageningen University, UNESCO-IHE, 
IPROGA, CAMAREN amongst others) cooperate in the NUFFIC-financed tailor-made 
courses on IWRM in Ecuador and Peru. Concertación supports these courses with research 
grants for local researchers to improve the course content and international expertise to 
review and deliver contributions to the course programme. Concertación further supports 
the strengthening of local courses for water professionals and water user leaders and 
masters courses of network partners. In addition, the programme contains several MSc and 
PhD scholarships. These are given to promising young researchers who are committed to 
contribute to the issue of water security for marginal groups within the context of a 
InterAndean network of institutions. They are trained with the idea to create a base of 
interdisciplinary scholars who can partake in international policy debates on these issues 
which are largely in English. For this reason, they are trained in the Netherlands, either in 
CEDLA or in Wageningen. Both social and technical scientists are trained and interact in a 
special Concertación MSc. programme. 
 
- How have research priorities been formulated and on which basis do you finance certain 
research or not?  
 
Like described above, the research agenda is composed of four main research themes on 
which the network has reached consensus. On an annual basis, particular sub-themes are 
selected on the basis of debates and meetings with those organisations that work at the 
daily level in the field of water policy and practice. Besides the existing regional and 
national debates, the international network provides opportunities to add new elements, 
approaches and concepts to the debate, such as for example a legal pluralism approach and 
recognition policies/politics in water rights issues, or a critical approach of Multi-
Stakeholder Perspectives (MSP’s) and conflict resolution methodologies in water 
management.  
 
 
Information: concertacion@wur.nl and www.concertacion.info
 
 
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Interdisciplinary research and capacity building program on water policies and water management in Andean countries

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