Change processes

From an IDRC publication on Outcome Mapping

"As Peter Senge points out,

Seeing interrelationships, not things, and processes, not snapshots. Most of us have been conditioned throughout our lives to focus on things and to see the world in static images. This leads us to linear explanations of systemic phenomenon. (Senge 1990: 15)


International development programs are particularly prone to excluding themselves from the system in which development change occurs. By separating themselves from development processes (i.e., something “we” help “them” accomplish) and explaining change using linear reasoning, programs lose the opportunity to explore their full potential as change agents."

In other words, change processes in basins are implemented by people. The trick is to ask "what people?" and "how can research outputs improve the process?". The simple response to this might be to consider where processes can be improved by reducing uncertainties. Such uncertainties might include:
- lack of data on water balances within a particular sub-basin
- ignorance about impacts of change on specific aquatic environments
- unequal representation of specific groups of people
- ignorance about the dependence of specific groups on water

By a strange coincidence with my previous post on the comparison between agricultural development in Africa and China: The WB posted a report on Learning from China's Experience to Help Africa's Development.

Delegates seem quite optimistic about the potential for learning. Yaouba Abdoulaye, Vice-Minister of Planning and Territorial Management in Cameroun is quoted as saying "when China started its reform, agriculture was as important as it is in many African countries now". Perhaps some attention is needed to the trajectory to see if this statement explains where the situation is, or where it is going.

Do institutional factors explain the gap between China and Africa?

An interesting report by Ron Sandrey and Hannah Edinger at the Centre for Chinese Studies (Univ. Stellenbosh) includes the following conclusion:

The challenge for Africa is to operationalise technologies in the absence of much of the necessary flanking support (policies, prices, infrastructure, agricultural credit etc).

This report is full of fascinating insights: Page 17 notes an extension service with 830,000 staff - about 760,000 at the grass roots level - though their effectiveness and resources is highly variable.

The Ministry of Agriculture reports that the application of crop production 'packages' in Northern China have improved grain water productivity from 0.3 to between 0.6-1.2 kg/m. [actually quoted as kg per mm but this seems too small]

Learning for sustainability site

Learning for sustainability is an internet resource offered by Will Allen to support and explain dialogue processes, inter-disciplinarity and institutional change. A wealth of quality information. Highly recommended.

Focus on institutional pathways and impediments to change

The 5 water-related factors underlying poverty (where water is part of ther cause) seems a reasonable approach. I am sure in all cases, there is a combination of factors operating; including interactions with other factors such as land access, market access, etc.

But my interest includes the institutional imediments and pathways for promoting changes that lead to improved conditions for people [and minimize changes that have the opposite impacts]: better access, more productivity, reduced vulnerability, etc. Do people have views on this issue?

Jinxia Wang is having trouble getting into the blog, but she directed me to a web site with some very intersting work on institutional innovations in China. Her website is: www.ccapwater.com . In the up corner of this web on the left, you can find the links to the English version. This web is both Chinese and English. I recommend this highly.

Better governance helps in the fight against poverty and improves living standards.

"Research by many scholars, including the WGI authors, shows that improved governance strengthens development, and not the other way around. When governance is improved by one standard deviation, infant mortality declines by two-thirds and incomes rise about three-fold in the long run".

The WB report on governance that provides the above quote uses the following classification variables:

• Voice and Accountability
• Political Stability and Absence of Violence
• Government Effectiveness
• Regulatory Quality
• Rule of Law
• Control of Corruption

Are there similar variables on which to determine water governance? Offers, anyone?

How do institutions determine water-related poverty?

I am a relative newcomer to the topic of institutions. But I now appreciate, from seeing analysis in the BFPs, how institutions are key to explain how - or why- people manage collectively land and water resources in the way they do, and what can be done to improve the benefit from these resources.

I really want help to understand concepts, processes and instruments that link people together in non-random instruments. I hope that people in this blog can help provide specific examples of these. But people seem reluctant to ‘jump in’.

So let me try to break the logjam by offering the following:
In a sister BLOG, we are discussing the analysis of water, food and poverty. To help this, we have five-class simplification of the apparent water-related causes of poverty (to be honest, I synthesized these in my head from what I knew of analyses in a few basins)…they are:
1 Water scarcity [oddly, a rare cause]
2 Lack of access
3 Vulnerability to water-related hazard such as flood, drought or disease.
4 Loss of water productivity, that is loss of potential gain from water consumed due to other factors
5 Loss of resource [e.g. poverty that is induced by adverse change]
In order of magnitude, a rough guess suggests that 4 > 2 > 3> 1 (5 is possibly a special case; as Eric Kemp Benedict observes, a framework in which others operate), and that this fits the sequence of importance of institutions. For example, for (4) institutions govern the assemblage and deployment of factors such as inputs, credit, markets within the water and food system to enable people to maximize water productivity. Institutions are clearly a major determinant of access, or lack of (2) to water. Vulnerability and resilience (3) are socio-ecological entities in which institutional factors control sensitivity to hazard. I guess not much can be done about absolute water scarcity, although even there, institutions can determine to overcome physical adversity (e.g. desalination supports a highly active urban population in Dubai).