The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Case Received: February 5, 1998

Authors: Marc P. Lammerink, Eveline Bolt, Isaack Oenga, Cecilia Gomez

Tel.: +31 70 30 689 68 / 30 689 30

Fax: +31 70 35 899 64

Email: jong@irc.nl

World Wide Web: http://www.oneworld.org/ircwater/

Research teams from six NGO water supply agencies in respectively Cameroon, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, Colombia and Guatemala have since 1994 been involved in a four years participatory action research programme. A team from IRC, has together with the local partners and helped by an international advisory group supported local action. The programme, which is funded by the Dutch government, deals with community management and develops approaches, methods and tools to enhance the capacity of rural communities to manage their own water supply systems with appropriate back up support and guidance

For over three years now, the six NGO's have been working with villagers from three continents in an ambitious attempt to develop a flexible support and development methodology and strengthen community water management. The 24 communities in the project which whom we have experienced this approach have various types of water supply systems and service levels and represent a range of environmental, socio-economic and cultural conditions as well as variations in managerial performance.

From the programme experience lessons are being drawn on improved strategies, innovative methods and tools for building management capacity in communities. The teams involved have experienced the need for human capacity development in their respective organizations and the strategies and tools which can help to implement a participatory methodology to water supply system management, flexible enough to adjust to the varying local conditions.

Sharing findings and experiences on the approach, the activities, process and results of the project with organizations in the countries concerned and training water sector staff of a wider international audience will very much contribute to the general development of effective community management in rural water supply. IRC will continue with the programme until 2002. Hopefully, this will help to design and implement more sustainable projects.

At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, world leaders committed themselves to a comprehensive programme to bring sustainable water supply and sanitation services to the hundreds of millions of people who currently lack them. At the summit all States and support agencies were urged to implement activities aiming for universal coverage outlined in Agenda 21, a strategy for sustainable development in the 21st Century. A guiding principle of Agenda 21 is: "Community management of services, backed by measures to strengthen local institutions in implementing and sustaining water and sanitation programmes." The activity list includes numerous measures to bring about effective community management.

Marc P. Lammerink (IRC) has since 1994 been the overall programme manager. Eveline Bolt (IRC) has been supporting the teams in the Asian continent. Isaac Oenga (NETWAS) and Cecilia Gomez (CINARA) are co-ordinating the research teams in Kenya and Colombia respectively.

Experience in many developing countries shows that even the best run water agencies cannot successfully implement, operate and maintain a network of widely dispersed water systems without the full involvement and commitment of the users. Despite the best endeavours of central agencies, staff, transport and budgets become overstretched, leading to broken down systems, dissatisfied consumers and demoralised agency personnel. However, agencies which make the transition from being providers to facilitators of communities can divert resources currently swallowed up in the provision and maintenance of inefficient services and use them to bring greater cost effectiveness and more widespread and sustainable benefits. Reducing the need for reconstruction or rehabilitation of broken down systems means more satisfying and more productive work on new schemes.

Thus, supporting a more prominent role for communities as managers of improved water supply systems has several advantages. It can lead to greater efficiency in system performance, improve cost-effectiveness for both communities and agencies and has better prospects for the long-term sustainability of water supply systems.

As a result there is a growing trend in most countries in the South to encourage rural communities to manage their water supply schemes. Support agencies also promote decentralization and greater community involvement in decision making and management, placing more emphasis on water resources management on the lowest appropriate level.

Community management does not imply that communities must take care of everything or pay the full costs. The idea of partnership allows scope for sharing responsibilities between supporting agencies and communities. The functions to be performed by local management organizations can thus vary considerably, depending upon the agreed division of responsibility between the agency and the community.

Decentralization and stronger user's involvement, however, faces a lot of constraints for both NGO's, agencies and communities. On the side of the agencies there is a strong tradition and focus on construction of water supply systems. Still little emphasis is put on the establishment of management capacity at local level for lack of experiences and strategies. On the community side, there is often a lack of experience with management of water supply systems and a lack of tools to cope with their operation.

Problems include: insufficient knowledge of indigenous management systems, partial coverage of user populations, lack of effective and equitable financing systems, insufficient capacity building, absence of suitable management tools, environmental degradation of watersheds and absence of proper gender balance in planning for, contributions to and control over the established water service.

Participatory action research offered in our view an effective and powerful strategy for the type of interdisciplinary research needed. It allows rapid adjustment to the different local conditions in the six countries in both Africa, Asia and Latin America. Especially by applying a short feedback mechanism it can stay close to reality. The approach enabled rural communities and supporting agencies to share, analyze and enhance their understanding of conditions and allowed them to plan and implement problem-solving action. It offered usable and relevant knowledge for practitioners' demands. However, at the same time it offered a common framework for the comparison between the different experiences, meeting standards of appropriate rigor without sacrificing relevance.

In participatory action research some of the people of the community under study participate actively with the 'professional researchers' throughout the research process from the initial design, through data gathering and analysis to the final presentation of results and discussion of their action implications. So some of the members of the community are actively engaged in the quest for information and ideas to guide their future actions. Dialogue between researchers and grass-roots people is an important feature. Research is seen as a learning process for all involved, learning from experiences of social action.

The research methodology we developed has placed strong emphasis on participatory and gender-sensitive appraisal and needs assessment approaches. Some of the methods used are emanating from the tradition of participatory rural appraisal. We used both qualitative and quantitative data collection on system performance and service, such as distribution problems, breakdown rates, costings, demographics, local organization, socio-economic characteristics of served and unserved households.

Implementation followed a sequence, starting with a joint preparation of a common framework for the research and method design (Preparation, Training of trainers/facilitators), and selection of the communities (Area selection and problem identification). This was followed by a participatory situation analysis, needs assessment and problem identification and an identification of possible solutions (Diagnosis of problems and potential solutions), leading to the joint development and field testing of problem-solving strategies, methods and tools (Experimentation and evaluation of possible solutions).

The last part of the project still to come in 1998 will focus on dissemination and sharing of project findings and the planning and co-ordination of further work in order to sustain the process (Sustaining the process and evaluation). This will not only include the countries concerned but will be planned at a larger scale.

Most partner organizations in the project did not have experiences with the design and implementation of participatory action research. They requested and received training, support and backstopping in developing and executing this type of participatory studies on:

• preparation of a situation analysis on local management of rural water supply systems in their countries.
• design for the action research process, for selecting communities, forming local research teams and assessing and analysing local management practices and results;
• facilitation on the selection of four 'partner' communities per country;
• the joint analysis of preliminary research findings;
• facilitation of the involvement of community groups' in the experimentation phase;
• strengthening the role and skills of the teams during field-testing.

The community research teams received training in analysing the water situation and, in particular, in identifying problems and appropriate solutions. Most of the community research teams have developed their research agendas late 1996. Experimentation and field testing of the problem-solving strategies, methods and tools - as well as monitoring and evaluation - took place during 1997 and early 1998.

Participatory action research undertaken by the research teams from the NGO's in representative communities have strengthened their own capacities and effectiveness. It has enhanced the problem solving capacity of both community and supporting organization. During the process the role of the researcher was clearly changing to that of a convenor, a colleague, a catalyst and sometimes of a consultant, who brought in new ideas or experiences unknown to the grass-roots organisation.

A small example: villagers in Nkoundja, Cameroon visited the neighbouring village of Nyen to find out how people there are solving their problems in managing, operating, and maintaining their water systems. One man reacted after the visit: "The knowledge we gain from this research is much more valuable than gifts. It is something that we keep for life". The visit had an immediate effect on Nkoundja's water caretaker who, after seeing how his counterpart in Nyen behaved, realized that he had to change. "We had discussed this over and over again and his behaviour never changed", said one of the community research team members. "Now his attitude has changed radically and he is working really well". Such 'exchange' visits have proven to be very useful components in this participatory action research project.

Following the joint problem identification and diagnosis the communities have since early 1997 been developed and tested their own strategies, methods and tools to address managerial problems, and to monitor the effects of any reforms on service performance. In this the country research teams plays a supporting role: helping to strengthen local capacity in areas such as skills development, group building, confidence building for women and men, in forging links with other communities or organizations. They also contribute to the improvement of maintenance, payment systems, and water source protection; a small budget from the programme allows to fund some technical improvements to the community water supply system itself.

One of the main management skills strengthened is effective monitoring of both the research process, as well as its impact. Close, continuous monitoring has facilitated adjustments of the strategies, methods and tools based on local findings and requirements. The monitoring approach has been developed with the partner organizations and the communities to ensure that it provides for the best possible learning opportunity for everyone.

Early 1998, the teams will be able to carry out its final evaluation of the process, and its concrete achievements. After being summarized these findings will be analyzed jointly with the respective communities and agencies.

The research teams from outside have been able to turn research into an learning experience for people at the grass-roots as they jointly searched for creative solutions and got to know the process of inquiry. Training during the PAR became a dynamic and creative educational process, not only leading to skills development, but also building up the critical consciousness of community members, sometimes examining their values and attitudes.

At the level of the communities through PAR local theory has been developed on how to manage their water systems in an effective and sustainable way. Local theory is the most direct, context bound explanation of cause-and-effect relations in a given situation that makes sense to those with local experience. Such a local theory is situation specific, but is generated in part from general knowledge and the rules of scientific inquiry. However, the construction and generation of local theory is empowering because those who create it learn why things are as they are and this leads naturally to ideas about change. Theory testing became a natural next step in learning. Participants test their theory in action, by experimenting with different possible solutions. This action means testing and improving the local theory. Evaluation of results leads to new, improved local theory. Reflection and action in PAR form a spiral process that gradually improves knowledge and creates useful results.

This testing or experimenting in all cases has been a collective action. For the main idea behind PAR is building up more democratic forms of organisation and management. Thus consensus at the level of the community has been sought about the cause and effect relationship and about what possible solutions are to be tested. The goal is to solve practical problems and develop new or improved knowledge and theory. Before each important step in the process the broadest consensus of community members is sought.

In that way research becomes a process of getting to know and interpret social reality, with the aim of gathering sufficient knowledge to allow for the reproduction, transformation and induction of new processes in society.

At the same time it is apparent that knowledge and knowledge acquisition are dynamic developments which are never finalised nor definitive. That is why it is important, as part of PAR, for the outside research teams to clearly identify and explain throughout the process each step and each phase, in such a way that it is understood by the members of the grass-roots organisation. Thus the PAR experience can also be used for other and different problems facing the communities in the future, sustaining the process of knowing. Research is not looking for the ultimate answer, the definitive solution, or the final truth. It is much more a continuous process of theorising, acting and reflecting.