Beyond reporting impacts: reflections from the Water and Development Symposium
The Water and Development Partnership Programme’s first annual symposium, themed ‘beyond reporting impacts’, created space for the participants - more than 480 water experts, researchers and professionals - to critically reflect on and share not only success stories, but also accounts of failures, uncertainties, and what is not yet known. These occasionally messy stories offer opportunities for collective learning across disciplines and regions towards socially just and ecologically sustainable water management practices. In this blog, the programme’s coordination team reflects on the three-day symposium’s final session, titled Fanel, which focused on failures and aspects of project design, planning and implementation that did not go as envisioned.
In the Fanel, we, as the management team of the Water and Development Partnership Programme, shared our struggles with implementing our programme, and the areas in which we have been less successful, at least so far.
We acknowledge that creating spaces for critical reflection is not easy, as it requires project teams to feel safe enough to open up and be vulnerable. In an online setting, it is even more challenging to achieve this. Yet, it is sorely needed: water issues are inherently complex, multifaceted and context-specific, and the actual problem is often not fully known or perhaps even knowable.
Moreover, power, interests, political context and broader perspectives on what constitutes ‘development’ influence how problems are perceived, or diagnosed, and which solutions are favoured. Ultimately, this means that we need to be modest about what we can achieve and remain critical of the implications of our projects and the programme as a whole. It also means that our approach should be inclusive, and our partnerships diverse to redress colonial legacies and challenge persistent hierarchies in the water sector.
Embracing diversity in diversity
Session speakers noted that the topic of diversity and inclusion, though increasingly seen as important values in programmes like ours, often is differently understood and remains controversial. This can cause anxiety among water professionals and within our project teams, and points to the need for more dialogue about the intrinsic value of diversity, beyond donor requirements. Fostering diversity is hard work and a highly political endeavour, yet it is essential for rectifying historical injustices and achieving more sustainable outcomes.
For us, this means that besides offering women and people of colour the leadership roles they deserve in our projects, we need to facilitate more conversations about diversity, privilege and solidarity. We need to be more active allies for those confronted with prejudices. We must persist in investing in research and education on the significance of diversity in addressing water issues and in ensuring that marginalised voices are genuinely included and valued.
Creating meaningful impacts
Participants shared that they struggle with capturing and reporting the impacts of projects over time, and with sustaining these impacts beyond the project’s end. We face the same struggle when coordinating the programme. Short-term funding and output-based impacts brings a risk that programmes like ours primarily focus on easily deliverable and quantifiable outcomes, such as the number of published journal papers or people trained – a focus that often disproportionately benefits those already privileged. However, such numbers say little about whether the project addressed actual water challenges.
At the same time, development projects often result in multiple spin-offs, new connections and alliances among different actors who continue their efforts beyond the platforms provided by the initial project. How can such outcomes be reported and valued in monitoring and evaluation? We need a better understanding of how meaningful impacts can be achieved and exploration of more creative ways to make visible outcomes that are incremental and not straightforward.
Finding pragmatic ways
Symposium participants conveyed that upscaling their projects to larger areas of higher administrative levels do not necessarily lead to larger impacts, as smaller-scale efforts are often more context-sensitive and better integrated into existing local water strategies. This is especially relevant in countries that face violence or war – such as the programme focus countries of Sudan, Mali, Iraq and Palestine. Violent circumstances require that we collaborate closely with our partners and build on existing initiatives to find pragmatic ways to continue our joint work.
A speaker candidly reflected that in view of such realities, there is a need to accept that some worthwhile activities may never be financially sustainable. In particular, maintaining relationships and sharing knowledge are highly valuable for collective learning how to best address the complex and constantly changing water issues – but they are not easily translated into concrete outputs and often depend on external funding.
Blurring boundaries
A hopeful observation in one of the symposium sessions was the increased collaborations between scientists, journalists and civil society movements on water issues. Advocacy efforts towards policymakers are more effective when these groups work together and learn from each other. There is no need to fear blurring the boundaries between science and activism: Most of us are activists in the sense that we have our hopes and ideologies—for a cleaner, fairer and more peaceful world, even if in our own unique ways.
The inputs and feedback offered during the symposium will help us strengthen the programme. We strive to continue creating space for reflection and joint learning – including at the next programme symposium, to be held in November 2024.
Watch the recordings of the symposium sessions:
Day 1
Session 2 and session insights
Day 2
Session 2 and session insights
Day 3