Browsing by Author "von Korff, Yorck"

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Designing Participation Processes for Water Management and Beyond
(2010) von Korff, Yorck; d'Aquino, Patrick; Daniell, Katherine A.; Bijlsma, Rianne
"This article addresses the question of how to design participation processes in water management and other fields. Despite a lot of work on participation, and especially its evaluation, this question has received little attention in the research literature. However, it is important, because previous research has made it clear that participation may yield important benefits for humans and the environment but that these benefits do not occur automatically. One precondition is sound design. The design of participation processes has been addressed in detail in the so-called 'craft' literature but more rarely in the scientific literature. This article helps close this gap by systematically analyzing and comparing five design guides to determine whether it is possible to combine them into a more robust guide. The article confirms that possibility and presents a preliminary outline for such a guide. Principles for participatory process orientation are presented, as well as numerous partially iterative steps. The adaptive process is laid out in a way intended to help designers determine the objectives of the participation process and the initial design context, and make preplanning choices that eventually lead to the selection of suitable participation mechanisms. There are also design tools that facilitate this work. We discuss how our findings are largely compatible with previous research on participation, notably the work on criteria for “good” or 'effective' participation processes. We also argue that our article advances research on an important remaining question in the scientific literature on participation: What process should be chosen in which context?"
Implementing Participatory Water Management: Recent Advances in Theory, Practice, and Evaluation
(2012) von Korff, Yorck; Daniell, Katherine A.; Moellenkamp, Sabine; Bots, Pieter W. G.; Bijlsma, Rianne
"Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called 'messes' or 'wicked problems.' The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods and processes being proposed to aid water planning and management, which include participatory forms of modeling, planning, and decision aiding processes. However, despite extensive scientific discussions, scholars have largely been unable to provide satisfactory responses to two pivotal questions: (1) What are the benefits of using participatory approaches?; (2) How exactly should these approaches be implemented in complex social-ecological settings to realize these potential benefits? In the study of developing social-ecological system sustainability, the first two questions lead to a third one that extends beyond the one-time application of participatory approaches for water management: (3) How can participatory approaches be most appropriately used to encourage transition to more sustainable ecological, social, and political regimes in different cultural and spatial contexts? The answer to this question is equally open. This special feature on participatory water management attempts to propose responses to these three questions by outlining recent advances in theory, practice, and evaluation related to the implementation of participatory water management. The feature is largely based on an extensive range of case studies that have been implemented and analyzed by cross-disciplinary research teams in collaboration with practitioners, and in a number of cases in close cooperation with policy makers and other interested parties such as farmers, fishermen, environmentalists, and the wider public."
Improving Participatory Processes through Collective Simulation: Use of a Community of Practice
(2013) Dionnet, Mathieu; Daniell, Katherine A.; Imache, Amar; von Korff, Yorck; Bouarfa, Sami; Garin, Patrice; Jamin, Jean-Yves; Rollin, Dominique; Rougier, Jean-Emmanuel
"Stakeholder and public participation in natural resources management (NRM) is now widely accepted as necessary to achieve sustainable development outcomes. Yet, effective implementation of participatory processes necessitates well-calibrated methods and tools, as well as carefully honed facilitation skills that are difficult to gain without practice. Practitioners and academics leading these processes are thus encouraged to better reflect on, prepare, and justify their interventions, before starting to work in the field with stakeholders. Our paper shows how a Simulation Community of Practice (SCoP) was set up to support improved participatory practice. The specificity of this community is that its members not only discuss planned participatory interventions, but also simulate these processes by adopting roles of future participants, and by working through the different steps of the workshop that will be later implemented in the field. The evaluation of our approach shows that individual and social learning of participants in the SCoP is developed, leading mainly to improved facilitator skills and to calibration of the participatory methods and tools being tested. A space is also provided for deepening reflection on the purposes of the participatory process and the values that guide these interventions. Our experience could provide a model for others around the world to set up their own SCoP to support participatory NRM practice. Further improvements to our SCoP and new ones could be made by enhancing the feedback mechanisms between the field sites and the community, in order to encourage more cumulative learning and to reinforce the members' interest, maintaining their involvement in the community over time."