 Stakeholders’ perceptions of water dynamics and collective learning at catchment scale. | | Water management problems tend to be complex and take place in rapidly changing and uncertain realities. A growing number of stakeholders are involved with own interest and perceptions of the problem at stake. Their points of view are legitimate and need to be incorporated through mediation and negotiation. The approach needs to reconcile ecological and social dynamics, improve collective learning, coordination mechanisms, and stakeholders’ capacity for adaptive management. |  | | How to model and integrate different stakeholders’ perceptions for collective action? | | A common ComMod approach and methodological framework | 
Main phases of an iterative  process.
| Companion Modeling is an interactive process facilitated by evolutionary models used as mediating tools to support dialogue, shared learning & collective decision-making. The modeling and simulation activities are driven by end users interest. Stakeholders (incl. researchers) learn together by creating, modifying, observing and assessing simulations. Knowledge, perceptions, behavior, and practices evolve along the process and can lead to collective action plans and better community mobilization to implement them. ComMod uses conceptual models, role-playing games, and agent-based simulators in an iterative way to represent how competing water use processes could be coordinated and to search for acceptable collective solutions through scenario assessment. | | Achievements and outcomes at nine diverse sites. | ComMod processes were implemented in different agro-ecological zones and socio-cultural contexts to examine diverse water management problems leading to a variety of key outcomes.
|  Key findings and lessons learnt | - This collaborative modeling approach can be used to better understand a water management complex system, or to facilitate collective decision-making in multi-stakeholders platforms. Depending on process dynamics, ComMod processes create diverse individual and collective effects on stakeholders: knowledge acquisition and exchange, changes in own and others
perceptions, behavior, decision-making and practices, engagement and community mobilization, etc. - Role-playing games are taken seriously and meet stakeholders’ interest. Agent-based models are more efficient to simulate scenarios and allow stakeholders to explore prospective futures collectively. ABMs are also useful to communicate simulation results to larger groups. - ComMod works better when a supporting community-based resource management policy is in place. The management of social inequalities, power relations and linkages with institutions at higher levels of organization are crucial, especially for up-scaling ComMod. For more information on the project:
- Full project document (pdf file )
- PN25 project posters: Nairobi 2003 , IFWF2 Addid Ababa 2008 (pdf file )
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Updated ( 30 October 2009 )
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