Guidelines for equitable participation in water decision-making

Human decisions on water can have a wide effect, impacting rivers, ecosystems, economies, livelihoods, cultures and spiritual values. To make decisions more equitable, researchers and practitioners need to engage directly with the people affected and understand the norms, values and forms of knowledge surrounding water which underlie these decisions. The participation of people affected by the decisions, known as “stakeholders”, is deeply connected to power relations, and effective models are needed to understand these relations and enable meaningful participation for diverse stakeholders. 

The authors propose a pathways approach to multi-stakeholder participation that builds upon participatory action research. Once the stakeholder groups, research questions, and structures of power and knowledge in a given situation have been mapped, a pathways approach can be used to understand and visualize the diverse roles for different stakeholders toward achieving collective goals.

To illustrate the pathways approach, the authors present a set of case studies from across the globe. The four case studies present different levels of participation across diverse conditions and show that individual pathways to water decision-making can vary, united by the key question: Which pathway is best for the stakeholder group?