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Transcript of Innovation platforms, power, representation and participation: Lessons from Blue Nile Basin,...
Innovation platforms, Power, Innovation platforms, Power, Representation & Participation: Representation & Participation:
Lessons from Blue Nile Basin, EthiopiaLessons from Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia
Beth Cullen, Josephine Tucker, Katherine Snyder, Zelalem Lema, Alan Duncan
New Models of Innovation for DevelopmentUniversity of Manchester
4 July 2013
Research focus
• Paper focuses on manifestations of power within Innovation Platforms (IPs) for natural resource management (NRM) in Ethiopia
• We analyse relationships between actors and the impact that these dynamics have on NRM interventions piloted by the platforms.
• Framed within Ethiopian context to assess the effectiveness of IPs in a politically restrictive environment
• Contribute to understanding of power dynamics in Innovation Platform processes
• Provide analysis and critique of the use of IPs for ‘pro-poor innovation’
• Demonstrate implications for platform implementation, impact, scaling up and policy
Research Aims
Outline• Research design and methods
• Ethiopian context
• NBDC overview: Why Innovation platforms?
• IP’s, Power & Representation:
- Membership & interactions between stakeholders
- Decision making and implementation
- Role of ‘innovation brokers’
- Concepts of participation
- Implications for future work
• Reflections
• Conclusion
• R4D project, Ethiopian highlands, 3 study sites
• Based on work from 2010 to present
• Paper synthesizes lessons from initial phase of platform operation
• Qualitative research: focus group discussions, participatory community engagement exercises, meeting minutes, researcher observations, key informant interviews, independent review of platforms
Research design & methods
Context: Context: The Ethiopian HighlandsThe Ethiopian Highlands
• Densely populatedDensely populated
• High levels of poverty and food insecurityHigh levels of poverty and food insecurity
• Expanding cultivationExpanding cultivation
• Rapid land degradationRapid land degradation
NRM InterventionsNRM Interventions
• Top-down quota-driven approachTop-down quota-driven approach
• Focus on technical interventionsFocus on technical interventions
• Lack of cross-sector collaboration & Lack of cross-sector collaboration & coordinationcoordination
• Insufficient focus on productivity & livelihoods Insufficient focus on productivity & livelihoods
• Poor incentives for adopting/maintaining Poor incentives for adopting/maintaining interventionsinterventions
• Lack of community participation Lack of community participation
Destruction by farmers of interventions
NBDC Overview
• Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) Program aims to improve the resilience of rural livelihoods in the Ethiopian highlands through a landscape approach to natural resource management.
• Hypothesis: development of integrated strategies which consider technologies, policies and institutions identified by a range of stakeholders will lead to improved NRM, providing alternative approaches to top-down implementation.
Or...
Why Innovation Platforms?
Areas of innovation
• Addressing NRM challenges requires innovation in institutions that structure interactions between resource users
• NBDC IP’s intended to prompt innovation in:
• Joint identification of issues and interventions
• Improved linkages between actors
• Increased community participation
• Co-design of interventions tailored to local contexts
• Innovation platforms: ‘equitable dynamic spaces designed to bring together stakeholders from different interest groups to take action to solve a common problem’
• In theory, platform members are equal and can articulate their needs. In practice, that may be far from the case...
• NRM planning and implementation in Ethiopia is a ‘closed’ or at best ‘invited’ space
• How equitable can platforms be in such a context?
IP’s, Power & Representation
This is what we will do!
Er…
Well, but… Not really…
Platforms dominated by government actors
Credit: Alfred Ombati
Platform membership & representation
• Government influence in the selection of IP members, particularly ‘community representatives’
• Significant for NRM activities because communities are the main implementers of NRM interventions
• Example of ‘false homogenization’ (farmer diversity not represented), difficult for facilitators to address
Interactions between stakeholders
• Community members not free to express alternative views
• Farmer knowledge not equally valued
• Hierarchical interactions firmly entrenched: significant barrier to innovation
• Initial attempts by facilitators to address unequal dynamics was met with resistance
• Project sought to provoke joint learning through active engagement
Decision-making
• Starting point: identification of commonly agreed upon NRM issue/entry point for interventions
• Different priorities between farmers and decision makers: short term vs. long term, livelihoods vs. NRM
• Fodder interventions chosen in all 3 sites- coincidence? Influenced by project & government agendas?
• Facilitators played important mediating role
Implementation
• Farmers seen as ‘implementers’, lack of genuine involvement
• Different levels of engagement (and understanding) between different actors- reflecting existing interactions
• Community members perceived platform activities as another ‘arm of government’
• In some sites community members destroyed/abandoned activities: ‘weapons of the weak’
• Highlights importance of community participation: evidence of the need for a ‘bottom-up approach’
‘Innovation brokers’
• Innovation brokers (Klerkx 2009) important, but dilemmas about ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ brokers:
- Outsiders: overview of context and challenges but define research/project objectives so powerful actors, problems of trust/partnership
- Insiders: limited understanding of innovation concepts, part of existing power structure which leads to limitations (e.g. NGOs)
• NBDC started with ‘outsider’ facilitators and gradually devolved responsibility to ‘insiders’, not an easy process
• Should platform facilitators play a neutral role or try to empower marginalized members?
• ‘Dialogue’ versus ‘critical’ vision of power (Faysse 2006)
• Attempts to empower community members (Participatory Video) had limited success- IP members took a ‘business as usual approach’
Why?
Role of facilitators
Concepts of participation
• Different understandings between platform members and researchers about ‘participation’
• Is lack of capacity and resources the main issue?
• Capacity building events organised with limited success
• Hierarchical social and political environment seems not to support ‘error-embracing participatory approaches’
• Lower level government officials & farmers equally constrained by this context
• Limited attention to constraints faced by lower level decision makers
• Poorly designed incentives & structural problems: requires influence at higher level
• Local platforms can help make these dynamics visible but unlikely to change them: could ‘nested platforms’ be successful?
• NBDC project needs to demonstrate how local level lessons can help achieve national objectives
Implications for future work
Reflections
• Too early to draw conclusions about impact: a problem for innovation processes!
• Some changes in knowledge, attitudes and practice among IP members but may not lead to wide-scale change
• Continuous engagement and capacity building of local actors important for longer term success
• Engagement with higher level decision makers critical but depends on political will
Conclusion
• Failure to resolve power and representation issues within IPs may affect:
- Priority given to issues, - Selection of entry points, - Design of interventions, - Adoption of interventions
• If some members’ voices are ignored – or if some groups are not represented at all – they may start to disengage from or resist interventions
• Danger that IPs give illusion of increased participation whilst replicating and masking existing power dynamics
• If issues of power and representation are not considered IPs may aggravate poverty and environmental decline rather than provide innovative solutions
Implications
Questions?