An Analysis of the Challenges Faced by Multi- stakeholder ...

Troubles on the Way: An Analysis of the Challenges Faced by Multi-

stakeholder Platforms

DRAFT – do not disseminate

Nicolas Faysse

ABSTRACT

Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) have been widely promoted as a negotiation tool in

resolving conflicts, first in developed countries and more recently as a global good

practice. However, many MSPs have been implemented in an unfavourable context –

primarily of social inequities – and did not meet the initial high expectations. Five

challenges that place MSPs in an unfavourable context are analyzed: a) power

relationships, b) platform composition, c) stakeholder representation and capacity to

participate meaningfully in the debates, d) decision-making power and mechanisms, and

finally e) the costs of setting up an MSP. The analysis is based on two case studies of

MSPs set up in inauspicious conditions. The first studied water user associations in South

Africa, and the second studied a negotiation platform set up to resolve conflicts over a

water and sanitation project in Bolivia. It is argued that MSPs should be seen less as an

ideal communication process, and more as an always imperfect negotiation process, whose

positive outcomes may outweigh the negative ones if the abovementioned challenges are

adequately taken into account.

INTRODUCTION

Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) are fashionable these days. An MSP is any discussion

and negotiation process where the stakeholders involved in a problem or a specific issue come

together to look for solutions. This paper looks particularly at natural resource management

MSPs which, according to Steins and Edwards (1999), are processes in which stakeholders: i)

work collectively towards an understanding of the resource base; ii) cooperate in solving

social dilemmas associated with collective resource use; and iii) undertake joint actions with

respect to the perceived problems. These MSPs are characterized by the diversity of the

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stakeholders coming to the platform, e.g., resource users, national or local government

representatives, NGOs and academics. They encompass such different processes as a

catchment management committee, a roundtable to discuss forest management problems, or

an international conference on landmine use (Hemmati, 2002).

MSPs have been motivated largely by the progressive promotion of ‘participatory

democracy’ to complement the limits of more traditional ‘representative democracy’. This

shift is illustrated by the more and more common call for public debate before any large-scale

infrastructure project, especially in Europe.

Use of MSPs has also been progressively institutionalized. For instance, the Dublin

Statement on Water and Sustainable Development asserted that users should be incorporated

in decision-making (1992: Principle 2). Later, this idea was formalized by the European

Union in the European Water Framework Directive (2000: Consideration 14), which also calls

for public participation in water resource management decision-making. Moreover, countries

as diverse as Brazil, France, Mexico, South Africa and Zimbabwe have clearly enshrined

participation of stakeholders in the decision-making for water resource management (Brazil,

1997; France, 1992; Mexico, 1992; South Africa, 1998; Zimbabwe, 1998). At international

level, the World Commission on Dams has been another emblematic figure in this new form

of dialogue. MSPs have mainly been initiated in developed countries, and have been

increasingly exported as an example of ‘good governance’ for developing countries, for

instance, in the cases of the Water Acts of South Africa and Zimbabwe (South Africa, 1998;

Zimbabwe, 1998).

Many countries provide an enabling environment for successful MSPs, based mainly on

well-organized stakeholder groups, few power imbalances, and a state that fully supports

MSP processes and outcomes. For instance, groundwater overuse was negotiated in California

through MSPs, and the results were largely successful (Blomquist, 1992). However, many

documented MSPs set up in unfavourable circumstances have fallen short of expectations,

with large differences between theory and results on the ground (Castellanet, 1999; Edmunds

and Wollenberg, 2001; Hirsh and Wyatt, 2004; Manzungu, 2002; Moreyra and Warner,

2004).

It is in this context that the present document analyzes the main challenges faced by MSPs

set up in unfavourable circumstances. These can be defined as: i) high social inequities; ii) a

state that is either too strong or too weak to support MSP negotiation processes; iii)

disorganized stakeholder groups; and iv) lack of the financial and technical capacities to

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implement MSPs. This paper reflects on the practicalities of implemented MSPs and

highlights the stumbling blocks to setting them up.

The ideas developed here may be of interest for academics who want to study the issues of

implementing MSPs, for practitioners trying to design an MSP, or for those supporting

specific stakeholder groups’ participation in existing MSPs. However, this paper does not

propose how to organize MSPs (for this, see for example Hemmati, 2002; Susskind and

Cruikshank, 1987).

MSPs are generally used as a means of calling various stakeholder groups together for two

main reasons: to discuss the management of common pool resources or to discuss a specific

investment project. The focus of this article is mostly on water-related MSPs, though the

analysis is deemed to be valid for any kind of MSP. Special attention will be given to two

MSPs that were investigated by the author: first, permanent MSPs for water resource

management in South Africa, and second, a short-term MSP to resolve conflict over a

drinking water and sanitation project in Bolivia. Though permanent and short-term MSPs are

very different in terms of practical implementation issues, they both face the same challenges.

Five challenges

Of the many issues that revolve around MSP design and implementation, five have been

selected here, based on their importance in the two baseline case studies: i) power

relationships within the MSP; ii) choosing the composition of the MSP and its effect on

invited stakeholders’ decision to participate; iii) stakeholder representation and capacity to

participate meaningfully in debates; iv) the decision-making powers and mechanisms of the

MSP; and finally v) the costs of setting up an MSP. All these issues are specific to MSP

processes, except for the issue of representation.

MSP enthusiasts often disregard these issues. For instance, MSP analysts such as

Hemmati (2002) deemed the five above-named challenges to be side issues that merely

needed to be considered some time during the process. In the same way, in South Africa and

Zimbabwe, the two challenges of achieving genuine inclusion of stakeholders and of

balancing power relationships were not given real consideration when their Water Acts were

written. It was thought important to get the process going first and that these side issues

would be resolved on the way. The main argument of this paper is that it is important to face

these five challenges, and that facing them is even key to the success of any MSP process

where there are asymmetries of power. One could obviously outline other important issues;

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for instance, how to find the resources to ensure continued functioning of a permanent MSP,

or the legitimacy and neutrality of the possible external facilitator. However, it is these five

issues particularly that should not be brushed aside for consideration later, once the MSP is

functioning.

The paper first presents the origin and key characteristics of MSPs, followed by a brief

description of the two baseline case studies whose experiences will be used throughout the

paper. Then, each of the five challenges is discussed in detail. A final section presents the

general outcomes of the two baseline MSPs studied, and discusses whether they were

eventually worth the trouble of holding them.

MSPS: ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS

Though MSPs can be very different from each other, the generic objective of an MSP can be

defined as: To enable the empowered and active participation of stakeholders in the search for

solutions to a common problem. This empowered and active participation refers to the highest

rungs of the ladder of participation defined by Arnstein (1969). MSPs are based on the

identification of stakeholders, whether groups or persons. Indeed, frameworks for public

participation have been progressively influenced by the idea of what has been termed ‘a

society of stakeholders’ (Warner, in press). Stakeholders are ‘those who have an interest in a

particular decision, either as individuals or representatives of a group. This includes people

who influence a decision, or can influence it, as well as those affected by it’ (Hemmati, 2002:

2). The word has been given growing emphasis in the 90s, and is now completely unavoidable

in any discussion on natural resource management (Grimble and Wellard, 1997).

There are two main expectations behind setting up MSPs. First, MSPs are expected to lead

to better decisions that are better accepted than the decisions resulting from state-led

processes. A second expectation of MSPs is that they lead to better and more acceptable

decisions than those arising from to one-to-one negotiations.

MSPs are preferred over state-led processes because MSPs came from a general change of

paradigm. To explain this change of paradigm very simplistically, in the 60s the state was

generally considered to be the most able body to organize decisions and lead projects. In the

field of natural resources management, this went together with a mistrust of community-based

management (Hardin, 1968). Later, when it appeared that the state could not make efficient

decisions and implement them alone, ‘participation’ and ‘decentralization’ became buzz

words. A new paradigm appeared, which could be summarized in the two following


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assertions: i) stakeholders always have more information than a central authority, and they

tend to be more interested in achieving a satisfactory solution; and ii) stakeholders are more

likely to accept a project or a solution to a problem if they have been part of the decision-

making process. Participatory approaches to solving problems have been used for some time

now, as shown by the large body of literature on alternative conflict resolution (e.g., Susskind

and Cruikshank, 1987).

MSPs are preferred over one-to-one negotiations because an MSP is primarily an ‘open

space’ where several stakeholders exchange ideas and negotiate. In that sense, an MSP is just

a step in the negotiation process: Stakeholders will negotiate before and after the MSP, but

also in parallel, outside it. These side negotiations can be formal or informal, between two

stakeholders or more, and even possibly in another parallel MSP. Therefore, analysis of what

takes place during the MSP should not be considered sufficient to understand the complete

negotiation process.

MSPs can be permanent or of limited duration: Permanent MSPs are often set up to

manage natural resources and are frequently legalized; short-term MSPs are usually set up to

manage or prevent a conflict. They all have three important characteristics. First, MSPs are

processes in which well-defined stakeholders are invited to participate (A forum for public

debate, where everybody is entitled to come, whether he has a stake or not, is not considered

an MSP). Second, stakeholders are usually too numerous for them all to participate in the

platform so they form groups, which designate representatives to the MSP; this leads to

specific representation problems that will be analyzed hereafter. Third, MSPs are considered

here as processes where discussions are scheduled to be linked in some way to decision and

action.

Indeed, the five challenges presented are predominantly for an MSP linked to decision-

making; they are of much less importance for a forum where no decisions are to be taken.

Therefore, a process that aims just at informing stakeholders about a given issue, or giving

policy recommendations with no recognition from the authorities, will not be termed an MSP.

The processes considered here as MSPs are processes: i) that have decision-making power

formally acknowledged by authorities; ii) whose participants are officially recognized as a

consultative group, i.e., the authorities are required to officially receive and review their

recommendations, though they are not bound to abide by them; or iii) whose participants will

themselves implement decisions taken during the MSP.

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TWO BASELINE CASE STUDIES

This paper will mainly refer to two case studies in which the author participated. The

complete studies are published in Faysse (2004b), Faysse and Gumbo (2004), Faysse et al. (in

press), and Seshoka et al. (2004). The two examples are very different, but both are MSPs and

they share many common core issues.

The first baseline case study deals with the new water resource management organizations

in South Africa, where a new Water Act was passed in 1998, mainly to address problems

inherited from the previous discriminatory regime. The Act scheduled the creation of

Catchment Management Agencies and, at local level, Water User Associations (WUAs). Both

organizations are a point of encounter for Black and White water users. A two-year research

study was carried out on the results of including Black users in the new WUAs, created from

Irrigation Boards, which previously had only White members.

The second baseline case study was a short-term MSP to solve a conflict over a water and

sanitation project in a periurban area of Cochabamba, Bolivia. In 2001, because of a very fast

urbanization process, the Tiquipaya and Colcapirhua Municipal Government decided to

design an inter-communal water and sanitation project called MACOTI. However, the local

communities soon became deeply divided between opponents and supporters of the project. In

2004, the Vice-Minister of Basic Services, looking for a negotiated solution of the conflict,

proposed to organize a Technical Roundtable (Mesa Técnica in Spanish) in Tiquipaya to

undertake an in-depth review of the project and negotiate an agreement. The Negowat

research project was at that time working on methodologies for negotiating water access and

land use in the Tiquipaya area, and the Negowat research team (to which the author belonged)

offered its help in organizing the Technical Roundtable. This was accepted by the Vice-

Ministry, the Tiquipaya Municipality, and various social organizations of Tiquipaya, and the

roundtable eventually took place during the whole second semester of 2004.

Apart from these two baseline case studies, the analysis will be enriched from the

experiences of other MSPs documented in Argentina (Moreyra and Warner, 2004), Brazil

(Castellanet, 1999), South Africa (Warner and Simpungwe, 2004), Vietnam (Hirsh and Wyatt,

2004) and Zimbabwe (Kujinga and Manzungu, 2004; Manzungu, 2002).


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CHALLENGES FACED BY MSPS

When setting up an MSP, it is important to consider power relationships, the composition of

the platform, stakeholder representation and capacity to participate meaningfully, decision-

making powers and mechanisms, and the costs of an MSP.

Power relationships

MSPs as places of encounter and of power struggle

There is an on-going debate between those who have a ‘power relationship vision’ and those

who have a ‘dialogue vision’ of how MSPs work. The main conceptual basis for the dialogue

vision of those who formalized MSPs (Steins and Edwards, 1999) is the ‘communicative

rationality’ defined by Habermas (1995). According to this approach, the main obstacles to

open and fruitful discussion and negotiation stem from a lack of good communication. Once

this barrier is removed, it is possible to build a common vision and to achieve a solution that

is better for everybody (a win win solution). In that way, according to Hemmati (2002),

democracy, equity, justice, transparency and consensus building are key values for MSPs.

Sultana and Thompson (2004) contend that consensus can always be reached if the MSP is

designed so as to address equity problems actively. The main prerequisites for this dialogue

vision are that: i) stakeholders accept the interdependencies linking them; ii) they are willing

to communicate and learn from each other; iii) they are willing to actively tackle the discussed

problems; and iv) each participant is interested in reaching a negotiated agreement. Usually,

the more informal the MSP, the more important it is to meet these prerequisites. Recent

concepts (e.g., social learning, Maarleveld and Dangbégnon, 1999), methods (e.g., the

patrimonial approach, Ollagnon, 1989), and projects (e.g., the European Union research

project on water resource management, HarmoniCOP 2003) are built on a dialogue vision of

MSPs. This vision is enshrined in laws such as the Water Acts of Brazil (1997), France

(1992), Mexico (1992), South Africa (1998) and Zimbabwe (1998).

On the other hand, according to the advocates of the power relationship vision, an MSP is

mainly a place where power relationships are expressed. These power relationships cannot be

completely annihilated and they always determine negotiated agreements (Crespo, 2005;

Edmunds and Wollenberg, 2001; Leeuwis, 2000). Furthermore, weaker groups’ participation

in an MSP may lead to negative results for them. Indeed, they could be forced to accept an

agreement that would not benefit them because of pressure from other stakeholders, majority

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rule or lack of negotiating skills. Though they would lose from the agreement, it would still

appear as a consensus decision from the point of view of an external monitoring organization.

This was illustrated by the Lower Olifants WUA, one of the South African WUAs

studied, where a Coloured community situated downstream of a commercial farming area had

been invited to join the association with the white commercial irrigation farmers. Due to

increases in the commercial farms’ water consumption and a change in the monitoring

system, the Coloured community started receiving less water than they were entitled to. The

claims they presented at the WUA Management Committee were discounted because the

Coloured community had only one representative, who did not have the technical information

to prove his point. Because of this, the representative of the Coloured community stopped

participating in the WUA Management Committee. The Ministry of Water Affairs tended to

judge his departure as illegitimate, and this weakened the Coloured community’s position

when it eventually claimed the fulfilment of its rights from the Ministry of Water Affairs.

As pointed out by Edmunds and Wollenberg (2001: 245) ‘by linking decision to inclusion

of all stakeholders, people or groups that refuse to participate can be left with no legitimate

place from which to criticize the outcomes’. Moreover, in spite of the communication ideal of

MSPs, there are still differences between participants in terms of education, language skills,

lobbying power, and the costs of their participation in the MSP. During a forest management

MSP in Brazil, many participants did not talk openly for fear of reprisals from the most

powerful participants (Castellanet, 1999). Without specific intervention to limit their

differences, the MSP may eventually be run by the most powerful groups (Edmunds and

Wollenberg, 2001).

The advocates of the power relationship vision criticize the dialogue vision approach.

They contend that the latter shows a propensity to overlook the importance of the power

relationships taking place in multi-stakeholder platforms. They maintain that the word

‘platform’ itself tends, wrongly, to imply a level playing field. Moreover, the supporters of the

power relationship vision argue that the other group sees conflicts as a pathology, which

entails that weaker groups, refusing to enter an MSP because they fear they will not be able to

negotiate on a level field, will lose the legitimacy of expressing their opinions. One of the

reasons for underestimating the importance of power relationships is that power distribution is

much more even in the countries where MSP approaches were designed, i.e., Europe and

North America. Social and economic inequalities are far greater in many developing

countries, and this is sometimes disregarded when international cooperation agencies advise

MSP-type decision-making (e.g., about water reforms in South Africa and Zimbabwe).


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For the advocates of the power relationship vision, it is better to build alliances among

specific groups than to insist that all stakeholders come to an agreement. Weaker groups

should be allowed to pursue other strategies besides negotiation, or to refuse to enter into

negotiations they think will be based on too large a difference in negotiating power (Edmunds

and Wollenberg, 2001). Moreyra and Warner (2004) report an MSP in Argentina where a

disadvantaged indigenous community that decided not to participate in the MSP eventually

obtained more than a similar community that did participate. Advocates of the power

relationship vision also believe that the playing field should be levelled as much as possible,

by capacitating and empowering the weaker groups before they enter into the negotiation.

This means that a facilitator supporting weaker groups in their negotiation should not try to be

accepted as a neutral broker, but must clearly identify and choose allies (Castellanet, 1999;

Crespo, 2005).

These two visions are both important in analyzing MSPs. However, both of them fail to

capture the nature of a negotiation. In the dialogue vision, the winning argument is the one

that is rationally the best whereas, in the power relationship vision (also called the ‘conflict

vision’), the solution is imposed by the most powerful group. If either of these visions is taken

to the extreme, it should be possible to predetermine the result of negotiations, based on a

careful analysis of context and stakeholders. However, in the large majority of the situations,

the results of negotiations are unpredictable, which means that these views are both

incomplete (Warner, pers. comm.). It is more useful to see them as complementary. The

context determines where the balance between the two visions should be reached: The more

unequal the participants are, the more power relationships should be given importance. Often,

the outcome of the negotiation is not the preferred solution of any of the participants, but is

one of the solutions that each participant is ready to agree to at the end of the negotiation. The

set of solutions a participant may accept will often have been modified during the process of

exchange and negotiation with other parties: In that sense, social learning and negotiation

should be taken together (Leeuwis and Van den Ban, 2004, quoted by Leach and Wallwork,

2003).

In the case of the Technical Roundtable in Bolivia, the power issue was not expressed in

terms of participants imposing their opinions. During the discussion of the roundtable

methodology (which lasted more than a month), the conflict was seen as local: Only the Vice-

Ministry of Basic Services was scheduled as a permanent non-local participant. Amongst

local participants, against all predictions, the Technical Roundtable went according to the

dialogue vision. The two opposing groups, i.e., opponents and supporters of the MACOTI

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project, were represented approximately equally and neither dominated the debate. Moreover,

decisions were made by way of consensus. During the course of the Technical Roundtable,

the atmosphere became progressively more peaceful, and participants that were clearly on

opposite sides during the first meetings eventually worked together in a spirit of cooperation,

particularly to define the institutional model. However, power was expressed in terms of other

key stakeholders managing to stay out of the discussion (see below).

Opportunities for capacity-building

Weaker groups’ participation in highly heterogeneous MSPs can be a risk for them, as

Edmunds and Wollenberg (2001) argued, but it is also an opportunity for capacity building.

The latter authors give several examples of short-term MSPs, where there was no room for

capacity building and where weaker groups were forced to accept agreements contrary to their

interests. However, when the MSP deals with the long-term management of a natural

resource, the general balance is not always clear-cut. For instance, the South African WUAs

are permanent local water management organizations, where the government has neither the

capacity nor the willingness to take over the control of the WUAs. In six of the eight WUAs

studied, the long-term advantages of capacity building outweighed the small risks of being

forced to accept the results of an unequal negotiation (Faysse, 2004b). The capacity-building

component was actually the main reason for attending the meetings, according to Black

farmers of the Lomati and Letaba WUAs.

The WUA may undertake capacity building itself: For instance, in the Komati Irrigation

Board, where a large number of Black irrigation farmers occupy the entire length of one bank

of the river, real capacity-building efforts are made, both during and outside the management

committee meetings. However, capacity building may be limited if there is no outside

intervention. In the Great Letaba and Lower Olifants WUAs, the Black farmers did not learn

the key information they needed to defend their water rights (Faysse, 2004b). In the Letaba

WUA, Black water users were not paid much attention during the management committee

discussions and, for important decisions, language naturally swapped from English to

Afrikaans, a language not completely mastered by the local Black farmers.

Taking the above into consideration, should the playing field be levelled before granting

decision-making power to a user-based MSP, or should the MSP be set up quickly, leaving

the power difference to be sorted out on the way? Interestingly, the South African government

chose the first strategy for the large-scale Catchment Management Agencies, while adopting

the second for the smaller Water User Associations.


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The composition of the platform

Three issues necessarily emerge during the design of an MSP: i) who defines the list of

persons who have a stake in the problem; ii) which stakeholders should be invited and what

are the legitimate organizations to represent them; and iii) how to make sure that the

stakeholders identified for participation in the MSP will be interested in coming.

Who defines the stakeholders?

The definition of who the stakeholders are is seldom self-evident because it depends on the

issue addressed. Moreover, some stakeholders, e.g., women water users, may not be

specifically represented and their interest may be merged in a general ‘local community’

representation. It is important also to care about who defines the relevant participants in the

MSP. During the Technical Roundtable in Bolivia, the organizations formally representing

the local communities, named OTBs (Organizaciones Territorial de Base), did not want the

irrigation farmer association to be present at the MSP, as they argued that the OTB

represented all the stakeholders in its jurisdiction, including irrigation farmers. Eventually,

they capitulated, after the Mayor’s insistence on adopting an open-minded stance. Indeed,

solving a conflict by associating stakeholder participation with classical representative

democracy was a relatively new idea in the Tiquipaya Municipal Area. Many Technical

Roundtable participants stated later that this was the first process of this kind in the

Municipality.

Which stakeholders should be invited?

It is not always relevant to bring all stakeholders to the MSP because of the possible

consequences of power imbalances, as discussed in the previous section. This point is proved

by the experiences of two MSPs in Brazil, set up to tackle forest management in the

Amazonian region. The first MSP failed mainly because the local elite who participated

managed to indirectly control the results of the sessions. The second MSP was organized to

include only the weaker groups and state representatives, and the local elite were not invited,

which yielded much better results (Castellanet, 1999).

The composition of the MSP is not always fixed once for all: In the case of the Technical

Roundtable, after lengthy discussions to define the ‘official’ MSP composition before the first

session, it was decided during the second two-day session that anybody could participate as

long as he would contribute positively to the debate.

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How can stakeholders be interested?

In some cases, stakeholders that are judged relevant participants in the MSP may not be

initially interested. For example, many South African WUAs fail to get municipalities or

upstream forestry companies on board because the latter see no advantage in being part of

these new organizations (Faysse, 2004c). This tends to be more common for consultative

MSPs that have weak links with the decision-making process, than for MSPs that are

officially given decision-making responsibilities. Many strategies have been used to address

this problem, e.g., giving formal decision-making power to the MSP or, in a typical

negotiation theory approach, broadening the scope of negotiated elements so that all invited

stakeholders may find something interesting for them in the negotiation. For instance, in the

Mlazi Catchment area in South Africa, upstream rural communities created erosion problems,

impacting on water quality and affecting commercial farmers downstream (Faysse and

Gumbo, 2004). The rural communities eventually agreed to participate in a local forum

because anti-erosion projects brought them employment.

In Bolivia, all local communities and drinking water user associations could attend the

Technical Roundtable and none of the stakeholder groups were discouraged from attending.

However, some key stakeholders decided not to participate actively. The participation of the

Municipality was weak and the constructing and supervising companies were only briefly

present – the technical side of the project was not so important then, since at that time nobody

had complained much about the technical design. The CEO of the credit bank came to a

session, but explained that the high interest the bank charged was fixed by law and, since

nobody had the technical knowledge to contest his claim, the debate on the topic was closed.

All these stakeholders could stay out of the MSP, since it had been decided that the Technical

Roundtable would not delay the beginning of the works, and all contracts between the

Municipality, the construction and supervision companies and the credit bank were already

signed. In these stakeholders’ opinions, the Technical Roundtable participants had limited

scope for changing the project.

MSPs can be designed from the bottom up or from the top down. Usually, the bottom-up

ones achieve stakeholder involvement but struggle to get state recognition. On the other hand,

top-down MSPs are backed by the state but may find it difficult to obtain real involvement of

all stakeholders (Warner and Simpungwe, 2004).


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Stakeholder representation and capacity to participate meaningfully

Real participation is more than a mere headcount (Manzungu, 2002). Though stakeholder

groups may have one or several seats at the MSP, they may not be able to participate

meaningfully. There can be three reasons for this: i) lack of capacity of the group to nominate

a representative and ask for feedback; ii) lack of financial means to participate in the

meetings; and iii) lack of technical knowledge of representatives to participate meaningfully

in the MSP discussions (Faysse, 2004b; Kujinga and Manzungu, 2004).

Representatives and feedback

The problem of representation within a stakeholder group is not limited to MSPs: It has been

studied in general for participatory processes (e.g., Edmunds and Wollenberg, 2001;

Wollenberg and Uluk, 2004). Though this problem is of key importance for the success of

MSPs, it was granted little attention during the design of the new South African water

resource management organizations.

Lack of stakeholder group organization is often a reason for poor representation. In the

Great Letaba WUA, though a seat at the WUA Management Committee is formally reserved

for farm workers, the latter are not organized enough to mandate a representative to the

Management Committee (Seshoka et al., 2004). Even more difficult is the nomination of

Black water user representatives to the Governing Board of the Inkomati Catchment

Management Agency, given that Black water users throughout the basin are almost

completely unorganized, in an area of more than 30,000 square kilometres.

Lack of communication within stakeholder groups is another reason for poor

representation. This occurs when the link between the constituencies and their representatives

during the MSP process is unsatisfactory. It can be top-down, if the representative does not

give feedback about what took place during the MSP sessions, or bottom-up, if the

representative does not listen to the opinions expressed by the constituency. In Bolivia, during

the Technical Roundtable, the MSP failed to reach grassroots stakeholders because many

representatives of local communities and drinking water user associations did not

communicate about their participation in the Technical Roundtable, nor did they listen to the

opinion of their constituencies on the issue.

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Lack of financial means

The lack of financial means to participate in the MSP meetings is significant in Zimbabwe,

where transportation costs are a major problem for emerging farmers who want to participate

in the catchment management committee meetings (Manzungu and Kujinga, 2002).

Lack of technical knowledge

MSPs are designed for deliberation, not mere participation, which means that participants

must have sufficient technical knowledge to enter into this deliberation. Specific capacity

building of participants should be organized to address this. However, the level of

participants’ technical knowledge is generally overlooked. Of all the problems, this one

proved to be the most important during the Technical Roundtable. The participants had no

capacity to criticize the technical design, and they could understand the financial design only

partially. Only during the institutional design did they feel at ease and enter into in-depth

discussions and proposals. Correspondingly, the Technical Roundtable did not address the

technical topics in detail, addressed the financial topic only partially, and led to detailed

proposals for the institutional topics. In the same way, in both South Africa and Zimbabwe,

Black water user representatives do not participate actively in the discussions because of a

lack of capacity-building (Faysse, 2004b; Manzungu, 2002).

Decision-making power and mechanisms

According to Hemmati (2002), MSPs are basically set up to give ‘voices, not votes’, i.e., their

interest comes mainly from sharing opinions, not from taking decisions. However, this

analysis focuses on MSPs that are somehow linked to decision-making. MSP impact on

decision-making may be a problem, especially for short-term MSPs, whose link with the

formally established decision-making process tends to be unclear at the start of the process. In

the area of water resource management, where operation, maintenance and even planning

decisions are increasingly handed to groups of water user representatives (Faysse, 2004a), the

degree of decision-making power the MSP has impacts on the strategic behaviour of the

participants. Stakeholders may decide not to participate in an MSP whose aim is merely

sharing views, preferring to lobby authorities directly to get what they want, but they will

participate in an MSP that has official decision-making powers. In South Africa, participation

in a local catchment forum waned as participants understood that the forum did not have any

power to enforce the recommendations that had been taken (Warner and Simpungwe, 2004).


15

MSPs are about building a new form of legitimacy, where stakeholders are not only

represented by way of universal voting, but also by way of ‘corporate’ groups. This other

form of legitimacy leads to its own issues, e.g., grassroots stakeholders may not have the

same weight, depending on which group they belong to. However, the new form of

participatory democracy never aimed at overthrowing the traditional representative

democracy in the different cases studied. Therefore, the key issue becomes how to strike a

balance between the two forms of representation.

Several ways of striking this balance have been tried. At one extreme, MSPs may just

issue recommendations that the authorities are bound to formally receive and review, but with

no obligation to implement them. This scenario was initially proposed for the Technical

Roundtable. At the other extreme, authorities may be part of the MSP itself, the latter having

full decision-making power. For instance, the local Catchment Committees in France are

composed by law of 50% from local authorities, 25% from the government, and 25% from

water user representatives. The best balance depends on local conditions: Representative

democracy should not be put aside in cases of weak internal democratic procedures within

some stakeholder groups. More generally, for MSPs to be able to perform properly, the state

must not be too strong, otherwise it does not give the other stakeholders enough room to

manoeuvre. But it should not be too weak either, because then the MSP work might simply be

controlled by local elites (Castellanet, 1999).

MSPs may also be turned into a mere pretence of participation. The authorities may

formally back the process, while unconcerned about the outcomes, which generates much

frustration vis-à-vis the MSP process. This problem has been documented in several cases of

bottom-up MSPs, where local stakeholders gathered with NGO support, and their decisions

never reached the ears of administrators and decision makers (Hirsh and Wyatt, 2004; Warner

and Simpungwe, 2004).

In the case of the Technical Roundtable in Bolivia, decision-making power was a much

debated issue at first. The Negowat team initially proposed that the Technical Roundtable just

have the capacity to present proposals to the Municipal Councils of Tiquipaya and

Colcapirhua, which could accept them or refuse them. This proposal was made on the grounds

that, first, many stakeholder groups had no legal status, and the relationship between the

constituency and its representatives in these groups was weak. Second, the groups supporting

the project feared that the Technical Roundtable might lead to motions that would harm the

project, and required guarantees before agreeing to take part in the process. From the first

session onwards, the participants kept on demanding that the Tiquipaya Municipal Council

16 Nicolas Faysse

16

automatically implement the decisions they would take. The Council resisted at first, but

eventually agreed to issue a note with such a commitment. However, a new Municipal

government was elected shortly after the last Technical Roundtable session and the Municipal

team did not implement the motions approved during the roundtable, even though that team

included people who had wanted the MSP to have full decision-making powers. The Mesa

Técnica had been especially successful in building proposals for the institutional model of the

future entity in charge of running the project. However, these motions were neither

implemented nor discarded in 2005, as the project faced huge technical problems and

significant delays in its implementation phase. Because of this implementation problem,

several participants were of the opinion that the Technical Roundtable had turned out to be a

simulacrum of participation.

Decision-making mechanisms were linked to the legal status of the MSP in the cases

studied. In Bolivia, the Technical Roundtable was a short-term platform, initially with no

clear place in the legal decision-making process. Therefore, it was decided that decisions had

to be unanimous. This only partly addressed the difficulties of defining the legitimacy of the

roundtable decisions because, when a motion did not obtain unanimous support, the MSP just

did not mention the point.

South African WUAs and Catchment Management Councils in France are more

formalized MSPs, legally established and permanent, and need to take decisions about

whatever happens. Therefore, they use the majority rule (which may be defined as one vote

per person, or per hectare, etc.).

The costs of an MSP

MSPs may be costly in terms of time and money; they could also delay the decision-making

process. In Bolivia, the Mesa Técnica cost approximately US$ 10,000, including materials

and salaries. Considering the magnitude of the MACOTI sanitation project (US$ 1.7 million

for the Tiquipaya part) and all the delays and subsequent financial problems due to the

conflicts in Tiquipaya, the implementation costs of the Technical Roundtable can be judged as

acceptable (around 0,6% of the total MACOTI cost in Tiquipaya). However, public

participation was not initially scheduled as an item in the MACOTI budget, and the Tiquipaya

Municipality would have had some problems in motivating this expense to the OTBs.

Actually, the Municipality paid for the lunches during the various sessions (which amounted

to 5% of the MSP cost) but was not interested enough in the Mesa Técnica to try to pay for


17

the whole process. The Vice-Ministry of Basic Services participated actively throughout all

the process but offered no financial support. Without Negowat financial capacities, the Mesa

Técnica as initially proposed by the Vice-Minister would probably have been reduced to a

series of short and quickly organized meetings.

In South Africa, WUAs are self-sustaining, thanks to contributions from all large-scale

water users. These MSPs have their own mechanisms to ensure the financing of their

activities, which is not the case for all permanent MSPs (e.g., the Catchment Management

Committees in Zimbabwe, Kujinga and Manzungu, 2004). For the South African WUAs, the

current unresolved issue is rather how to finance genuine support and capacity building for

weaker participants.

THE TWO MSPs STUDIED … A WORTHWHILE PROCESS?

In the light of these five challenges, how should the performance of the two MSPs studied be

judged? Both the South African and the Bolivian MSPs proved to be mixes of failures and

successes so it is hard to say whether or not they were worthwhile.

In South Africa, Black users do not benefit fully from their presence in the WUA, due to a

lack of external support for specific capacity building. In two WUAs where emerging farmers

needed key knowledge to defend their water rights, being part of the WUA did not enable

them to access the information they needed and so win their case. However, these WUAs

were set up to replace existing Irrigation Boards, since the state does not have the capacity to

control water management at this level. In such a situation, capacity building and internal

organization of Black water users seem more promising solutions than recentralizing

management.

In Bolivia, a major weakness of the Technical Roundtable was that it was set up when the

project was already at the beginning of its implementation stage. This meant that decisions

like the choice of the constructing and supervision companies could not be changed.

Moreover, since many decisions were already taken, key stakeholders such as the credit bank

did not give credence to the process. However, the lack of technical changes to the project

during the roundtable came mostly from participants’ lack of technical capacity to criticize the

project. Moreover, non-implementation of the decisions taken led to frustration. As the Mayor

later told the facilitators privately: ‘The Technical Roundtable kept them busy talking, which

enabled us to start with the work.’ Finally, the Technical Roundtable did not socialize the

project beyond the representatives. However, it did manage to ease tensions around a project

18 Nicolas Faysse

18

about to lead to street conflict once again, and to move from general judgments and even

insults from local leaders to quite detailed and positive discussions on the different aspects of

the project. Organizing the Technical Roundtable was possible because the area was split

between two opposing camps of similar strength. The municipality understood that it could

not solve the conflict on its own, and accepted a public debate organized by an external

facilitator. The next year, the newly elected municipality won the elections by a large margin.

This new municipality initiated a Committee for the Social Control of the MACOTI project,

elected by the OTBs, but the Committee found itself with no support from the municipality

(which was ultimately uninterested in social control), or from the OTBs, and finally waned.

The Technical Roundtable had a facilitator but no formal recognition: A facilitator

engineered the MSP but, because of lack of clear decision-making power and support from

the authorities in implementing decisions, the MSP turned out to have limited visible impact,

which later created frustration among former participants. In South Africa, the WUAs have

formal recognition but no facilitator: They have full decision-making power, but no

practitioner intervenes to ensure that the initial objective of these MSPs (to open up the

management to Black small-scale water users) is indeed achieved. Thus, in the two examples,

it would take both formal recognition of the MSP and the presence of a facilitator to make the

process worthwhile.

CONCLUSION

MSPs were analyzed in terms of five issues: power relationships, platform composition,

stakeholder capacity to participate meaningfully in the debate, decision-making power and

mechanisms, and MSP costs. Each of these challenges may debilitate or even end an MSP

process, but there are ways to tackle each of the problems analyzed.

The same framework of analysis was used for two very different MSPs, and it appears that

they share many crucial issues. The five points reviewed are obviously necessary conditions

for the success of an MSP, but not sufficient ones. In South Africa, great efforts were made to

have genuine participation of Black water users during the set up of the Catchment

Management Agencies. However, the main problems in getting genuine inclusion did not

stem from insufficient or unempowered participation, but from the fact that the predetermined

functions of Catchment Management Agencies (dealing with externalities in water

management) did not overlap with Black users’ priorities, which were investments in

infrastructure (Faysse, 2004a).


19

The two cases of MSPs reviewed here were implemented in countries with unfavourable

conditions for MSP success. Indeed, important drawbacks and limitations became apparent in

the analysis. First, in South Africa, there is a serious danger that White water users will

continue to dominate the decision-making in WUAs, behind the appearance of smooth

communication between all water users. Second, in Bolivia, the Mesa Técnica eventually had

little decision-making power. Despite these limitations and risks, in both cases, the results of

having the MSPs can be judged as better than those of not having them at all. In the light of

these case studies, there is no absolute answer to the question of whether MSPs are adequate

tools in unfavourable conditions, especially in countries with high social inequities. However,

MSPs should be less driven and analyzed according to an ideal of perfect communication and

social learning, and more seen as a useful tool that will nevertheless always be imperfect.

In situations that are unfavourable for MSPs, external intervention is necessary to face the

challenges linked to MSP design and implementation, amongst them: power relationships, the

composition of the platform, stakeholder representation and capacity to participate

meaningfully, and the decision-making powers and mechanisms of an MSP. Many MSPs are

supported by a facilitator, whose activities may range from merely inviting stakeholders to the

sessions, to being fully engaged in organizing the negotiation themes and providing the

needed technical information to the platform. But it is still an open question whether the same

facilitator can also tackle those four challenges. Actions such as supporting weaker

stakeholder groups, or intervening in the relationship between a constituency and its

representative, might be judged by MSP participants as conflicting with a facilitating role.

Moreover, it is seldom evident to what extent it is possible to tackle these challenges, who

could do this, and at what cost. Based on this, it will be necessary to evaluate, on a case-by-

case basis, whether it would still be better to have an imperfect MSP than not to have it at all.

In South Africa, the government has the financial capacity to undertake the task of

supporting Black water users’ inclusion in water-related MSPs. It would be worthwhile to

increase inclusion of Black water users’ in WUAs: What the government lacks is knowledge

of the current problems related to Black water users’ inclusion and of adequate strategies to

tackle them. However, it may not be efficient to invest large efforts in building genuine Black

stakeholder representation at the Catchment Management Agency level, in the current context

of Catchment Management Agencies’ not meeting Black water users’ main needs. In Bolivia,

few organizations are currently able to support such an MSP on a permanent basis.

Given this analysis, important directions for future investigation are how to capacitate

MSP members to actively participate in a technical discussion, how to ensure true

20 Nicolas Faysse

20

communication between constituencies and their MSP representatives, how to strike the right

balance between the MSP and traditionally elected authorities in terms of decision-making

power, and how to build up the strength of weaker groups to level the playing field with the

stronger stakeholders as much as possible, before entering into an MSP – if it is estimated that

weaker stakeholders really have a reasonable chance of reaching an agreement that suits them.

Finding ways to tackle these issues should be pursued at the same tempo as the one with

which MSPs are developed these days, which has unfortunately not happened to date.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Both MSP case studies were the results of teamwork: with Jabulani Gumbo, Jetrick Seshoka

and Willem de Lange in South Africa, and with Raul Ampuero, Franz Quiroz, Vladimir

Cossio and Bernardo Paz in Bolivia. Jeroen Warner shared important ideas regarding the

theoretical analysis of MSPs. The text itself benefited from insightful comments from

Raphaele Ducrot, John Butterworth and Marcel Kuper. Anne Denniston undertook a detailed

final revision of the paper.


21

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