Exploring the quality of participation in an application of the Adaptive Systemic Approach to integrated water resources management development in Rwanda

Résumé

The Adaptive Systemic Approach (ASA) is designed to enable researchers from different disciplines, with varying applied sustainability science experience, to collaborate, and to engage with landscape stakeholders, in tackling complex sustainability issues. Participation and collaboration are at the heart of the ASA, infusing all activities. Here, we use a three-dimensional participatory framework: emancipatory, instrumental, and oppressive participation with three sub-dimensions: who, why, and how participation was undertaken, to explore the quality of participation in research that applied the ASA. The ASA was developed in the Unlocking Resilient Benefits from African Water Resources Project, RESBEN, and applied in six African countries, including Rwanda. Participation in the RESBEN-Rwanda case-study is presented in a nested manner. First, we introduce the case study within the contexts of (i) the whole RESBEN project and (ii) the conceptual foundation of the ASA, noting the centrality of participation; and then contextually, (iii) within Rwandan landscape characteristics and (iv) Rwandan water resource management. This frames the nested research aims. (i) A contextual research aim: to apply the ASA to support Rwandan integrated water resources management (IWRM) in water resource protection (including biomonitoring) and developing participatory governance. (ii) A specific research aim: to interrogate the quality of participation in the ASA process, using the participatory framework. Participant contributions are categorized in terms of the framework and have content that refers to the IWRM context. The biophysical and institutional arrangements for IWRM are elaborated. Methodologically, participation is first located in the conceptual and theoretical framing of the ASA, and then in the practical ASA process. Thematic analysis of participant contributions indicated clear emancipatory intentions and participant experiences of emancipatory participation, with some instrumental constraints, and with only one clearly oppressive interaction. Stakeholder experiences of participation that included knowledge generation and co-learning, suggested potential for the Akagera River catchment to contribute to future water resource protection and participatory governance development in Rwandan IWRM. In discussion we reflect on the possibilities and limitations of using the ASA to support engaged sustainability practice and identify possible outcomes, concluding that positive claims are modest, but tangible.

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