The document analyzes the dynamics of power and representation within innovation platforms (IPs) for natural resource management in Ethiopia, focusing on their effectiveness in a restrictive political context. It highlights that while IPs are designed to promote equitable decision-making and community participation, government influence often dominates, leading to underrepresentation of community voices. The study underscores the importance of recognizing power dynamics to enhance the effectiveness of IPs in addressing poverty and environmental challenges.

1. Innovation platforms, Power,
Representation & Participation:
Lessons from Blue Nile Basin,
Ethiopia
Beth Cullen, Josephine Tucker, Katherine Snyder,
Zelalem Lema, Alan Duncan
New M odels of Innovation for Development
University of Manchester
4 July 2013

2. 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

3. Research Aims
• 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

4. 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

5. Research design & methods
• 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

6. Context:
The Ethiopian Highlands
• Densely populated
• High levels of poverty and food
insecurity
• Expanding cultivation
• Rapid land degradation

7. NRM Interventions
• Top-down quota-driven approach
• Focus on technical interventions
• Lack of cross-sector collaboration &
coordination
• Insufficient focus on productivity &
livelihoods
• Poor incentives for adopting/maintaining
interventions
• Lack of community participation

8. Destruction by farmers of
interventions

9. 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.

10. Why Innovation Platforms?
Or...

11. 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

12. IP’s, Power &
Representation
•
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?

13. Platforms dominated by
government actors
This is what we will do!
Er…
Well, but…
Not really…
Credit: Alfred Ombati

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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 sitescoincidence? Influenced by project &
government agendas?
• Facilitators played important mediating
role

17. 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’

18. ‘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

19. Role of facilitators
•
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?

20. 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

21. Implications for future work
• 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. Implications
• 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

25. Questions?