Presented by Beth Cullen, Josephine Tucker, Katherine Snyder, Zelalem Lema, Alan Duncan at the New Models of Innovation for Development, University of Manchester, 4th July 2013
Transcript: #StandardsGoals for 2024: What’s new for BISAC - Tech Forum 2024
Innovation platforms, power, representation and participation: Lessons from Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia
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
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.
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?
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