Session 4.3

Transdisciplinary design of water management concepts in the Andean highlands, Peru

Fabienne Minn 1, Hannah Kosow 1, Christian León 1, Hanna Kramer 2, Stephan Wasielewski 2, Michael Hügler 3, Stefan Stauder 3, Ana Acevedo 4, Roger Agüero 5, Manuel Krauss 2 & 6, Yvonne Zahumensky 1 & 7

1 ZIRIUS Center for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies, University of Stuttgart; 2 ISWA Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste Management, University of Stuttgart; 3 TZW DVGW Water Technology Center, Karlsruhe; 4 HOMAS Horizontes en Medio Ambiente y Sauld, Lima, Peru; 5 SER Asociación Servicios Educativos Rurales, Lima, Peru; 6 FiW Research Institute for Water and Waste Management, RWTH Aachen (current affiliation); 7 GFE Research Center for Global Food Security and Ecosystems, University of Hohenheim (current affiliation)

Accessing safe drinking water and sanitation is still a challenge in many regions. The approaches to reach SDG 6 “Clean water and sanitation for all” need to go beyond technical solutions and must unite different disciplines, perspectives and forms of knowledge. We would like to provide an example of designing drinking water supply and waste water management concepts that are adapted to local contexts and requirements of rural Andean communities, in the Lurín river catchment in the region of Lima, Peru (www.trust-grow.de). Not only experts' scientific knowledge played an important role in designing socio-technical concepts but also the experiences, empirical knowledge and priorities of local actors, particularly communal organizations and local government. Therefore, actively involving local stakeholders throughout the entire process was vital.

During the course of the project, several participatory formats were applied to integrate the local perspectives of Peruvian stakeholders in designing socio-technical concepts. Various methods (e.g., interviews, transect walk, actor mapping, focus groups) were used to gain a comprehensive picture of the local water sector and generate a common understanding of the situation and its problems. The hydrological, technical, social and economic backgrounds were key for designing the concepts and the socio-technical solutions were tailored to them.

Among the activities to include the multiple local perspectives were participatory assessment workshops with Peruvian experts and future users to discuss and evaluate the concepts. Here, evaluation criteria were developed jointly, providing further insight into local priorities and needs. Results and feedback from the workshops were incorporated in the subsequent design of the socio-technical concepts and their technical measures. Finally, the concepts were implemented to serve as a pilot and training plant jointly with the support of Peruvian NGOs. Local actors were actively involved in choosing the site, in the construction process and the operation of the pilot plant. This way, future users were able to familiarize themselves with the functioning of the plant already during construction. Equally important however, the experiences, obstacles and problems encountered during the installation and use of the plant provided valuable insights and feedback regarding the concept design and its practicability. The pilot plant also allows learning processes to prepare for managing and planning plants at larger scales. Additional NGO-led activities to support communal water providers and raise awareness for the importance of water proved very helpful.

Our experiences illustrate that it is important to adapt approaches and technologies to local social and cultural structures. Pursuing transdisciplinary approaches in the development of new water management concepts and involving various experts and stakeholders during the different phases of concept design and implementation is not only necessary but also beneficial. Access to knowledge is particularly important and valuable in sectors with weak or fragmented governance, frequent staff turnover, or little formal documentation. Frequent and continuous participation in developing water management concepts ensures that not only the technical requirements are met but that the social and cultural realities within which the concepts are embedded are properly taken into account.

Trans-disciplinarity and on-the-ground translation: co-creation with communities in Brazil and Colombia

João Porto de Albuquerque 1, Philipp Ulbrich 1, Marcos Rodrigo 2, Alejandro Rivera 3, Edna Rodríguez 4

1 University of Warwick, United Kingdom; 2 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 3 Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia; 4 Institución Universitaria Colegio Mayor de Antioquia, Colombia

Based on the experience of an ongoing project which seeks to expand the understanding of risks, vulnerabilities and potentialities associated with hazards in Latin America, this pre-crafted contribution explores the critical factors for success as well as the challenges to equitable trans-disciplinarity. Co-creation and dialogical engagement among the multi-disciplinary research team from the UK, Brazil and Colombia, the marginalised communities living in self-constructed neighbourhoods and the governmental agencies has already led to initial methodological and procedural reflections. With the project explicitly focusing on equity, various procedural questions were and continue to be addressed, and the pandemic presented both challenges and opportunities for equity and on-the-ground impact. Work with two marginalised communities enables a comparative approach and allows us to present preliminary insights for transdisciplinarity for discussion. The core theme of the project which appears to emerge is “translation”. In our pre-recorded presentation which includes two short video clips produced by the community-embedded researchers we will illustrate the different types of translation and local interpretations, the emerging dialogues as well as dissonances which reflect the linguistic, socio-spatial, and disciplinary plurality. Conceptually, the project has adopted a dialogical approach inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy (1970) to allow for experimentation and for the communities to take ownership of the co-creative research process. This dialogical approach and the decentralisation of project management to the local co-investigators has allowed the project to adapt to the community challenges and make visible their interpretations of concepts such as “resilience”, “risk” and “vulnerability”. These are brought into dialogue with the existing definitions and mediated through tools for engagement and co-creation such as participatory online mapping. An immediate result are community-driven processes of risk reduction related to the social needs due to the pandemic – particularly in Rio de Janeiro, and to a recent landslide in Medellín, bringing the different interpretations to light. Challenges, however, continue to exist. In the context of the pandemic and the inability to hold on-site workshops, these primarily relate to the digital divide, with the most vulnerable often not being able to participate, and project monitoring and impact evaluation, the latter of which in turn requires further work to develop a shared conceptual language for measurement. We conclude with thoughts for further discussion during the conference and invite comments based on similar experiences.

Increasing the relevance of science for practice and practice for science: Quantitative empirical insights

Claudia R. Binder 1, Livia Fritz 1, Ralph Hansmann 2, Andreas Balthasar 3, Zilla Roose 3

1 EPFL, Switzerland; 2 ETH, Switzerland; 3 University of Lucerne

We present results of a survey conducted with researchers and practitioners involved in a Swiss National Research Programme on steering energy consumption. We analyse what motivates practitioners and researchers to engage in a collaborative research project, their perception of the collaboration intensity (here defined as the frequency of contact) in different project phases, and the extent to which the research project provided useful results for practitioners. Our analyses demonstrate that the intensity of collaboration is a key driver of successful collaboration as it fosters trust between researchers and practitioners. Thereby, it increases the usefulness of the research project for practitioners and their perceived contribution to the success of the research project. Research programmes should thus (1) foster trust through incentivising collaboration between research and practice; (2) facilitate the development of a shared understanding of researchers’ and practitioners’ respective roles; and (3) support the inclusion of practitioners in the project development phase through financial support during the proposal-writing phase.