Session 6.2

A multi-actor, multi-staged approach to building transformation pathways for water-related dynamics in periurban India

Sarah Luft 1, Shreya Chakraborty 1 & 2, Carsten Butsch 1, Sharlene L. Gomes 3, Leon M. Hermans 3

1 University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany; 2 SaciWATERs, Hyderabad, India; 3 TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands

With recent urban expansion and growing population of Indian metropolitan cities, research is increasingly directed towards the periurban, as zones in transition decisively shaped by these dynamics. Here, transformation processes are particularly visible regarding natural resources, especially water, as periurban spaces face changing water ecologies from within and increasing demands for water resources from urban centers. Closely related to these water dynamics are altering livelihood strategies, shifting mechanisms of water supply, and restructurings of associated institutions. These transformations are affected and co-produced by multiple actors with different values, strategies and knowledge levels and thus need to be approached through grassroots stakeholders and actors from higher level social and political scales.

The collaborative project “H2O – T2S in urban fringe areas” addresses these transformations in the periurban areas of three Indian metropolitan cities (Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata). It investigates the plurality and contexts of water-based livelihoods, water as a basic consumption good, and water-related institutions and governance. The project follows a multi-staged, mixed-methods research technique in studying existing pathways in six periurban villages in order to provide building blocks for future adaptive pathways. Thereby, the project contributes to understanding site-specific drivers of vulnerabilities and engages periurban capacities and potentials towards a more sustainable future.

After the initial field phase, it became impossible to conduct the planned participatory action-research phase of the project for co-developing transformation pathways with multiple local stakeholders on-site due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The method was thus amended to a virtual and remote, multi-actor, multi-stage approach. Therefore, a modified Delphi study was designed for transdisciplinary engagement with local periurban communities, political decision-makers, and Indian and international experts to gradually build sustainable transformation pathways through a process of visualizing future scenarios and sequencing adaptive responses to periurban hydrosocial dynamics towards these futures.

This Delphi study applies two strands: 1) from the bottom-up, engaging with local actors of different caste-livelihoods and gender groups and local government affiliations in three periurban settings, and 2) from the top-down, consulting Indian and international experts from academia, planning, civil society, and the private sector. In three iterative rounds the Delphi study is designed to identify actions and institutions leading towards ideal future scenarios, consecutively prioritize these scenarios and determine possible tipping points, and comparative reflections on the varied final pathway schematics emerging from different stakeholder groups.

The paper discusses the virtual, remote, and collaborative nature of this approach and the design of reflexive, innovative tools to facilitate a transdisciplinary stakeholder dialogue in a structured pathway-building exercise. These tools were designed to respond to challenges of Covid-19 impacts, digital divides, disparate literacy levels, plurality of stakeholders and knowledge systems, language barriers, and the translation of complex theories into everyday periurban realities.

This presentation focuses on the methodological design process of the Delphi study, its conceptual opportunities, methodological challenges and collaborative learning processes. Some preliminary observations from the ongoing data collection and analysis will be presented, highlighting pluralities, differences and similarities in actors’ objectives and experts’ visions for future periurban transformation, based on which the project contributes to enabling local communities in reflecting on possible futures towards sustainable development, with a focus on water in particular.

Intercultural One Health Research in Guatemala: Patients as Bridges Between Knowledge Systems

Monica Berger-Gonzalez 1, Brigit Obrist2, Jakob Zinsstag 2

1 Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Guatemala; 2 Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel University

The One Health Poptun project was conducted as an intercultural transdisciplinary project from 2016 to 2019 in Guatemala, under the collaboration of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Cattle and Food Production, and the ACGERS Council of Indigenous Elders. It aimed to assess the burden of zoonotic diseases on the health of individuals living in an impoverished area with little access to official healthcare services, as well as to implement a surveillance and response system based on culturally-sensitive syndromes. In order to work amongst a plurality of cultures, languages and knowledge systems, the project designed several tools meant to break barriers of historical racism and epistemic superiority in order to provoke reflexive pathways amongst participants. These reflexive pathways targeted preconceptions and assumptions of a particular medical system towards another (for example indigenous Maya medical systems misrepresenting Western veterinary medical systems), pushing discussions between participants to reach some degree of mutual understanding. The overarching goal was that participants could better assess potential collaborative frameworks for future healthcare systems more culturally pertinent for the study region. One of such tools was inviting sick human patients, and owners of sick animals, to become ‘bridging subjects’ to facilitate discussion between medical doctors, veterinary doctors and traditional healers. Employing this aspect of boundary science showed that the common goal to heal a sick patient made participants bridge social and epistemic divides, facilitating joint diagnostics and even joint treatment meeting the standards of Western Medicine and the cultural expectations of Maya traditional medicine. The short film presented here portrays this tool as it was employed to generate a process of mutual learning between representatives of extremely different medical knowledge systems. The discussion session will reflect on challenges and lessons learned while implementing this tool. 

Contextualising Transdisciplinary Research: Insights from Asia, Africa and Latin America

Flurina Schneider 1 & 2 & 3

1 ISOE, Germany; 2 Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany; 3 CDE - Centre for Development and Environment, Switzerland

Development of TDR theories, principles and methods have largely been steered by researchers of the global North, reflecting context conditions of the global North. To contribute to a context sensitive TDR framing we investigated what context characteristics affect design and implementation of TDR in six case studies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and what this means for TDR as a scientific approach. To achieve our objective, we distinguished four TDR process elements and identified several attributed context dimensions that showed to influence them. Our analysis showed that context characteristics prevalent in many Southern sites such as highly volatile socio-political situations and rather weak support infrastructures can make TDR a challenging endeavour. However, we also found that context characteristics greatly vary, namely between Asian, Latin American and Asian sites (e.g. the role of deliberation in opinion formation, research freedom, and dominant perceptions of the appropriate relation between science, society, and policy). We argue that TDR in these contexts require pragmatic adaptations, but also more fundamental revisiting of underlying epistemological concepts related to what it means to conduct ‘good science’ as some context characteristics affect what might be considered core epistemological values of TDR.