Overall, five approaches can be considered to address the challenges of equitable and sustainable sharing of benefits with local communities around reservoirs in West Africa.
In order to identify relevant issues and stakeholders to engage, Suez Environment has developed a methodology and a software to help its managers to build their dialogue road map. While analyzing the local context, the tool allows to map the most critical issues to address and the most relevant stakeholders to engage, with regard to these specific issues. Analyzing those maps then helps to build an action-oriented dialogue strategy that fits both with the operator’s and stakeholder expectations.
New Ideas on Water: a multi-stakeholder dialogue to help bring about a new model for water management
Having met the challenge of the 20th century (i.e. bring water to every French household), the main focus of the 21st century will be to protect the quality and quantity of the resource. This means finding the right balance between all water uses and making sure that all stakeholders commit to apply best practices to water use and management. Convinced that the future of water must be written with everyone involved, SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT- Lyonnaise des Eaux launched the “New Ideas on Water” (“Idées Neuves”) project in 2010
FAO and IFAD implemented a regional programme covering 7 countries from 2007 to 2010 on Pro-Poor Policy Formulation, Dialogue and Implementation at the Country Level because the two organizations were of the view that the poor were unlikely to derive much benefit from economic growth in the absence of a policy environment that favoured them. The governments of the region had expressed their willingness to implement pro-poor policies but faced difficulties in doing so because their officials lacked training.
How can we make cities and countries less vulnerable to global climate change? This is a pressing question, especially in densely populated delta areas. There are enough policies, plans and ambitions. But many countries and cities are struggling to actually implement measures to reduce flood risks and safeguard fresh water resources. Often there is not enough sense of urgency and political commitment to build the required capacity and generate the necessary funds. A dialogue between stakeholders is needed. A DeltaDialogue that results in a (widely supported) DeltaPlan and generates new (public-private) DeltaPartnerships to finance and implement solutions.
The River Basin Game (RBG) has been employed a role-playing physical tool for promoting dialogue and decision-making over water resources where irrigation is present. The river basin game is a physical representation of a catchment (or small river basin) with a gradient and glass marbles to show upstream-downstream flow of water. Upstream abstractors/users of water are favoured over downstream abstractors and users of water.