Innovation platforms, Power, Innovation platforms, Power, Representation & Participation: Representation & Participation:

Lessons from Blue Nile Basin, EthiopiaLessons from Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

Beth Cullen, Josephine Tucker, Katherine Snyder, Zelalem Lema, Alan Duncan

New Models of Innovation for DevelopmentUniversity of Manchester

4 July 2013

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

• 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

Research Aims

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

• 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

Research design & methods

Context: Context: The Ethiopian HighlandsThe Ethiopian Highlands

• Densely populatedDensely populated

• High levels of poverty and food insecurityHigh levels of poverty and food insecurity

• Expanding cultivationExpanding cultivation

• Rapid land degradationRapid land degradation

NRM InterventionsNRM Interventions

• Top-down quota-driven approachTop-down quota-driven approach

• Focus on technical interventionsFocus on technical interventions

• Lack of cross-sector collaboration & Lack of cross-sector collaboration & coordinationcoordination

• Insufficient focus on productivity & livelihoods Insufficient focus on productivity & livelihoods

• Poor incentives for adopting/maintaining Poor incentives for adopting/maintaining interventionsinterventions

• Lack of community participation Lack of community participation

Destruction by farmers of interventions

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.

Or...

Why Innovation Platforms?

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

• 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?

IP’s, Power & Representation

This is what we will do!

Er…

Well, but… Not really…

Platforms dominated by government actors

Credit: Alfred Ombati

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

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

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 sites- coincidence? Influenced by project & government agendas?

• Facilitators played important mediating role

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’

‘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

• 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?

Role of facilitators

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

• 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

Implications for future work

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

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

• 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

Implications

Questions?