The new generation of watershed management

Action-research

Review participants found that in watershed management, there are still large gaps between science and practical expertise, theory and practice, and desire for collaboration with stakeholders and capacity to manage such collaboration. A practical approach to information gathering, information sharing and information use for pluralist decision-making is needed.

Action-research is also known as adaptive, collaborative, interactive, pluralist or participatory research. It focuses on subjects that reflect local priorities and aims to identify site-specific solutions that can be shared (or at least accepted) by all stakeholders.

To this end, action-research addresses watershed management processes in the context of the existing productive systems, social institutions and cultures. Local views should be gathered, discussed and, when appropriate, compared with relevant scientific knowledge and policy orientations. In this way, action-research promotes a two-way cross-cultural learning process through which expert knowledge is adapted to local environmental and socio-cultural conditions, while local knowledge is enhanced and strengthened by scientific understanding of the issues at stake. Action-research is a multi-stakeholder learning process.

Action-research should be planned as a long-term process that includes the dissemination and replication of successful results, local best practices and lessons learned, through demonstration sites and training. Because end-users participate in identifying research topics, designing research and validating results, procedures and outputs adopted in action-research exercises should be easy to understand and use for local stakeholders. Information produced through action-research should also match reasonable validity and reliability standards, however.