IWRA Proceedings

AbstractCollaborative decision-making, especially in the context of water security and socio-ecological resilience, in an uncertain world involves navigating multi-stakeholder partnerships for adaptive governance. This challenge cannot be solved via technical supply management alone, and requires intervention through transformative inclusive governance mechanisms which solve information asymmetry challenges. A key step in this process to address uncertainty and engender empowerment is participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E). We study two participatory M&E models as part of multi-stakeholder partnerships which build and evaluate drought resilience and nature-based water conservation infrastructure in the arid state of Rajasthan in India. These are Social Audits under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) of India and a Non-Governmental Organisation led (called Seva Mandir) Gram Vikas (Village Development) Committee monitoring model. Social Audits are a participatory M&E method under India’s community driven rural employment guarantee programme (NREGA). They are community-led accountability tools to measure and evaluate service delivery by the government with direct public participation. The Seva Mandir Gram Vikas Committee is an NGO-directed and community-led approach of building and evaluating community water conservation infrastructure. By comparing two different models based in India, one institutionalised and facilitated by the Government and the other by a Non-Governmental Organisation, we explore which of their components operationalise, or hamper, participation in participatory decision-making and transfer of information across different levels of governance. Our comparative analysis includes systematic literature review, process net-mapping of two mature community-led M&E models which entails documenting the process of governance instead of connection between actors, and stakeholder interviews. The paper identifies key principles of effective participatory M&E models of water security interventions for climate change adaptation and social and ecological resilience. These principles include empowering the community to monitor water security infrastructure; iterative, regular, and flexible evaluation; institutionalising feedback loops for learnings generated in the M&E process; and capacity building of the community in participatory methods, which should be institutionalised with the aim of reducing the root cause of vulnerability to water security. We also highlight that a participatory process is not necessarily inclusive and active intervention by way of policy design and capacity building of those conducting the M&E is needed. The process net-maps of the two models identify the mechanism through which public participation can transform water governance. They serve as models for innovative processes for democratisation of information available for adaptive governance targeted at building social and ecological resilience.