Research for Impact

I have read Dennis Lettenmaier’s disturbing editorial on dropping the ball on water resources research (Lettenmaier 2008) and reflect here on how we might address the problem of water resources research sliding into “oblivion.” What is desperately needed is a stronger connection between our research and policy—to demonstrate the importance of our research. I suggest here an approach that we have found effective in the context of water and food research in the developing world.

The Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF). (www.waterandfood.org) has an ambitious goal—to do water- and food-related research that contributes to increasing food security and poverty alleviation in developing countries while protecting associated ecosystems. The immensity of the problem cannot be overstated: 75% of the poor in developing countries live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and ecosystems for their livelihoods, and 900 million people are living on less than $1/day (FAO 2006).

While the CPWF is a small player in the arena of poverty alleviation, this program is making steady progress in achieving impact and influence that goes far beyond the researchers and their associated peer-reviewed journal articles.

The CPWF uses an approach called participatory impact pathway analysis (PIPA). PIPA was developed to enhance the developmental impact of the program’s more than 60 projects, involving over 200 organizations globally. PIPA is based on concepts related to program theory drawn from the fields of evaluation, organizational learning, and social network analysis (Douthwaite et al. 2007). While the original intent of PIPA was to improve the assessment of impact, it has proven to change the content and approach researchers take to achieve impact.

The PIPA approach makes explicit a project or program theory of how research can have impact by developing impact pathways. The first Part of specifying impact pathways is the development of a problem tree. Problem trees begin with the identification of problems the project could potentially address and end with problems that the project will directly address. We’ve found them very accessible and understandable to both researchers and stakeholders.

The second component—network maps—explores how stakeholders are linked to and influence each other, and how the project aims to change and influence the existing network to achieve impact.

The nature of the change the CPWF (and I believe the water resources research community) hopes to achieve requires a social process of communication and negotiation. The network maps are crucial; they complement the “harder” mechanistic description of the problem tree with the “softer” behavioral and relational dimensions of a project. In the context of the example given in this article, network maps were created for the provision of information, research and technical advice, provision of funding, and provision of and lobbying for political support.

In the context of the CPWF, a number of examples from the first phase of the program demonstrate broad change via research projects, but we highlight an example from Ghana because of its ability to enter the policy arena.

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly in Ghana has a bylaw on “Growing and Safety of Crops,” which states that “No crops shall be watered or irrigated by the effluent of a drain which is fed by water from a street drainage.” In fact, the assembly had no systematic way and insufficient resources to enforce the bylaw, to the detriment of people’s health.

One of the CPWF research projects doing research on safe water reuse (Safeguarding Public Health Concerns, Livelihoods and Productivity in Wastewater Irrigated Urban and Peri-Urban Vegetable Farming in Ghana) participated in an Impact Pathways workshop in 2006. Via the development of a problem tree and network maps, the project team identified the Ministry of Food and Agriculture as the most important stakeholder in terms of accessing and informing policy making.

Shortly after the Impact Pathways workshop, the ministry organized a multistakeholder and policy workshop on urban agriculture. The project seized the opportunity to present its research to the ministry on how to minimize health risks without outright banning of wastewater use for agriculture, as well as the potential benefits of wastewater reuse based on their research. The presentation was so well received that the ministry made a declaration that project outputs would be used to formulate more appropriate policies around urban agriculture.

Until the Impact Pathways workshop, the project researchers had not realized the importance of lobbying for political support, nor their potential to give direct input to effect policy change. The outcome in 2008 is a change in the law that allows reuse of water given safety precautions are in place, and a longer-term relationship with policy makers.

Turning back to the question of why water management has been allowed to fall on hard times just when one would think it is most important? Like Lettenmaier, I believe we as a research community are responsible. We are not explicitly doing our research in ways that research policy makers and the broader cross section of humanity can use to realize the consequences lying ahead as a result. I suggest that we as a community may learn from the work of the CPWF.

Fig. 1 shows a problem tree that gives us a starting point for how we could address the issue of limited funding by making explicit the connections between our research and policy. In this tree, I suggest the impact we strive to achieve is less-vulnerable people and ecosystems. In other words, our research contributes to improved socioecological resilience in the face of rapid change. The problem tree makes explicit the role of research in this broader context by iteratively asking why is this problem happening at successive levels.

As shown in the tree, the research does not immediately reduce vulnerability, but rather leads to better policies and improved understanding. The problem tree demonstrates that research is central to reducing vulnerability, but it is also clear that the research will not be a priority until there is political and public support for funding. There are aspects of this problem that we cannot address as a research community—that there will always be urgent short-term issues that get high priority. But we can at least place the longer-term problem in the context of short-term crises.

The needs are indeed great and urgent. We need to make changes across the board—in our curricula, our research, and our outreach—that will demonstrate the dynamic nature of the world we live in. As Lettenmaier stated, it is not just climate change that water resources engineering needs to take into consideration, but larger driving forces including demographics, food and energy prices, economics, politics, and land use change.

The next step is to decide at what scale we collectively seek to address this issue—at state, national, or international levels—and to develop network maps that make explicit not only how to obtain political support, but how our research does result in less vulnerability.

While this seems a daunting task, it is one we can and should take on. In developing the problem tree, it became clear to me that what is needed is a sea change in the public understanding of the nature and consequences of continuing to plan and manage our natural resources along with the status quo.

I have suggested here one method that may help us achieve this task, using concepts developed in the context of the CPWF research program. So yes, let’s make a “convincing argument” that will motivate change at all levels of policy making—from local to international. We owe it to our profession and the world.