SWITCH in the city putting urban water management to the test Edited by John Butterworth, Peter McIntyre and Carmen da Silva Wells SWITCH in the city putting urban water management to the test Edited by John Butterworth, Peter McIntyre and Carmen da Silva Wells IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre The Hague, The Netherlands Butterworth, J., McIntyre, P. & da Silva Wells, C. 2011. SWITCH in the city: putting urban water management to the test. The Hague, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Table of contents Preface iv part 1 Learning from SWITCH 1.1 Introduction 2 1.2 What have we learned? 16 1.3 Perspectives on learning alliances as an innovative mechanism for change 38 part 2 City case studies 2.1 The potential for treated wastewater use in Lima 68 2.2 Cali: city of seven rivers 84 2.3 Starting at the top: preventing pollution from tanneries and cleaning up the Río Bogotá 92 2.4 Water management and urban planning in Belo Horizonte 110 2.5 Learning together makes strategic planning possible for fast growing Accra 120 Published on behalf of the SWITCH consortium 2.6 Integrated urban water management planning in Alexandria 138 by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. 2.7 Managing water risks in Birmingham: the city with the tastiest tap water in Britain 158 2.8 Zaragoza: taking pride in integrated water management 178 2.9 Hamburg: city with the largest river island in Europe 188 Copy editor 2.10 Lodz: city of water 202 Cheryl White 2.11 Tel Aviv Water Club puts focus on wastewater treatment 214 Layout and Printing 2.12 Beijing: alternative water sources for peri-urban agriculture 224 Sandifort id • Katwijk, The Netherlands www.sandifortid.nl part 3 Guidelines Cover photo credits (clockwise from top left) 3.1 Starting a learning alliance 242 Alejandro Rueda (Bogotá), Kwasi Attafuah (Accra), ERCE (Lodz), Johannes Gerstenberg (Hamburg), 3.2 Stakeholder analysis 256 John Butterworth (Belo Horizonte), Cedare (Alexandria) 3.3 Developing a joint vision 272 3.4 Facilitating communication in learning alliances 280 To order more copies of this publication, please contact IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre 3.5 Rapid urban water assessment 298 P.O. Box 8232 • 2508 EH The Hague, The Netherlands T +31 70 304 4000, F +31 70 304 4044 • [email protected] 3.6 Scenario building 314 3.7 Strategy development 326 This publication is also available in pdf from the IRC website: 3.8 Innovating in learning alliances: action research concepts and practice 338 www.irc.nl 3.9 Promoting equity in processes 346 3.10 Process documentation 356 3.11 Monitoring success and less 368 ISBN: 9789066870789 3.12 Engaging with the realities of governance 378 3.13 Facilitating creative workshops 388 Copyright © 2011 IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre 3.14 Transitioning urban water systems 396 The content in this (product) is under a licence of Creative Commons specified as Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0. This licence allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the (product) materials for non-commercial purposes, as long as they credit the copyright holder and license their new creations under the identical terms. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ The full legal text concerning the terms of use of this licence can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode Contributors to the SWITCH in the city book 406 iii preface The guidelines presented in Part 3 of the book were originally developed to support a series of training workshops for SWITCH project staff that were facilitating learning alliances, and research partners. These workshops were held in Cairo, Lodz, and Ouro Preto along with several other tailored training sessions. The feedback received from participants at these events greatly helped to refine the guidelines. The workshops also benefitted from the participation of staff from other projects with relevant experiences and interests such as the EMPOWERS and RiPPLE action research projects. A series of city assessments in 2010, building on a similar exercise in 2008, was the basis for Part 2 of the book and the inputs of all the authors are acknowledged. Mike Morris, who was earlier instrumental in establishing the stakeholder engagement activities within SWITCH before switching his job, Jeroen Warner and Barbara Anton provided valuable advice at peer review workshops to discuss the findings of these assessments. The inputs of Alastair Sutherland in all these activities and his many perceptive insights are warmly acknowledged. A conference ‘Sustainable Water Management in Cities - Engaging stakeholders for effective change and action’ in December 2010 in Zaragoza, Spain provided a further valuable forum to share and receive feedback on many of the ideas and findings presented here. A special thanks to the organizers of this event and especially to Josefina Maestu and her team at the UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication. In addition, without the efforts of a fabulous supporting cast, production of this book would not have been possible. Angelica de Jesus coordinated the book production process with the assistance of Anjani Abella and Paz Blok, Cheryl White gave the text its final edit, Aminata Sylla coordinated all the finances and administration, Agnieszka-Urbaniak Butterworth drew the diagrams in the introduction and synthesis chapters, and Daniel Sandifort designed the book Preface layout. The SWITCH project was generously supported by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme and contributed to the thematic priority area of “Global Change and Ecosystems” [1.1.6.3] Contract no 018530-2. Partners also all made vital matching funding This book brings together findings from activities in 12 cities that each involved contributions. SWITCH was coordinated by the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education under the management of Huub Gijizen, Kala Vairavamoorthy and Carol Howe and a management multiple consortium partners and many city stakeholders. The approach was team that devoted many hours to debating the ideas and implications of learning alliances. The specifically to encourage stakeholder engagement, and these chapters reflect the work presented here would also not have been possible without the warming to the approach of stakeholder engagement by the project’s management team which over time allocated an inputs of many city actors and researchers who contributed to the activities. increasing amount of funding to make the substantial city engagement that is presented in this These inputs are all gratefully acknowledged, as are the efforts of the authors. book possible. The editors would like to pay tribute to the enthusiasm and skills of the SWITCH learning alliance facilitators, and the researchers and other colleagues that found new ways to work during the project. These teams had the hard task of trying to put these guidelines into practice in each city, and to put down and share both their successes and failures. John Butterworth, Peter McIntyre and Carmen da Silva Wells iv v part 1 Learning from SWITCH Before the city: the beginning of the Río Bogotá, Colombia. (Photo credit: Alejandro Rueda) introduction The Sustainable Water Management Improves Tomorrows Cities Health, or SWITCH, project was a five year experiment focused on some of the key sustainability challenges in urban water management. In a number of cities around the globe, it set out to test what was needed for a transition to more sustainable urban water management through a combination of demand-led research, demonstration activities, multi-stakeholder learning and training, and capacity building. The rationale for this non-conventional mix of activities was that it would encourage research to be more relevant and facilitate better use of research findings in decision making. Winning the engagement of key stakeholders in each city was central to making the shift towards more sustainable and coordinated urban water management. This book focuses on that challenge. The book brings together the experiences of 12 SWITCH cities across four continents – Lima, Cali, Bogota, Belo Horizonte, Accra, Alexandria, Birmingham, Zaragoza, Hamburg, Lodz, Tel Aviv, Beijing – with a set of guidelines focused on promoting stakeholder engagement that were developed to support the implementation of the project. The SWITCH project The Sustainable Water Management Improves Tomorrows Cities Health (SWITCH) project was Water sensitive1.1 urban design at Trabrennbahn Farmsen in Hamburg. (Photo credit: Johannes Gerstenberg) a major research partnership funded by the European Commission with a budget exceeding a 20 million over the period 2006 to 2011. It involved an implementing consortium of 33 partners from 15 countries. SWITCH involved innovation in the area of sustainable urban water management often also referred to as integrated urban water management (IUWM). This ambitious project looked towards water management in the ‘city of the future’ and aimed to challenge existing patterns and to find and promote more sustainable alternatives to the conventional ways of managing urban water. SWITCH also set out to do things differently by carrying out action-orientated research in cities that was more demand-led, so that it reflected Introduction the expressed needs of cities. The project design included developing and encouraging learning alliances with the idea that they could help set the research agenda, and that their engagement would help put research across different aspects of the urban water cycle into use in cities, to help improve integration and scale-up impacts. By learning alliances, as explained in more detail below, we mean platforms that bring together stakeholders from a range of institutions With more than half the planet’s population living in urban areas and rapid growth predicted, – municipalities, service providers, universities, and in some cases NGOs and user groups – to cities present a daunting test in water management. Their scale and concentrated populations think, act and learn together, using action research to test ideas.