Stakeholder engagement insights from Beatriz Medina and Karine Caussé, from WE&B
Have you ever wondered about the true value of water and how sustainable practices can enhance this essential resource? To address this question, we must consider the role of society and the value we collectively place on water as well as our own behavior.
Understanding and appreciating this social value involves various participatory actions, ranging from simple informational processes to innovative co-creation research efforts by communities. Certainly, one of the key steps in revaluing water is increasing awareness. Informative campaigns can educate people about the crucial role water plays in our daily lives and the urgent need to protect and conserve it. By spreading knowledge about the importance of water conservation, we can foster a culture of respect and responsibility towards water.
However, informing is just the beginning. To truly make a difference, we must engage communities in more interactive and participatory ways in the process of making research. Innovative approaches, such as co-creation in research, allow communities to actively participate in finding and implementing solutions. This collaborative effort not only empowers individuals but also leads to more sustainable and effective outcomes. In addition to the technological aspects of developing solutions, an entire action on “Governance and Social Engagement” accompanies the whole REWAISE project cycle, providing this essential social perspective that we are coordinating in WE&B.
At WE&B, we aim to create a positive impact by improving livelihoods, fostering positive community impacts, enhancing the ability of organizations to work together, and refining methodologies to co-create new opportunities. As the coordinator of the work package on engagement in REWAISE, we embed this overarching goal into our core business through social innovation approaches.
Clear to many scholars already is that technological innovation alone is insufficient to tackle the challenges related to the environment and climate change. A greater focus is required on research, policy, and bottom-up innovation. By combining these elements, we can develop comprehensive solutions that address both environmental and social challenges effectively. But this issue of definitions and their effects or impacts on society could lead us to write another post. In fact, it is a task that we are investigating together with our partners at CAWR, and other colleagues from CIRSEAU are already working on it.
Practically speaking, in REWAISE we try to approach all the relevant stakeholders in the field. Within the REWAISE framework, our mission is clear: to engage all relevant stakeholders in a collaborative manner. This includes the three REWAISE Competency Groups (CGs) and the Living Lab Approach provided in the Water Oriented Living Labs as our main strategies to afford this goal. In the short term, our focus lies on coordinating these CGs across various regions, including Skaane, the Midlands, and Spain. These groups serve as platforms for grassroots-selected topics, facilitating diverse stakeholder participation and problem-solving.
CGs are hubs of expertise and experience, aimed at collectively addressing societal challenges related to water use. While consensus isn’t always the goal, these groups strive to produce tangible outputs defined by the participants themselves. Additionally, we’re embracing a long-term perspective through the Living Labbing exercise. This approach ensures alignment with existing living labs across Europe and beyond, with ENOLL leading this action.
We believe it is essential to clarify that there are many ways to organise engagement in a research project, and at REWAISE we have the open innovation umbrella as our logical framework in which research should take place (beyond the engagement itself) and which is organised in the Living Labs.
No, Living Labs are not a gathering of stakeholders that happens from time to time, Living Labs are a way of doing open research with the participation of communities and stakeholders, bringing science closer to everyone.
No, it is not a short-term thing, it is a framework and a culture of its own, it is not just for technology developers, its vision must be socio technological. They should thus be places incorporating the multiple values society attributes to water, and to this end, be privileged spaces for developing governance models, in which stakeholders of different natures define together the values their water management and decision-making systems should rely on.
By creating the CGs, yes, we are engaging as one-off actions, but no, we are not talking about technology development, we are talking about general social challenges that need better water management in the three proposed regions; current challenges that have emerged from the debate (yes, it is bottom-up approach, and no, we have not suggested them). Whether or not they will last beyond REWAISE will depend on the approach of each region, and we hope that the Living Labs methodology will keep the debate on these identified social water challenges going beyond, and if necessary.
The variety of modes of engagement taken within the five projects of the CIRSEAU Working Group on Engagement, is leading to the collection of experiences and evidence. Those are collected and synthesized into valuable lessons learned, informing recommendations for effective stakeholder engagement practices in EU-funded research and innovation projects.
Not clear yet? A practical example is still needed. Well, one of the workshops we have just organised, in the framework of the GC in Skäne, was about jointly developing the questionnaire that we want to launch to the users of REWAISE technologies and the surrounding community.
In summary, LLs/CGs are also experimenting/testing sociological methodologies to assess practical engagement and therefore ensure the social value of water is adequately considered. They serve as catalysts for positive change, shaping a more sustainable future for generations to come.
