An update from the Program Coordinator

Much has happened since our last newsletter, with research continuing at full speed in CPWF projects and new ideas being captured, especially through two innovative workshops on impact pathways and the interaction of CPWF Asia project leaders, who discovered more links among their work than most had imagined. As coordinator, I participated in the “Challenge Program Day” organized at the World Bank by the CGIAR Chair and Secretariat – an event where we were honored by the presence of the President of the World Bank -- and in the Fourth World Water Forum where CPWF organized a successful seminar on the links between international research networks and local actions, with attendance of around 100 people despite the eleven competing parallel sessions in the water-food-environment theme.
A successful methodological workshop in February crystallized the lessons from the first four basin focal projects and enabled us to make, on time, the call for expressions of interest to run six new projects, including in the Niger basin at the special request of the steering committee that oversees the funding that we receive from France.
I’m sure everybody is waiting for news of two key events I mentioned in the last newsletter. We have been working with several donors to confirm sufficient funding so that we can run a focused second competitive call. I am pleased to announce therefore that the World Bank has just confirmed an allocation of USD 2.7 million to the CPWF for 2006; we express our sincere thanks to them and to all our donors for continuing support. If other conversations also bear fruit, we hope to announce the call in May. Meanwhile, the priorities for that call are ready for review by our independent expert panel and our steering committee.
Our plans for the “Synthesis Conference” have moved forward. We can tell you that it should take place in Vientiane, Lao PDR, hosted by the Mekong River Commission, from 5-11 November 2006 and that it will have an innovative format – still under design - a scientific discussion forum, rooted in field experiences in the basins. Please put those dates in your diary; we’ll have further announcements soon. Jonathan Woolley, CPWF Coordinator
	At the World Bank "CP Day", from L to R: J.V. Meenakshi (HarvestPlus), Ian Johnson (Chair, CGIAR), Jonathan Woolley (Coordinator, CPWF), Paul Wolfowitz (President, World Bank), Freddie Kwesiga (Coordinator, SSA-CP), Bonnie McClafferty (HarvestPlus), Francisco Reifschneider (Director, CGIAR), Jean-Marcel Ribaut (Director, Generation CP)

Asia Project Leaders’ Workshop, Theme Leaders’ Meeting and Management Team Meeting, 13 – 19 February, Vientiane.

Hosted by the Mekong River Commission, this series of meetings provided several opportunities for project leaders, theme leaders and management team members to share and discuss progress in research and other program initiatives.

The week began with the third meeting of CPWF theme leaders. The team worked towards finalizing guidelines for 2005 research synthesis documents and agreed on a set of publications that will form the knowledge base for 2006 knowledge sharing activities. A list of proposed research priorities for the anticipated second competitive call, based on the research priorities identified by the Comprehensive Assessment on Water Management in Agriculture (CA), was also produced.

In parallel to the theme leaders’ meeting, Boru Douthwaite and Sanjini de Silva conducted Impact Pathway and Most Significant Change workshops for CPWF Mekong project leaders and associated monitoring and evaluation representatives. Feedback from the workshops was mostly positive with participants looking forward to incorporating these tools into their project activities.

The project leaders’ workshop on 16 and 17 February allowed researchers to interact and exchange ideas on how research results could be more effectively utilized to achieve the goals of the CPWF. Thanks to the facilitation efforts of CPWF Mekong basin coordinator, Kim Geheb, project leaders identified opportunities for cross-project, cross-basin and cross-theme linkages.

The week concluded with the management team meeting. Over the course of two days, the team discussed a broad range of upcoming activities and new endeavours. Among these, particular attention was given to the use of impact pathways in the CPWF, CPWF participation at Stockholm World Water Week, the November 2006 synthesis conference, and plans for a second competitive call for proposals.

Impact Pathways, Most Significant Change and the CPWF
By Boru Douthwaite, Senior Scientist, CIAT, Colombia; Sophie Alvarez, Consultant, CIAT, Colombia ; Rick Davies, Independent M&E Specialist; Simon Cook, Leader Basin Focal Projects, CPWF

Most people think of impact assessment as something carried out by economists several years after the end of the project. They think it is important to show their organization is doing a good job, and perhaps for producing publications, but it rarely affects the way they think about their own work. They certainly don’t do it themselves!

The Basin Focal Project (BFP) Impact Assessment Project is attempting to change all this. The project has begun running workshops to help CPWF projects clarify what sorts of impacts they expect to have, and how these changes will come about. In other words, we are helping projects define their impact pathways and in doing so workshop participants are carrying out ex ante impact assessment - in economists’ jargon (if carried out after the end of a project, economists call it ex post impact assessment).

So far we have run workshops for the 17 projects in the Volta and Mekong river basins. The next workshop will be for the Karkheh basin in May and the plan is to carry them out in all nine CPWF benchmark basins.

In the workshops, we spend two days developing impact pathways and on the third day we introduce an approach called most significant change (MSC) [www.mande.co.uk/docs/MSCGuide.htm] to monitor progress along the impact pathway. The Knowledge Sharing in Research Pilot Project is co-funding the MSC work as the approach also fosters learning about others’ innovative experiences. More details of the content of the workshop format and content can be found in the Volta Workshop Report.

We define an impact pathway as: (i) the causal chains of activities, outputs and outcomes (a timeline, similar to a Gantt chart) that show how a project achieves its purpose and goal; and (ii) network maps that show the evolving relationships between project implementing organizations, project partners and the ultimate beneficiaries that are necessary to achieve the goal. Developing an impact pathway helps a project better understand and communicate what it is doing, whom it is doing it with, and why. This makes the project more fundable and helps with monitoring and evaluation. It can also help the project focus on high priority activities and relationships. Moreover, constructing impact pathways for the projects in a basin helps the respective project leaders, basin coordinator and the CPWF Secretariat better identify complementarities and synergies between projects, thus contributing to basin research program development.

We are not the only people who use the term “impact pathway”. The Science Council of the CGIAR now asks the CPWF to report in terms of impact pathways. The added value of our approach is the emphasis we put on networks. As such, we aim to bring together the best of two models of how innovation occurs – the traditional one used by the Science Council that uses logic models such as logical frameworks (log frames); and a network model, to give a fuller and more realistic understanding of a project’s impact pathway (see Figure 1). One way that network maps help is that they show multiple linkages between partners, and thus multiple ways in which ideas and technologies can interact and be developed and diffused (Figure 2). This helps people see that they are part of a network, and it is the network, not just their organization alone, that will achieve impact. It also helps people appreciate that the interactions between actors, indicated by the links in the map, make the innovation process inherently unpredictable in the medium and long-term, thus placing more emphasis on the need for continual monitoring and evaluation to support adaptive project management.

Participants have found it useful to draw a map of the network that will be using and disseminating their project outputs 2 years after the end of the project. It is this network that will determine whether their project will achieve its eventual goal. We also ask them to draw the network of organizations (actors) working together now (Figure 2). If their future network does not exist in their current one, and usually it does not, then this suggests relationships that the project needs to forge before the end of the project. This, in turn, suggests different ways of working with partners which can then be added as activities, outputs and outcomes to their (linear) timeline.

Some of the feedback we have received from workshop participants includes:

“I will use impact pathways in future design of projects”
“The dynamics of the networks is useful to envision the future”
“I will share the approach with partners and colleagues”
“I will use the approach to develop the project further”
“I will use the approach in other projects”
“It helps show gaps”
“It is good for planning”
“It is good to check where the project is”
“It helps explain impact of my project”
“Constructing impact pathways should not be one-shot”.

As the feedback indicates, there is a demand from participants to continue using the impact pathway approach in their projects, and to introduce it to partners. One of the next steps, therefore, is for us to produce training materials. We have also started working with the CPWF Secretariat to write a discussion paper that considers the implications and practicalities of adopting an impact pathway perspective in the CPWF from calls for projects all the way to ex post impact assessment. We share a vision of a CPWF where project managers and staff work with impact pathways because they help them plan, monitor and evaluate, communicate what their projects are doing and achieve their project and CPWF goals. We want people to be doing their own impact assessment because it helps them do their job better!

Contact Boru Douthwaite at b.douthwaite@cgiar.org

Report on Basin Focal Project Methodological Workshop, 8 – 10 February, Colombo.
By Simon Cook

This three-day workshop was intended for basin focal project (BFP) teams from CSIRO, IRD, IWMI, U.C. Davis and the Stockholm Environment Institute to share details of analytical methods for focal projects in the Karkheh, Mekong, Sao Francisco and Volta river basins. This was the third meeting of research teams and they showed substantial progress in the development of hydrologic, social science, econometric and agronomic analysis.

The overall conceptual framework is now clear. Analysis centres on the relationship between (1) poverty; (2) availability and accessibility of water; and (3) agricultural water productivity. All terms require careful definition within individual basins.

Since a goal of BFPs is to identify potential for change, the next step of analysis is (4) to identify interventions. The first areas of intervention are those that re-distribute water. The second species of intervention targeted by BFPs are those that promise improvements in water productivity, through better management of the system. All opportunities and risks of change are mediated through institutional attributes, hence activity (5), institutional analysis.

The entire process is moderated by means of (6) progressive knowledge management, to improve effectiveness, accessibility and relevance.

The first set of BFPs is now ending the method development phase. They will soon start the full analytical phase, using a coherent set of methods, which tend to vary in recognition of the varying issues and data availabilities in each basin. Currently, there is a call for Expressions of Interest to lead a second set of basin focal projects in the Nile, Limpopo, Indus-Ganges, Yellow, Niger and Andean system of basins (see www.waterandfood.org). It is anticipated that the new set of BFPs will benefit from the analytical methods established during the workshop.

CPWF Welcomes Ms. D. Charmini Kodituwakku, Integrated Basin Water Management Systems Team

Charmini joined the CPWF family as a Research Officer on 6 March 2006. Based at IWMI in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she will assist Francis Gichuki, CPWF theme leader on Integrated Basin Water Management Systems, by carrying out managerial and research activities.

Formerly a Program Officer for the South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP), she focused on a number of environmental management issues including water-shed management, forestry and water pollution. A warm welcome to Charmini who can be contacted at c.kodituwakku@cgiar.org .

Dates for your diary

6 April 2006, closing date for applications CPWF Basin Focal Projects

CPWF invites expressions of interest and offers of partnerships from highly qualified institutions to lead and participate in basin focal projects in the Nile, Limpopo, Indus-Ganges, Yellow, Niger and Andean system of basins. For more detail, see www.waterandfood.org

7, 11, 27 April 2006, Capacity Building Needs Assessment Seminars, Ghana

Held in Kumasi, Tamale and Accra, these seminars are designed to identify capacity building targets (participants, institutions, and activities) for training in integrated water and food research. For more details see www.waterandfood.org

2 – 3 May 2006, CPWF Annual Steering Committee Meeting, Cairo

The nineteen members of the CPWF Steering Committee will meet to discuss Program strategic and policy issues, and evaluate progress. They will also review plans for a second competitive call, review and ratify the institutions selected to prepare new basin focal projects and approve the latest budget projections.

27 – 29 May 2006, Karkeh Impact Assessment Workshop

The Basin Focal Project Impact Assessment Project will conduct this workshop which aims to help CPWF projects in the Karkheh basin clarify the impacts they expect to have, and how these changes will come about.

31 May 2006, closing date for applications for International Training and Research Program, Groundwater Governance in Asia

The objective of this program is to enhance the capacity of existing institutions involved in groundwater management and research in the basin states sharing the Indus-Ganges, and in the Yellow River basin to undertake more integrated, multidisciplinary and sustainable approaches to groundwater governance. For details see http://www.waterforfood.org/gga/training.htm

Recently Released Publications

Beyond More Crop Per Drop: Water Management for Food and the Environment by Frank R. Rijsberman and Nadia Manning

CPWF is proud to be a co-sponsor of this document, produced for the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico. ‘Beyond More Crop Per Drop’ provides key messages which reflect valuable information, insight and opportunity for action within the framework of the water-food-environment nexus. The full document can be downloaded from: http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/WWF4/html/index.htm

IWMI Research Report 98
Multiple-Use Water Services to Advance the Millennium Development Goals by Barbara van Koppen, Patrick Moriarty, and Eline Boelee.

This research report is based on the ongoing work of the CPWF project “Models for implementing multiple-use water supply systems for enhanced land and water productivity, rural livelihoods, and gender equity.” The full report can be downloaded from: http://www.waterandfood.org/fileadmin/CPWF_Documents/Documents/Partner_Publications/IWMIRR98.pdf

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