Adaptive Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation for Long-Term Impact: Insights From a Water Supply Case in Bangladesh

Abstract

Most water and development interventions aim to contribute to long-term sustainable impacts. Given the uncertainties involved in these longer-term water development projects, adaptive planning approaches hold promise to connect planning, implementation and evaluation. Recent innovations report promising results, but find limited wide-spread practice due to a relatively large distance from current operational realities. Therefore, in this article we set out to investigate the real-world benefits and barriers for adaptive planning, monitoring and evaluation as a tool for water development interventions. To do so, we have stripped the advanced theoretic adaptive planning approach to its essentials, for exploration in an ongoing water development project. Application of the resulting three essential adaptive planning steps to a water development project in Khulna, Bangladesh shows that these steps are feasible and can support a more adaptive planning and management. In particular, they have helped to surface critical assumptions and uncertainties, as well as associated adaptation actions for the case. These were related to spatial development, water quality, finance, and management capacity. However, results also show that the actual use of the proposed steps is likely to be hindered by strategic misrepresentation. Our findings suggest this as an additional and more fundamental barrier to the widespread use of adaptive planning practices. We reflect on this barrier of strategic misrepresentation and on possible mechanisms to counter it, in order to enable water development actors to make their planning and evaluation arrangements more adaptive.

Planning for Livelihoods Under Hydrosocial Uncertainty in Periurban Pune

“…Incorporating impact-and capacity-driven perspectives on adaptive decision-making, we integrated spatially differentiated, multi-perspective, transdisciplinary engagement (Vermeulen et al, 2013;Versteeg et al, 2021) in a three-staged, modified Delphi method. The following section outlines the principles of this approach.…”

“…New institutions emerge but often do not have the required effectiveness to support local needs (Gomes et al, 2018b). As counteraction, farmers trade-off higher level hydro-political processes, village collective initiatives, and their individual capacities to access responsive hydraulic infrastructures (Versteeg et al, 2021) and thereby increasingly drift into hydrosocial insecurities. Exposure to these hydrosocial uncertainties increases farmers' vulnerability in a highly transformative environment, challenges adaptive decision-making processes (Maru et al, 2014) and thus calls for new measures and water resource planning (Moors et al, 2011).…”

“…Scenario-based planning helps in understanding long-term uncertainties and complex volatilities and how their development can influence a specific system over time (Rikkonen et al, 2006;Giaoutzi et al, 2012;Wulf et al, 2013;Versteeg et al, 2021). The degree of uncertainty is determined by the number of possible scenarios.…”

“…Scenario-based planning is becoming increasingly important for investigating socio-ecological transformation (Oteros-Rozas et al, 2015) and is popular among politicians and planners operating under highly complex and dynamic conditions (Harrill, 1999;Moors et al, 2011;DasGupta et al, 2019). It has been applied in environmental, economic, and social mitigation in urban planning (Perveen et al, 2017), in planning for agriculture (Vermeulen et al, 2013), land-use changes (DasGupta et al, 2019), or water management (Versteeg et al, 2021). It has two advantages.…”

“…The "discussion" highlights the interrelationships between the different knowledge systems in terms of adaptive decision-making by farmers and reflects on the methodology before the conclusions are drawn. (Vermeulen et al, 2013;Versteeg et al, 2021) and cocreate dynamic transformation processes. The understanding of uncertainty is shaped by these processes and manifests on multifaceted hydrosocial scales, e.g., through population pressure or pressure on resources (Ruet et al, 2007;Srinivasan et al, 2010;Prakash, 2013;Gumma et al, 2017).…”