Understanding local participation in water climate adaptation programs: lessons from "Water as Leverage Cartagena"

This study focuses on the limitations and opportunities presented by local participation to address power imbalances in the Water as Leverage Cartagena program as a case study of Climate Adaptation Programs. This research is necessary because it contributed to filling the academic gap in the study on the effect that the various layers of understanding and narratives of participation have on power dynamics present in Climate Adaptation Programs and its impact on how actors performed. The main research questions are focused on answering the limitations and opportunities of local participation to address power dynamics among the different stakeholders involved in Water as Leverage Cartagena, what are the diverse layers of understanding participation among different stakeholders and the impact of their participation, how participation manifests itself in early design phases of the program, and how do the governmental relations impact local government involvement. The questions are addressed through a combination of methods, such as participatory action research, ethnography of policy translation and qualitative interviews. The main findings of the study were that grassroots NGOs are the ones mediating and generating connections between local actors and external actors; the understanding of participation was not homogenous from the beginning among actors, but two main common ideas arose: participation as a transformative and sensitive process, second, as a tool for reputation and power control. Likewise, it was seen that the Dutch Water Sector is trying to change the narrative of the Dutch expertise, for Dutch as knowledge facilitators, also, local actors’ narrative was embedded in their livelihood conditions. Finally, the analysis demonstrated that WaL and RVO perceptions of personal leadership characteristics and local political and historical contexts from WaL partners shape the intensity of local government involvement in the WaL programs.