Capturing & Communicating Impacts

The DUPC2 (Water and Development Partnership Programme, phase 2) Impact Initiative started in 2019 to support projects in better managing for impact and in better capturing and learning about their impacts. Various lessons could be drawn from this project, such as that impacts were beyond the scope of most DUPC projects, but that outcomes were not, and that projects could manage for early outcomes and project objectives. Furthermore, it showed that an increased focus on project outcomes helped, not just in evaluation and learning about impact, but also in project design and management. The project also showcased how we should “count-what-can-be-counted” and “talk” about the rest: narrative and story-telling methods were useful to capture meaningful outcomes and emerging impacts. Another lesson was that there was a rich set of impact/outcome management frameworks and tools. However, using the full richness of these, seemed beyond project management capacity for DUPC2 projects. And finally, inclusive processes, cooperative engagement, project co-management and co-creation were important mechanisms for lasting impacts beyond DUPC project lifetimes.

This action-research project aims to enhance productive use of sand river aquifers for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A4Labs aims to co-develop, test, share and compare with farmers and partners methodologies to create a reliable and sustainable source of water for agriculture in three semi-arid to arid regions of Sub-Sahara Africa, using water underlying dry river beds and upscale these methodologies for use at river basin scale while maintaining sustainable abstraction limits and minimising negative social and ecological consequences. This is achieved through the development of experimental sites (“living labs”) where smallholder farmers, practitioners, agricultural extension officers, water engineers, students and private sector actors co-develop new (technological, agronomic, financial, market) approaches of accessing and using shallow groundwater for productive purposes, and evaluate the hydrological, social and economic effects and impacts. Part of this project was to introduce the method of stories of change, with the aim of communicating the impact of the project through storytelling. 

Learn more by visiting the project website

The Open Water Diplomacy Lab project focusses on media, science and transboundary cooperation in the Nile. The project aims at studying the role of the media and science in transboundary waters negotiations, as well as at developing journalists’ and researchers’ capacities on water science communication. Despite COVID the project managed to continue with a number of podcast series on water conflict and cooperation hosted by Fiona Broom (SciDev.net). Also, the EverydayNile initiative continued, in which photojournalists from different Nile countries attended a series of workshops to think about the stories they want to tell to re-picture the river. The aim is to reflect on how to communicate and build bridges over the Nile’s troubled waters. Rather than creating a new website, this project presents and shares information on pre-existing websites of project partners.

Take a media tour, walk through timelines and read stories on the interactive website of the Nile Water Lab (also supported by DUPC2), by clicking here

To access the project page on the Water Journalists Africa site, click here

To access the InfoNile website, click here

The societal impact of the Water and Development Partnership Programme is considered to be large and comprised of many dimensions. Documenting and monitoring actual impacts in the countries the projects we fund work in, is not straightforward and always intertwined with many other ongoing initiatives and context-specific developments, which requires modesty and sensitivity in understanding the added-value of the programme. Ultimately, such an exploration will help not only the programme, but also IHE, the partner organizations and funding agencies to gain a more in-depth understanding of the different meanings and forms of societal impact and the different ways in which impacts are realized. In turn, this can help inform how to best realise meaningful impacts in the future. This project consists both of a research- and education component which will eventually merge their findings.