The transdisciplinary water research method emphasising mutual learning and close coordination among researchers and communities is enabling effective water policy interventions. It is gaining a larger community of practice in South Africa on several projects, centred on community involvement, and is improving water management.

The research method was proposed to the Water Research Commission and developed by Rhodes University professor and Unilever Centre for Environmental Water Quality (UCEWQ) director Tally Palmer to improve the effects of water research outcomes and resultant water policy formulation.

“Water systems are highly complex social- ecological systems with relations between many various elements that influence other elements, some of which can be predicted and some which cannot. However, researchers and policy makers still form linear plans, as if nothing unexpected will happen, rather than accepting the complexity and materially changing the way we manage these systems.

“People have a strong sense of justice, and establishing working groups of community members, municipal managers and technical experts, such as water researchers, is an effective way of bringing together technical capacity and human ingenuity to be able to address complex water problems from within these systems,” she says.

Many interventions fail because they do not take into account human elements, including developing cooperative working groups and communities of practice, which are required to ensure the continuity of interventions.

To overcome the complexity of water challenges in South Africa, water policies must shift the notion of investment to include the practicalities of community relations and connectedness to build good water practice into the system.

“This method taps into people’s passion for justice, while the relations between individuals and working groups allow for the input of ordinary people to be expressed in decision- making,” she highlights.

Several projects exploring the implementation of this research method and water practice paradigm at local, catchment and regional scales are enlarging the community of practice among academics and practitioners, with many reporting positive, though gradual, results.

The Lower Sundays River Valley municipality experiences severe water problems, but several working groups have been established to grapple with the most significant of these problems. There has been a significant improvement in cooperation and understanding between role-players in the Lower Sundays. Rhodes University doctoral student Jai Clifford-Holmes leads the project.

The Makana municipality project aims to regain water management from provincial administration, with several community water forums having been established. The municipality is showing signs of distress similar to those of the Lower Sundays River Valley municipality, but several interventions, such as a training support programme for municipal workers and researcher involvement in a civil society volunteer programme, have been implemented.

Rights organisation Khulumani Support Group director Dr Marjorie Jobson is a leader within this Khulumani-UCEWQ project, which aims to enable people to reclaim agency and solve water problems facing their communities in Makana.