Second BeWater stakeholders' workshop in Tunisia
The second BeWater stakeholders’ workshop was held in Yasmine Hammamet (Tunisia) on June 4th 2015, and was attended by 24 stakeholders, four facilitators from Prospex, one representative from EFIMED, one observer from Ecologic and the INRGREF team.
The main objectives of this workshop were to bring the Rmel basin stakeholders together in order to discuss some aspects of the basin (40% are former participants and 60% are new identified partners), to depict results from the first stakeholder workshop (2014), to select used criteria to evaluate the water management options (WMOs), and to discuss and evaluate the WMOs.
The workshop started with a few words of welcome from the INRGREF director general and the commissioner of the regional office for agricultural development of Zaghouan. Afterwards, Prospex facilitators introduced the agenda for the day. The participants reacted positively and showed their interest, enthusiasm and most importantly their willingness to be a part of the activities.
The first session started with INRGREF presenting the BeWater Project and the outcomes of the first stakeholder workshop and the awareness campaign (Fuzzy cognitive map (FCM), narrative, challenges and classes of WMOs) allowing a better understanding of the actual situation of the Rmel river basin.
The second session was depicted by Prospex to introduce the Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and afterwards, the criteria proposals were presented. The participants were assigned to vote and select the most important criteria leading for a range of concrete proposals.
Prospex facilitators displayed the outcomes resulting from discussion voting process. Participants tried in groups to extract several criteria and did their best to strive, in a very friendly atmosphere, some important trade-off between these criteria to finally indicate the best score. Then, they were asked about the possibility of having other suggestions of extra criteria. After that, during an individual exercise in the third session, participants ranked and weighed selected criteria (proposed and extra).
The afternoon session was dedicated to discuss the 6 main challenges (water quantity, agriculture, water quality, forest resources, awareness campaign, human resources and creation of jobs) and to present the water management options. In total 5 groups participated and each one, based on their own expertise and scientific background, did bring out some extra thoughts on these options. These groups had the opportunity to discuss, effectively, how a vision for future adaptation to these options might be developed.
The preliminary results of MCA for each challenge, the average weighing of different criteria for the participants, the results of impact assessment and characterization of options were explained by EFIMED. Every group discussed these outcomes and tried to figure out if these results fit their expectations and what they have already discussed together during the previous sessions.
The final session consisted on short explanations regarding to what happened with the outcomes of the workshop that enabled participants to take a comprehensive idea about the project by exchanging reactions as well as raising some interesting and relevant questions to enrich the process. To conclude, the participants filled out evaluation forms and questionnaires.
BeWater is an EU FP7-Collaborative Project that promotes dialogue and collaboration between science and society in sustainable water management and adaptation to the impacts of global change in the Mediterranean.