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B3.05. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships

Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) are collaborative mechanisms that bring together actors from a variety of backgrounds interested to work on a specific challenge or explore an opportunity together. MSPs vary in their degree of institutionalisation, can take various forms, and can operate at different geographic scales – from local to regional, national, and transboundary. This Tool introduces what are MSPs, provides a taxonomy to help understand the different types of MSPs related to water management, lays out key design considerations, discusses some of the key principles on how to set up and maintain successful MSPs, and provides a framework to decide whether an MSP is an appropriate mechanism for your purpose and context.

What are Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships?

Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) are collaborative mechanisms that bring together different types of stakeholders, i.a., civil society, private sector, governments, international organisations, media, academia, NGOs, and research institutions. MSPs share experience, information, technologies, and other resources towards solving a common challenge or pursuing an opportunity (Tremblay-Lévesque et al., 2022). MSPs often tackle “wicked problems” that could not be solved by single-agent interventions. Each actor thus contributes to the MSP by bringing in their own set of skills and complementary resources. For instance, an MSP trying to expand irrigation in small farmers communities may benefit from the financial resources that agricultural cooperatives bring, the innovative technology that private sectors have, and the technical knowledge that government extension workers have to offer. A foundational idea to MSPs is that the whole is greater than its part.

The general characteristics of the operation of an MSP include defining a common framework and securing inclusion and meaningful involvement of all stakeholders in the process. The advantage of an MSP as a cooperative workspace lies in the assumption that it increases the efficiency in the solution finding process, and in the implementation of the adopted measures. Stakeholders must be able to influence the process and decisions made, regardless of whether they dispose of large resources or not, and regardless of their belonging to a particular social group. In this regard, an efficient MSP must consider the power relations and hierarchies within the MSP itself (i.e. between partners and other stakeholders) and within any one community and address challenges in terms of gender (Tools B5) or age (and the differences between old/young actors) (Tool C5.01). Facilitators play a vital role in managing MSP processes and ensuring that traditionally marginalised people(s) are meaningfully involved.

An overview and classification of water MSPs

Water resources management is a complex business that involves actors from different sectors working at different levels. The water governance space is therefore filled with all kinds of different MSPs. In fact, the United Nations Partnership Platform lists more than 1700 partnership-based initiatives active in supporting the implementation of SDG 6. To make sense of all those partnerships, Tremblay-Lévesque et al., (Tremblay-Lévesque et al., 2022:16) developed a taxonomy with 6 criteria that can be used to characterise and differentiate between the various water-related MSPs:

Composition

The structure of an MSP is defined by the types of actors and sectors involved, as well as the relationships between them. Some examples include:

Initiation

All MSPs need to start somewhere. An MSP may be initiated in several ways:

Sector

Depending on the goals they set and how they operate, MSPs may involve different sectors – and stakeholders may not all come from the water sector.

Scope

MSPs may have a different scope of work depending on the nature of their desired interventions. MSP scope can also depend on whether the problem addressed by the MSP is short-term or continuous:

Scale

MSPs intervene and act on water resources management at different scales, including:

Degree of formality

The way in which MSPs structure their operations varies a great deal. It is helpful to consider whether the level of formality of the MSP you are involved in is suited to the problem you seek to solve. Allowing for a certain degree of generalisation, this can be summarised as follows (Dore, 2007; Warner, 2006):



Design considerations for setting up MSPs

Setting up an MSP requires design thinking and asking yourself some difficult questions. Below are some key considerations to help you conceptualise and structure your MSP in a way that suits your purpose in the best possible way.

Structure or process

You can for example think of your MSP as a structure, i.e. as an entity or construct with different attributes in terms of actor-constellation, types of goals, and different geographical, disciplinary, and sectoral and thematic foci. Or, you can think of your MSP as an ongoing process of partnering. In this view, partnership can be understood as a form of collaborative governance which may enhance democracy by providing the possibility to influence political decision–making to organisations, citizens, and different administrative levels (Stott, 2023). When thinking about your MSP as a structure, you might want to think about who the best partners would be and how to make the best institutional design. When thinking about it as a process, you might pay more attention to the human resources and time needed to make the MSP successful.

Instrumental or intrinsic value

Another way to think about your MSP is in terms of instrumental and intrinsic value; is the partnership a means to an end or and end in itself? Stott and Murphy (Stott and Murphy, 2020) describe instrumental partnerships as relationships between organisations where partners seek common ground, with horizontal decision-making arrangements, as transitional in nature, and with an emphasis on impact and results. In contrast, intrinsic value partnerships are characterised by being consituted as relationships between people who are able to live with disagreement, where power is constantly renegotiated in decision-making processes, as ongoing rather than transitional, and with an emphasis on processes that facilitate achievements of impact and results. MSPs are often thought of as instrumental, but paying attention to the intrinsic value of partnering might help you appreciate the learning that comes out of conflicts and the value of people simply coming together and trying to understand the other side.

Traditional or transformative

Finally, the partnership can be set up or viewed on a spectrum ranging from leverage/exchange partnerships on the one end and transformative partnerships on the other (Stibbe and Prescott, 2020). The leverage/exchange partnership is characterised by one partner donating to another, or partners exchanging resources. In between the two ‘extremes’ is the partnership for better traditional development, which is a partnership delivering more than the sum of its parts by combining the partners’ complimentary or similar resources in new ways to create greater impact, efficiency, innovation, or scale. The transformative partnership delivers change on a system level (Stibbe and Prescott, 2020; Stott, 2023). These partnerships aim to tackle underlying causes of unsustainability and create a lasting, sustainable situation. This is done by appreciating the interconnectedness and complexity of our world and bringing together essential complementary resources that can provide the shift needed to deliver systems transformation. Importantly, systems transformation cannot be achieved by any one actor working alone.

Guidelines for building successful MSPs

Partnerships create different value that can help us transform systems towards a more sustainable future. One way to evaluate the success of water MSPs could be to look at the relational and technical qualities it produces (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2007). Based on that understanding, the first aspect of a successful MSP questions whether it leads to enhancing the way people work together, including their ability to resolve conflicts and build trust. An MSP could be deemed as successful, for instance, if it leads to developing a shared common understanding and vision for the management of a river basin, especially if this watershed was previously marked by high competition and conflicts. The “technical qualities” dimension refers to the extent to which the MSP can improve the sustainability of the socio-ecological system. This can include whether an MSP can lead to reducing water abstraction rates below the level of natural replenishment or whether it prevents or limits pollutions and spills into water bodies. Taking a more adaptative stance on sustainability, one could argue that successful MSPs are those that allow governance regimes to become more resilient to water related risks (Fjäder, 2021).

This discussion on what is a successful MSPs, has been paralleled by an equally important debate on what are the ingredients to make these platforms more effective (e.g. Brouwer and Woodhill, 2016; Gray and Jill, 2018). For instance, Stibbe and Prescott (Stibbe and Prescott, 2020) suggests 4 building blocks of effective partnerships: (1) the fundamentals: partnerships must be able to create significant value, and the ‘right’ partners at the table must be included to be successful, (2) partnership relationship: the complex, multi-faceted dynamic relationship among partners must be kept strong, (3) structure and set-up: the partnership’s structure should be fit-for-purpose, and (4) the partnership should be well managed, and requires the application of leadership at multiple levels.

With respect to MSPs for sustainable land and water resources management, Tremblay-Lévesque et al., (Tremblay-Lévesque et al., 2022) suggest 6 ingredients:

Other principles and ingredients that can be found in the literature about setting up and maintaining an effective MSP include:



To partner or not to partner?

Before you decide whether or not to engage in an MSP, consider if this is the right solution for you and your organisation. As emphasized by Stibbe and Prescott (Stibbe and Prescott, 2020), MSPs are an important commitment that should not be entered into lightly. It is A commitment that requires A lot of time and resources from all parties involved. Furthermore, partnership formation may be unnecessary if the challenge can be resolved by for example purchasing a product or a service (Stott, 2023). To make the go/no-go decision and assess the implications, values, and risks of partnering, you can use the “internal prospective partnership assessment” offered in The SDG Partnership Guidebook (Stibbe and Prescott, 2020). Alternatively, a few basic questions can allow you to assess whether an MSP is really fit for what you are aiming to do.