The effectiveness of flood-risk management in The Netherlands depends on effective stakeholder coordination through governance arrangements developed over many years of coping with floods. In this research project, we will repeat this process on a shortened time scale, and aim to develop coordinating capabilities in flood-risk management for the urban poor in a developing country. We will initiate and support community-based innovation, development, production, and implementation of small-scale technical innovations that alleviate immediate flood-related nuisance (wet feet) in a town in Bangladesh, with the aim to increase coordinating capacity for flood risk management and focus this emerging governance capacity on developing ever longer term, severer risks, increasing scale and more sustainable solution for flood risk management. Our research in this Learning Space addresses a major knowledge gap on how community based flood mitigation and adaptation measures both technological and institutional develop into measures of scale. This will enhance flood resiliency through demonstration and subsequent development of knowledge co-creation in collaboration with local partners and ultimately integration in flood management policies.

Water reuse offers great potential for reducing water shortages in urbanizing deltas. However, suitable technologies and approaches lack for sustainable reuse in the social setting in development countries. The overall objective of the integrated project is to reduce water shortages in Maputo by enabling the local water sector to include water reuse in overall planning and design of the urban water system. Knowledge gaps exist on integrated technical and social aspects of productive use of wastewater in development countries. Little research has been published in this field. The research challenge is to obtain fundamental social and technological knowledge to assess and predict effectiveness and sustainability of integrated water reuse strategies. To achieve this the research will focus on understanding and testing centralized and decentralized water reuse systems from a technological and social perspective. The reuse of centralised wastewater will be studied at the wastewater treatment plant in the Infulene valley (the only large scale treatment plant in Maputo). The goal is to turn this treatment plant into a profitable mine that produces clean water for irrigation and industry, energy by digestion of concentrated waste streams and sludge, and nutrients for agriculture. The reuse of decentralised wastewater will be studied in peri-urban areas, assessing and pilot testing the potential of reuse of domestic waters for small industries, urban agriculture and garden watering, leading to a reduction of the expensive drinking water use and polluting wastewater flows. The two research projects will lead to reliable technologies, tools, models and approaches for local stakeholders who need water reuse strategies and solutions to develop this market. These stakeholders include Governmental organisations, Non-Governmental organisations and private operators, conform the approaches proposed in the Mozambican Water Policy. Within the research project mixed teams of Mozambican social science and water technology PhD and Post-Doc researchers will collaborate, institutionalising optimal multidisciplinary collaboration. Focussing on only Mozambican PhD researchers is part of the capacity building strategy that comprises different levels of education, stimulating, in addition to the proposed communication strategy, the uptake of the research in planning and implementation during the project period and thereafter.

A4Life will quantify the potential of sand rivers in Sub-Saharan Africa to provide reliable water for farmer-led irrigation development (SDG 2), while recognizing the importance of preserving the natural ecosystems along sand rivers (SDG 6). Given the challenges associated with climate as well as socio-economic change, establishing this potential is urgent. These findings can help government agencies and development banks make evidence-based decisions about critical investments to support resource-poor households in African drylands. At least 1 million households might benefit and strengthen their resilience (SDG 13). A4Life thus paves ways for inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development in fragile African landscapes.

CONNEXION identifies and addresses critical connections between water management and human health in the Inkomati-Usuthu water management area (South Africa). We combine disease and water-energy-food (WEF) interaction models to better understand these connections. We visualise results in a dashboard for decision making, supporting WEF and health managers in their policy and daily practice. Our consortium includes a broad team of researchers and practitioners in WEF, nutrition, and infectious diseases, who will work together with various local stakeholders to co-create potential scenarios and recommendations. CONNEXION will contribute to improved resilience, community livelihoods, health, and wellbeing in the research area and beyond.

The implementation of strategic plans is a long-known challenge. In addition to the functional and economic performance of strategic planning alternatives, also their implementation feasibility is of critical importance. The implementation of strategic delta plans depends on the motivations and the abilities of stakeholders in society to absorb and support the measures expected in the plan. So far, methods to systematically assess such implementation feasibility of plans have been lacking. Stakeholder analyses or social impact assessments may be done, but both are, in different ways, relatively limited. During the UDW1 project Strengthening Strategic Delta Planning, a method has been developed to systematically assess the implementation feasibility of strategic planning alternatives, based on stakeholders’ motivations and abilities. This method, MOTA, looks into stakeholders’ Motivations, Opportunities, Triggers and Abilities and has been successfully been applied in the context of the Mekong Delta Plan in Vietnam. The proposed activity will investigate the potential for this new planning method to be applied outside its original application area. In particular, it looks into the potential for MOTA to support implementation programming for the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 (BDP2100), and for further methodological extensions that enable this. This is done by delivering MOTA trainings to key parties involved in the BDP2100 process in Dhaka and Khulna. This will enable organizations at the delta and local level to learn about the MOTA method. For selected issues within the BDP2100, two MOTA studies will be executed by CEGIS and PRI. These will use the developed MOTA framework and will carefully apply it and adapt it to meet the local needs and conditions. In Vietnam, a third MOTA study is foreseen, which will explore the methodological extensions of MOTA, as a method to support implementation programming.