What Participation? DistinguishingWater Monitoring Programs in Mining Regions Based on Community Participation

CIRDI's Program Manager Andre Xavier and colleagues from the University of British Columbia prepared a paper on Participatory Water Monitoring.

The paper is also being published in the MDPI journal entitled “Water” and it is part of a special issue on “Water Stewardship in Mining Regions” which is co-edited by Prof Neil McIntyre and Dr. Nadja Kunz. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water/special_issues/Water_Stewardship...

Link to CIRDI’s website: http://cirdi.ca/?research=what-participation-distinguishing-water-m...

Abstract: Water issues are a major concern for the mining sector and for communities living near

mining operations. Water-related conflicts can damage a firm’s social license to operate while violent

conflicts pose devastating impacts on community well-being. Collaborative approaches to water

management are gaining attention as a proactive solution to prevent conflict. One manifestation of

these efforts is participatory water monitoring (PWM). PWM programs have the potential to generate

new scientific information on water quantity and quality, improve scientific literacy, generate trust

among stakeholders, improve water resource management and ultimately mitigate conflict. The

emergence of PWM programs signals a shift toward greater stakeholder collaboration and more

inclusive water governance within mining regions. In this article, we propose a new framework

to evaluate the degree and extent of community involvement in PWM programs. This framework

builds on citizen science literature. When applied to 20 cases in Latin America, notable differences

in the degree of community and company participation between PWM programs are found. These

differences suggest that companies and communities approach these programs from very different

points of view. It is concluded that more attentive collaboration between firms and communities

in the design of the program, the collection of data and interpretation of the results is needed to

effectively build trust through PWM.

 Keywords: water monitoring; mining; participation;

water-10-01325_2018.pdf