pre-feasibility

The WIP development process aims to design and establish WIPs which will be led and predominantly funded by local organizations and stakeholders. It is therefore critical to begin by understanding the stakeholder landscape – individuals and entities located throughout the catchment, who are responsible for, benefit from, directly or indirectly fund, or otherwise influence watershed stewardship and water management.

STEP 1: Begin with a ‘stakeholder mapping’ exercise to identify relevant actors and attempt to understand their interests, actions, and level of influence. This should be conducted with a wide lens to incorporate a diverse range of stakeholders, for example including water governance bodies (e.g. water utilities, irrigation districts), water users (e.g. national reserves, hydrological infrastructure, agricultural producers, industry), local communities, NGOs, and different layers of government.

STEP 2: Select and engage with the stakeholders whose involvement will be necessary to the success of the potential WIP, to better understand their priorities and appetite to support the analysis and potential WIP. This is likely to at minimum include water governance entities, key beneficiaries, and representatives of local communities. In doing so, it is important to balance the legitimacy and broad-based support of the WIP with the friction and timing costs of collaborating (more is not always better and is often slower).

STEP 3: If a ‘Go’ decision is reached to move forward into Feasibility, you should formalize some sort of agreement (e.g. a Memorandum of Understanding) among your group of key stakeholders which signals intent to support future analysis and the potential WIP.

The Pre-Feasibility phase should identify a set of NbS (generally between 3-8) which might effectively address the key water security challenges in the area of study. This determination is driven by a range of factors such as the key water security challenges and their causes, local ecology and hydrology, land use and land use change, major pieces of infrastructure, and land tenure / governance. Each of these factors will influence which NbS options are technically, practically and socially feasible. The NbS Option Factsheets, Grey-Green Infrastructure Deep Dive and NbS Benefits Explorer Tool may be useful sources to start thinking through different NbS.

Another objective of Pre-Feasibility is to geographically delimit the area(s) of interest for the WIP. This process should involve balancing multiple factors which will emerge throughout the analysis, such as scientific findings, political considerations, and stakeholder willingness and mandate. Most WIPs identify these boundaries in terms of hydrological areas, but in some cases sociopolitical factors may also be relevant (e.g. a “catchment” upstream of a certain point, as far as a given administrative boundary).

You are likely to need to gather data (e.g. land use and land use change, soil types, precipitation, river flow, snowmelt) from a range of sources. Accurate hydrological maps already exist for some areas, whereas in others they may need to be developed based on elevation models or other tools. Identifying key grey infrastructure, e.g. dams, water transfer schemes, and irrigation networks, is also important because these influence hydrological processes, water security challenges, and stakeholder interests.

A WIP’s ability to generate sustainable funding, which is most likely to come from local beneficiaries, is a key factor in its long-term success. As part of Pre-Feasibility it is therefore important to begin thinking through which of the identified stakeholders might provide funding for watershed NbS or otherwise support it (e.g. through ‘in-kind’ financial support such as staff time, coordination, or data/research). These stakeholders should be consulted regularly and kept abreast of progress, particularly in the Feasibility and Design phases, to ensure that analysis meets their ‘burden of proof’ for disbursing funding. See the Sustainable Funding Deep Dive for more detail.

AT A MINIMUM: Pre-Feasibility should include a rough costing exercise to understand the order of magnitude of funding required to deliver the quantity of NbS necessary to deliver or at least meaningfully contribute towards stakeholders’ desired outcomes.

OFTEN USEFUL: Take this a step further and conduct a high-level ROI (return-on-investment) analysis to help validate the potential of NbS. This can be a direct financial return due to improved water security (e.g. see WaterProof) or simply a comparison between the proposed NbS options and alternative ‘grey’ infrastructure (e.g. the per-m3 cost of water savings from invasive plant control compared to water production from desalination). This economic analysis can then be improved and expanded upon in the Feasibility phase. 

Alongside analysis of stakeholders, it is necessary to understand the regulatory and policy context in the study area. For example, this includes water management (e.g. regulators, tariffs, quality and flow standards), infrastructure (e.g. construction and maintenance, dam releases, energy generation), and use (e.g. water rights, land tenure, irrigation systems, rules around discharges). Both stakeholder engagement and desk-based research are necessary, since (a) stakeholders might not be aware of some governance mechanisms, (b) regulations and policies may overlap or be ambiguous, and (c) even in the case of perfect and clear policy and regulation, things may work differently in practice.

The Governance Deep Dive has further information around different governance forms which WIPs can take. Detailed governance work generally happens in the Design phase, however governance and stakeholder analyses and discussions during Pre-Feasibility might point towards or invalidate potential governance arrangements. Hypotheses regarding this should at a minimum be recorded appropriately for revisiting in later phases, and discussed in detail if deemed significant to the “Go/No-Go” decision.

It is important to understand the current depth of evidence base and general social acceptance for the WIP’s potential NbS interventions. Are the NbS totally new to the area, or have they been implemented successfully before, and if so by whom? Does local implementation capacity exist? Has the impact of these NbS been studied in this area or areas with similar characteristics? If your stakeholder mapping identified existing initiatives, researchers and/or implementation capacity, try to schedule interviews and visits with these groups to help address these and other questions.

A Theory of Change (TOC) is a description of a sequence of things that describes a causal pathway between them – e.g.: inputs > activities > outputs > outcomes > impacts. Developing a TOC is a useful theoretical exercise that helps identify and articulate the activities that are necessary to achieve a certain goal, and interrogate any underlying assumptions. During Pre-Feasibility it is important to develop a TOC that at a minimum includes the target beneficiaries and their desired outcomes, to help stakeholders think through the activities and impacts of the potential WIP, and thereby shape the Feasibility and Design phases (during both of which the TOC may be revisited and updated).