Innovative Approaches to Water Security: Icts as Platforms for Systemic Online Negotiation

This paper presents the initial outcomes of the research project ‘Innovative approaches to water security using ICTs for systemic online negotiations’ carried out between the department of Systems at the OU, UNESCO PC-CP program and UNESCO-IHE Institute of water education. It explores how water conflicts could be managed by being prevented through integrated water management and through better communication amongst water stakeholders and more systemic analysis of water problems at stake. The paper explores how ICTs can provide both a support for such systemic analyses and an enabling communication tool that presents an interesting democratic alternative to currently existing negotiating platforms. The use of Soft Systems Methodologies (SSM) represents an important step forward in negotiation methods: it helps examine how the various parties’ perspectives can be better to each other, hence helping taking cultural dimensions of negotiations into account and it supports an integrated representation of water issues, human-environment interactions and environmental security. The challenge lies in using SSM online in ways that will democratise the negotiation process because based on a ‘neutral platform’, empower participants in that they take part in the ongoing construction of the online tool, and broaden the negotiation boundaries by making best use of online resources to build negotiation cases and understand better each other’s perspective and culture vis a vis negotiation styles and purpose.