Opening the decision space for stakeholders in large infrastructural projects

Around the world, governments are developing large water infrastructural projects. Although these projects have huge social and environmental impacts, official narratives often frame them as indispensable to develop the region. However, issues of due process, transparency, public participation, democratic decision-making, and alternative developmental pathways are often neglected. The involvement of stakeholders in water resources planning is challenging for science-policy processes. Because of the complex process to define costs, benefits and risks of large infrastructure on the socio-ecological systems they interact with, project leaders often limit the decision space when they engage stakeholders. Public participation can become trivial if stakeholders can only decide within such a confined decision; and supposedly participatory decisions are already pre-selected by the project leaders. Literature argues for the importance of co-designing solutions with stakeholders, especially when these large projects can have lock-in and path dependency effects. We present two cases, one in Mexico and another in Myanmar, where we tested stakeholder preference for alternative infrastructure development pathways through participatory modelling. The modelling process was based on an existing water resources model developed by consultants hired by the local Mexican government to assess a controversial and conflict-ridden inter-basin water transfer. We enhanced the existing model, by developing a user-friendly interface as well as alternative solutions proposed by stakeholders to open the decision space. We then organized workshops with key stakeholders and implemented a Q-method before and after the workshop to assess the perception of participants related to the participatory modelling approach. We conclude that participatory modelling was a useful process to discuss alternative solutions and engage with the interests and positions of stakeholders around large-scale infrastructure. However, opening the decision space is only possible when political support is present. We aim to contribute by showcasing the importance of engaging local stakeholders and their knowledge in controversial decisions.