*4.1. Negotiating Mixed Methodological Commitments*

Figure 4 summarizes the consequences for river basin planning of the methodological commitments made in our Nepal and Myanmar initiatives. It summarizes the key influences on those commitments, as well as some responses to mitigate certain undesired consequences.

**Figure 4.** Methodological challenges for river basin planning in developing countries.

In both cases, more than one model of decision-making influenced original design commitments. In both cases, following a co-production model, one subset of the partners committed to using multiple disciplinary techniques to support an analytic deliberative process. On the other hand, consistent with a rational choice model, a second subset of the partners regarded specific expertise to be a prerequisite

for participatory basin planning to commence. In both cases, the ensuing epistemological tension led the partners to occasionally disagree over technique prioritization and resource deployment. Both cases highlight the importance of fostering competencies and capacities to negotiate acceptable outcomes when such tensions arise.

In the Ayeyarwady case, challenges in producing and interpreting hydrological modelled scenarios offered the team an opportunity to adapt the rapid integrated assessment method (Figure 2). We widened it from a realtively narrow Delphi process to a process more inclusive of our workshop participants' social, political, and environmental knowledge. This adaptation met the project's overall objectives, but in a manner consistent with a co-productive model, not a rational choice model, of decision-making. By contrast, in the Kamala case, divergence over who could effectively contribute to MCA (Section 3.4.3) impacted discussion around the *pros* and *cons* of the four Development Scenarios.

When mixed methodological commitments lead to undesired consequences from an IWRM perspective, the specific autonomy of process designers matters. In the Myanmar case, our autonomy as process designers was relatively high, whereas in the Nepal case, it was relatively low (as manifested in constraints on the type of stakeholder, and types of knowledge production, admitted or preferred by the focal agency; Section 3.4.3). We interpret this difference in control primarily to contextual differences between Myanmar and Nepal. The Ayeyarwady BESS initiative-an exploratory study with lower stakes for the focal agency–allowed innovation with co-productive methods, with minimal contestation from advisors to the focal agency.

By contrast, the Kamala initiative aimed to produce an actual strategy, and to do so in a context of relatively profound state restructuring compared to Myanmar. Nepal's federal structure has constituted and mobilized local and provincial government actors. Concurrently, key organizations of federal government are in the process of restructuring, along with legislation reform. WECS is proposed to have significant institutional reforms in order to implement IWRM-based river basin planning. It takes time to adopt a co-production model of decision-making and a vigorous multi-stakeholder process. A deliberative analytic design (Figure 3) offers multiple points for project sponsors to intervene, occasionally exercising veto power, to shape the scope and extent of stakeholder participation (Figure 4).

To navigate undesired consequences when multiple techniques are required (Figure 4), we found it helpful to simplify essential techniques (Figure 3), and to propose planning processes that do not allow any one actor to dominate methodological choices (Ayeyarwady). In the Ayeyarwady case, the explicitly co-productive approach mitigated the risk of over-weighting biophysical analysis. In both cases, we found it helpful to affirm and elicit expertise from different disciplines. The ability to iterate contested or unimplemented techniques would further contribute to a shared understandinging of their value.
