New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 2 - Spring 2015 | Page 11

New Water Policy and Practice

readily identified with the importance of the project champion and team leader roles
from their experience, many were intrigued by the enabling leader role, which they
recognized to be of great value in projects with multiple disciplines and stakeholders.
Participants in the first UNESCO-IHE water leadership course in 2014 also suggested
that enabling leaders can foster collaboration in complex water projects, and stimulate
the development of water leaders around them.

Whilst this experience has helped to confirm that these three roles are indeed
important in the water sector, it is equally important to emphasise that every leadership
context is unique. For example, two water leaders playing the same leadership role
in different countries or organisational cultures may apply similar strategies (e.g.,
anticipating ‘windows of opportunity’ to influence water policy), but will need to be
highly sensitive to their local context in the way they apply these broadly applicable
strategies (e.g., to work within appropriate cultural norms) in order to produce a
positive outcome.
2.4. 2013–2016: Research within the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive
Cities

In 2013, the Australian-based Cooperative Research Centre for Water
Sensitive Cities began a three-year research project looking at the issue of sciencepolicy translation in government with a specific emphasis on the role of scientists and
sustainable water management advocates within the policy process as people who
strongly influence the outcome. Through interviews and in-depth consultation with
around 100 water bureaucrats, science advisors and politicians; consistent patterns
began to emerge that confirmed findings from other studies in the water sector, as
well as long-standing policy leadership observations established in other countries
and other issue areas. Several in-depth case studies of policy development within
different political contexts found ample evidence to underscore pre-existing theories
regarding the importance of leaders within the policy processes, both in general
theory (e.g., Kingdon 1995; Mintrom and Norman 2009; Mintrom and Vergari 1996)
and in studies specifically relating to water (e.g., Crow 2010; Huitema and Meijerink
2010; Keremane 2015).

These interviews have gone further than many studies to incorporate detailed
analysis of specific water policy development cases to closely examine how key decision
makers used and were influenced (or not) by scientific inputs. This approach contrasts
with the more common focus on procedural structures in policy studies (Laing 2015;
Laing, Thwaites, and Walter 2015).

This research has highlighted the important contribution that political
science approaches can make to the refinement of water leadership strategies and role
definitions. For example, it identified the increasing need to understand the important
role played by ‘trusted advisors’ within government to achieve policy outcomes. It has
also identified the general need for people playing leadership roles in the water sector
to demonstrate political savvy when seeking to influence water policy development,
and to develop a wider set of skills and tools when using science to build a case for
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