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There is an increasing call for local measures to adapt to climate change, based on foresight analyses in collaboration with actors. However, such analyses involve many challenges, particularly because the actors concerned may not consider climate change to be an urgent concern. This paper examines the methodological choices made by three research teams in the design and implementation of participatory foresight analyses to explore agricultural and water management options for adaptation to climate change. Case studies were conducted in coastal areas of France, Morocco and Portugal where the groundwater is intensively used for irrigation, the aquifers are at risk or are currently overexploited, and a serious agricultural crisis is underway. When designing the participatory processes, the researchers had to address four main issues: whether to avoid or prepare dialogue between actors whose relations may be limited or tense; how to select participants and get them involved; how to facilitate discussion of issues that the actors may not initially consider to be of great concern; and finally, how to design and use scenarios. In each case, most of the invited actors responded and met to discuss and evaluate a series of scenarios. Strategies were discussed at different levels, from farming practices to aquifer management. It was shown that such participatory analyses can be implemented in situations which may initially appear to be unfavourable. This was made possible by the flexibility in the methodological choices, in particular the possibility of framing the climate change issue in a broader agenda for discussion with the actors.

Boosting the productivity of smallholder farming systems continues to be a major need in Africa. Challenges relating to how to improve irrigation are multi‐factor and multisectoral, and they involve a broad range of actors who must interact to reach decisions collectively. We provide a systematic reflection on findings from the research project EAU4Food, which adopted a transdisciplinary approach to irrigation for food security research in five case studies in Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa and Tunisia. The EAU4Food experiences emphasize that actual innovation at irrigated smallholder farm level remains limited without sufficient improvement of the enabling environment and taking note of the wider political economy environment. Most project partners felt at the end of the project that the transdisciplinary approach has indeed enriched the research process by providing different and multiple insights from actors outside the academic field. Local capacity to facilitate transdisciplinary research and engagement with practitioners was developed and could support the continuation and scaling up of the approach. Future projects may benefit from a longer time frame to allow for deeper exchange of lessons learned among different stakeholders and a dedicated effort to analyse possible improvements of the enabling environment from the beginning of the research process. © 2020 The Authors. Irrigation and Drainage published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage

In the Olifants river basin about 60% of water resource is used in agriculture (DWAF, 2004). Agriculture faces increasing competition from other water users, constraining its contribution to economic growth. Spatial and temporal water shortage for irrigation affects small scale farmers resulting in conflicts on sharing the little available water. This paper presents the River Basin Game (RBG) as a tool for equitable and sustainable water resource use in the Sofaya irrigation scheme in Sekororo, Olifants in South Africa. The area provides an ideal setup for investigative work described below as it lend itself to a mixture of large-scale and small-scale irrigation farmers sharing the same water resource.The river basin game addresses irrigation water use efficiency and access between upstream and downstream users. It is applied with the development of new ideas on the ground, supported by lessons learnt at local, regional and international audiences. The RBG was first developed at University of Anglia, United Kingdom (UK) as a teaching tool and tested in Tanzania under the project Raising Irrigation Productivity And Releasing Water for Intersectoral Needs (RIPARWIN). The current version of the game incorporates a groundwater component.The results reported are from two RBG workshops held in Sekororo. The first workshop consisted of small-scale farmers from different irrigation schemes and researchers, while the second consisted of farmers from Sofaya irrigation scheme.Farmers were able to relate to the board game representation to their reality and accepted the schematic representation of their reality. Firstly, the RBG demonstrated that role-playing can benefit understanding of top-tail inequities of water supply. Secondly, that solutions lie with communities, particularly if given support by formal institutions such as universities, research institutions, government and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) willing to respond to their needs. The game has proved to be an effective discussion support tool that should be upscaled to the Olifants river basin.

ABSTRACT. Stakeholder and public participation in natural resources management (NRM) is now widely accepted as necessary to achieve sustainable development outcomes. Yet, effective implementation of participatory processes necessitates wellcalibrated methods and tools, as well as carefully honed facilitation skills that are difficult to gain without practice. Practitioners and academics leading these processes are thus encouraged to better reflect on, prepare, and justify their interventions, before starting to work in the field with stakeholders. Our paper shows how a Simulation Community of Practice (SCoP) was set up to support improved participatory practice. The specificity of this community is that its members not only discuss planned participatory interventions, but also simulate these processes by adopting roles of future participants, and by working through the different steps of the workshop that will be later implemented in the field. The evaluation of our approach shows that individual and social learning of participants in the SCoP is developed, leading mainly to improved facilitator skills and to calibration of the participatory methods and tools being tested. A space is also provided for deepening reflection on the purposes of the participatory process and the values that guide these interventions. Our experience could provide a model for others around the world to set up their own SCoP to support participatory NRM practice. Further improvements to our SCoP and new ones could be made by enhancing the feedback mechanisms between the field sites and the community, in order to encourage more cumulative learning and to reinforce the members' interest, maintaining their involvement in the community over time.