Knowledge uptake from Lived Experience to complement scientific knowledge in urban policymaking regarding sustainable water management

Abstract

This paper addresses the challenge of incorporating Lived Experience into knowledge production to accelerate sustainable development. Earth’s natural resources are being depleted as the world’s population grows. One of them is our water. Local knowledge development for future-proof water management in urban areas, therefore, seems to become increasingly important. Often this is embedded in local participation procedures. However, practitioners are not sufficiently aware of the potential contribution of Lived Experience of residents and the collaborative action learning process to develop area-specific local knowledge that can contribute to local policymaking and possibly also to scientific knowledge development.

We performed the ex-post case study in the Bloemenbuurt in the municipality of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. An area with an excessively low groundwater level, which causes the wooden piles of the foundations of the houses to become dry and may collapse. We conducted a document study and interviews applying two triangulation steps. The results were that we revealed three types of local knowledge development originated through Lived Experience. In addition, this developed local knowledge was embedded in the execution work. However, not yet in policymaking or scientific knowledge development. Based on the results, we can conclude that a common cause is required to achieve collective action learning, including Lived Experiences. Moreover, we inferred that the communication barriers and knowledge uptake failure mechanisms should be scrutinised in a collective action learning process, as well as the elements of trust and power.