Communication within multi-stakeholder platforms in water resource management: Ethiopian case study

Despite Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) being advocated as a sustainable approach to water resource management, it is not clear how to implement it. Participatory management has been advocated by scholars and leading agencies, but apart some tools that can address involvement in a single sector (e.g. irrigation), models to implement a multi-stakeholder approach are still under development. Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) seem to be a potential candidate for an organizational structure which could support this challenge. This paper analyses if there is the capacity among stakeholders to handle water-related information, in order to support a meaningful participation within the MSPs, by investigating the Ethiopian context as a case study.