摘要：Participatory research has in recent years become a popular approach for problem-orientedscientific research that aims to tackle complex problems in a real management context. Within the EuropeanUnion project NeWater, stakeholder processes were initiated in seven case studies to develop approachesfor adaptive water management. The Uzbek part of the Amudarya River basin was one of the studied riverbasins. However, given the current political and cultural context in Uzbekistan, which provides little roomfor stakeholder participation, it was unclear to what extent participation could be realized there. In thispaper, we present an evaluation of the participatory research carried out in the Amudarya case study withrespect to (i) the choice and application of different participatory methods and their adaptation to the givenpolitical, socioeconomic, and cultural environment, (ii) their usefulness in improving system understandingand developing strategies and measures to improve water management and monitoring, and (iii) theiracceptance and suitability for enhancing policy-making processes in the Amudarya River basin context.The main lessons learned from the comparison of the different participatory methods were (1) thestakeholder process provided an opportunity for meetings and discussions among stakeholders fromdifferent organizational levels and thus promoted communication between different levels andorganizations, and (2) in a context where most stakeholders are not generally involved in policy-making,there is a danger of raising expectations that a research project cannot meet, e.g., of transferring localinterests to higher levels. Our experience shows that in order to choose participatory methods and adaptthem to the Uzbek cultural and political setting (and most likely this applies to other post-Soviet transitioncountries as well), four aspects should be taken into account: the time required to prepare and apply themethod, good information about the participants and the context in which the method will be applied,knowledge of the local language(s), and careful training of local moderators. While these aspects arerelevant to any application of participatory methods, they become even more important in a political andsocio-cultural setting such as that found in Uzbekistan. One added value of the activities and a crucialaspect of a participatory research processes was the capacity building of local scientists and practitioners,which facilitates the further application of the methods.
关键词：adaptive water management; Amudarya River basin; participatory methods; stakeholder;participation
