Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung
Center for Development Research
Universität Bonn
Workshop Report
Following the Innovation part 2:
ZEF/UNESCO Project team develops strategies for innovation diffusion in
second FTI workshop in Urgench from June 1-5 2008
Operationalising the technologies, concepts and tools for improved land and water
management in the ZEF/UNESCO Project in Uzbekistan (Follow-the-Innovation, FTI), was the
goal of a workshop which took place in Urgench, Uzbekistan, from June 1 to June 5 2008.
Twenty-two junior and senior scientists from different disciplines of the project participated in
the workshop.
Facilitated by Laurens van Veldhuizen of ETC Ecoculture and Mehmood Ul Hassan of ZEF, the
participants of the workshop discussed and trained tools for identifying and engaging with the
relevant stakeholders at community, administration and policy levels. The workshop offered a
mixture of conceptual and practical input sessions, working groups, plenary discussions and
games, as well as tools for various stages of implementation, i.e. stakeholder identification,
stakeholder engagement, designing joint experiments, participatory monitoring, and evaluation.
The participants then identified and prioritized the following four potential innovations from the
project research to be communicated to and shared with stakeholders.
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Introduction of conservation agriculture (zero tillage, precision land leveling, soil fertility
management.) Coordinator: Oybek Egamberdiyev).
Improved soil salinity assessment (irrigation scheduling, salinity control). Coordinator:
Akmal Akramkhanov).
Improving water management in Water User Associations through collective action
(Coordinator: Iskandar Abdullayev).
Afforestation (Coordinator: Asia Khamzina).
Corresponding to the four innovation topics, four inter-disciplinary teams were set up. A road
map was drafted for broadening and deepening the participation from relevant stakeholders,
offering them to join and follow-up on the project innovations. These plans will be finalized in
consultation with the key stakeholders in the end of June 2008, after which the teams will start
implementing and monitoring the joint experiments.
During the workshop’s evaluation the participants’ uttered their content with the workshop as
well as with its outcome. They said, their capacities for working with the stakeholders had been
strengthened considerably by the skills and tools provided and trained during the workshop.
This workshop was the second in a series of five planned training workshops on Implementing,
improving and adapting with target groups: Follow the Innovation. The first one took place in
Bonn in February 2008, the next one is scheduled for Urgench in November 2008.
Contact:
Bernd Kuzmits, email: bkuzmits@uni-bonn.de
Mehmood Ul Hassan, email: mhassan@uni-bonn.de