Stirling Local Policy Innovation Partnership

This proposal suggests a Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) in the region of the Forth Water Basin (FWB) in Scotland (including the Firth of Forth and the capital city, Edinburgh). Its innovative structures for 'optimising outcomes' from water assemble an excellent academic and stakeholder team, combining the capacities of each for the benefit of all. This unique, multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral partnership addresses three fundamental questions: (i) How can we optimise outcomes from water resources, in the pursuit of sustainable and inclusive economic growth? (ii) How can we raise stakeholder capacity to enable and connect new opportunities from partnership, including community resilience and empowerment? (iii) How can we build productive and harmonious relationships between human and natural systems in these pursuits? In sum, this novel and ground-breaking partnership addresses important, urgent and complex issues that lie at the core of our life and economy. Everywhere in the world people organize in relation to water. Its resources and assets provide essential 'goods' and 'services' and huge opportunities for the economy, society and communities. Harnessing these productively is a key route to optimising growth, value and community outcomes. Yet water is also multi-faceted and difficult to manage. Our work with stakeholders has identified that a diverse, multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral social and public policy approach is urgently needed to square the value and impacts of water for human systems and communities and vice-versa. Also urgently needed is a serious investment in science-based capacity building across all stakeholders, focused on demystifying water's value chains and enabling innovative opportunities to raise the levels of key economic, social, community and environmental benefits. Engagement has been high in Phase 1 of the project, and this has been invaluable in prioritizing our activities in LPIP Phase 2. The shared vision we have developed has also significantly increased the membership of the LPIP. Our solutions-led approach to innovation adds to knowledge concerning key unanswered public policy questions of productivity, place-making, and positive-sum system interactions, particularly in some of the most deprived communities in Scotland. No-one has yet assembled the multi-disciplinary scientific capability we propose here, which builds on world-leading technological innovation to (i) optimise outcomes for communities and (ii) create transferable learning for initiatives and investments in similar contexts across the UK. These ideas are generating enormous energy in stakeholder interactions. More than 80 partners have now provided letters of support across all the key areas required to deliver on our key objective to 'optimise outcomes from water resources in the Forth Water Basin'. Collaboration on this scale is important in building system change. It is strengthening local capacity for innovation, research and knowledge exchange in a way that exceeds the boundaries and boundedness of current networks. With its powerful enabling infrastructure, the Partnership is thus at once a policy network, a learning community, and a direct actor in the water system - able to identify and implement actionable insights and to challenge the conditions that can stifle positive action. 'Optimising outcomes' means raising levels across the board for sustainable and inclusive economic growth, resilient communities and a healthy environment, through innovative solutions, place-making, and positive-sum system interactions. Moreover, our technologically-advanced HsO, and conceptual and methodological development in an important and transferable learning context, will add further value to initiatives and investments in similar water basins across the UK.