**8.4 System transformation: initial progress, but more to do**

Meadows [10] says that while "the rules of a system define its scope, boundaries, and degrees of freedom," ([10], p. 158) self-organization in human systems reflects the ability to "create whole new structures and behaviors" ([10], p. 159). The authors regard alterations of those types as transformations.

A striking development in the four wards had been the emergence of citizens groups (women's groups; agricultural cooperative) and international nongovernmental organizations (Navjyoti; Red Cross) as system stakeholders. Those changes took place in the space left open by immature local government. As a qualification, however, although international NGOs had successfully encouraged communities

to generate their own responses and at the same time provided resources to make those responses successful, initiatives that were off target prevented the community from self-organizing and ultimately decreased its ability to respond to its own problems. Nonetheless, and more important, interviews suggested that in most cases, those stakeholders who engaged in collaboration in different subcommunities were the most reliable and effective target for new stocks of tangible and intangible resources.

Alterations associated with rules and self-organization had begun to spill over to goals. That is, efforts by IGOs to cooperate with members of villages and wards had for the most part strengthened the capabilities relevant to adaptation and resilience and ultimately to human security. Nevertheless, although increased self-organization had challenged traditional power structures and created new hierarchies, selforganization had also led to conflict as was the case for the protesters who cut off the water flow between Manegau and Manesau. Such instances tended to reduce the levels of trust community members assigned to collaboration partners. At the same time, governments at the ward level—and in some cases even the district level—had not yet earned legitimacy in the eyes of most community members. Essentially, to move on from those types of outcomes and enhance community resilience, there was a need for more learning-by-doing among community members as well as for further maturation and engagement of local government as a system stakeholder.

While communities had made progress in their efforts to promote human security, there were of course avenues for additional progress associated with system transformation. In the wards visited, there was some early evidence of changing paradigms. The most poignant illustration surfaced in the interview with the woman who headed the school for the disabled. She noted that a greater number of community members had come to recognize the fundamental right of their disabled compatriots to dignity and full status.

Furthermore, in the wards visited, there was also some evidence about the rising status and autonomy of women. As a counterpoint, however, there was also evidence that long-held existing paradigms had prevented women from being able to make important decisions regarding water use, elevated threats to their health, reduced their voice in community forums, and constrained their opportunities to develop independent sources of income. The latter set of circumstances suggested that deep-seated cultural dispositions would not be transformed in a short period of time.

**17**

**Author details**

of Jordan

Michael Fratantuono1

\*, Sarah House2

\*Address all correspondence to: fratantu@dickinson.edu

provided the original work is properly cited.

1 Department of International Business and Management, Department of International Studies, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA

3 Dickinson Class of 2018 (Program Coordinator), The Kaizen Company, Kingdom

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

2 Dickinson College Class of 2020 (volunteer), AmeriCorps, USA

and Sam Weisman3

*Collaboration to Counter Fresh Water Scarcity and Promote Human Security*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93693*

*Collaboration to Counter Fresh Water Scarcity and Promote Human Security DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93693*
