Decentralised mega visioning: Compiling a global scale, beautifully small vision for water

If Schumacher's notions of intermediate technology and intermediate size were to underpin the task of visioning a future for our natural resources, it is rather likely that the processes and outcomes to apply would be rather different from those that have driven recent global visioning processes. By way of example, the recent efforts of the World Water Council to engineer a single global vision for the world's water resources provide a setting through which we can consider the relative possibilities for the kind of community-engaged, learning-based visioning process that Schumacher would likely advocate and the ‘old school’ hierarchically and expert-driven alternative that was undertaken by the World Water Council. Visioning is an instrument of community building, so the perspective and tools we use to develop visions are of critical importance to the character and resilience of those communities.