Failing Forward?
Failing Forward? is an initiative that provides an open space for constructive, critical reflections and learnings about challenges, setbacks, and failures in water and climate adaptation interventions.
Global development narratives often foreground Eurocentric or Western technological solutions as best practices in water management and climate adaptation projects and programmes. These projects, which pledge sustainability, inclusivity, and peace, are frequently presented as win-win models for project partners and communities they work with. Yet, these narratives are often depoliticised and largely disconnected from lived realities. This leaves limited room to acknowledge the complexities, dilemmas, trade-offs, unintended consequences, and failures that shape project outcomes.
What makes it even more concerning is that these critical criticisms and reflections often remain confined to internal review reports, closed-door meetings and/or informal conversations. As a result, lessons go unexamined; existing power hierarchies and dominant narratives are reinforced; accountability and structural reforms go unchallenged; failures are buried under bureaucratic, jargon-laden language; and, importantly, communities lose trust, which can undermine genuine collaboration.
In response to this underexplored practice/space in the development sector, Shahnoor Hasan, a Bangladeshi scholar of water governance and the politics of development, conceptualised and co-created Failing Forward? in 2024, with support from the independent knowledge institute Deltares. Since 2025, the initiative has been co-created with Liliane Geerling, programme coordinator for the Dutch government’s international water programme, Partners For Water, and Shiba Kurian, a journalist and research consultant from India working on water and civic governance issues.
The question mark behind Failing Forward? is intentional. It invites critical reflection: are we truly learning from failure, or repeating unexamined mistakes.
How we do this?
Failing Forward? operates through two interconnected activities: interactive workshops and dialogues in international fora, including the Stockholm World Water Week and a digital platform that documents and curates stories from relevant practitioners.
- Failing Forward? Workshop: Since 2024, every year, Failing Forward? organises an on-site workshop where we invite experts working on water and climate projects/programmes to reflect on their dilemmas, struggles, and dominant practices that may impede meaningful impact. The critical insights brought forward by our speakers and participants demonstrate courage in questioning celebrated best practices (even their own), and openly naming failures that international sustainability agendas often obscure. The workshop participants value the safe and empathetic environment created for constructive reflections, something they observe is not always common in international water spaces. At the same time, the workshops acknowledge an important limitation in their endeavour: the perspectives of those most affected by project outcomes remain largely absent from these conversations. Recognising and addressing this absence is itself central to the ongoing work of Failing Forward?
- Failing Forward? Gallery: To bring these conversations beyond the workshop room and to a wider audience who could not be in the room, the team co-created the Failing Forward? Gallery. Here, we welcome water and climate practitioners, government officials and policymakers, researchers, and community representatives from diverse sociocultural identities and epistemic understandings. They identify the failures associated with their collaborations, plans and strategies; share experiences, struggles, and insights; and demonstrate how these experiences can become opportunities for ‘Failing Forward?’. Through curated stories, the invited contributors challenge linear understandings of success as well as the taboo surrounding failures. By documenting their efforts, the Failing Forward? Gallery offers insights on understanding systemic barriers related to funding, governance, technology, participation, and power, while foregrounding diverse ways of knowing, collaborating, and co-enacting water and climate adaptation.
Let’s chat about Failing Forward?
The question mark behind Failing Forward? is intentional. It invites critical reflection: are we truly learning from failure, or repeating unexamined mistakes? If this resonates with you, we warmly invite you to continue the conversation by emailing Liliane Geerling, Programme Manager at Partners for Water and Dr. Shahnoor Hasan, Senior Researcher and Advisor at Deltares.
Partners for Water is a Dutch government programme enhancing water security internationally in long-term cooperation with local partners and the Dutch water sector. By facilitating strategic planning and support in the early stages of innovation, the programme aims to contribute to systemic change for sustainable water management and infrastructure. This is how we initiate impactful changes for a better living environment.
