In the water catchment areas (WCA) defined following the European Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), agricultural action plans should be developed in order to improve water quality. However, the coordination and facilitation between the various local stakeholders is not easy and does not facilitate the writing of action plans, which are often not defined regarding the specific issues of the area until now. [br/] In this context, in order to support the design of action plans that would address specific issues of each water catchment area and that would be shared by the local stakeholders, two different participatory approaches have been designed by researchers from the French National Institute of Agronomy, involving the diversity of stakeholders concerned by the water quality problems. [br/] The first approach, Co-click’eau, is based on the design and evaluation of scenarios of changes in agricultural practices at the scale of a water catchment area, in partnership with local stakeholders. It has been tested in 2011-2012 on three WCA in three different regions of France (Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Haute-Normandie, Centre). The second approach, experienced in Burgundy region in 2011-2012, aimed to support the process of change initiated by a group of voluntary farmers, who proposed an original action plan based on an obligation of results and not of means, and iterative assessment on a long term perspective. [br/] The purpose of this paper is to assess collaborative learning generated in these approaches.