The water-related programming and project activity shall be aligned with the National Sector Framework i.e. the set of national policies, laws, strategies and guidelines together with the institutions and systems that make them work; including budgets, strategies and programmes that guide the expenditure in the sector. In the previous chapter, sets of policy principles have been presented as a foundation for a strategic approach for water-related programming and project activity. These principles provide an operational philosophy and framework for sector development in areas relating to water resources management and service delivery. In this chapter, the programming contexts for the application of the policy principles are presented. These have been called ‘Focus Areas’, in keeping with terminology adopted in the Earth Summit document, Agenda 21.

These Focus Areas allow programming contexts to be grouped according to six broad types of activity: Water resources (WR) which includes all activities designed to assess the availability of the natural resource, protect its quality, and plan its use; Basic services (BS) , which covers service provision in rural areas and marginal or poor urban areas, often consisting of low technology systems managed by local authorities, community structures or both; Municipal services (MS) , which covers urban and industrial installations and systems, including wastewater treatment and sewerage systems; and Agricultural (A), which covers installations and activities related to agricultural use of water, especially for irrigation; Energy (E), which, for this guideline, covers water use for energy from hydropower energy only, and Sector Performance (SP), covering mainly how the national sector framework is conceived and how it functions. No pre-determined priority is given to any one Focus Area as compared to any other. The programme activities covered by the Focus Areas are explored more fully below.

The application of policy principles is intended to be carried out in all Focus Area contexts. This should pre-empt the possibility that any one Focus Area could be treated in isolation from any other. While the limits between sectors can be artificially defined, there are in reality many overlaps, and the same can be said for the sub-sectors, resulting in many linkages between Focus Areas. For example work directed towards provision of basic water supplies should also include sanitation, and waste water management should consider agricultural water management activity and vice versa. Activities related to Water Resources (WR) will, by definition, impinge upon activities in all the other Focus Areas. Any grouping of activities should contribute to the need to view water holistically and foster an integrated management approach across usages and programme activities.

The programming contexts occurring within the six Focus Areas aim to accomplish a number of objectives. In the first place, they reflect a broader range of programming activity by viewing water as a resource whose protection and usage must be comprehensively planned. Secondly, they allow programming contexts with similar social, economic and technological characteristics to be grouped together: Basic services, for example, will include both rural, poor or peri-urban settings where small-scale installations managed and operated on a local basis are likely to be the norm. Thirdly, they allow for the integration of major water supply works with those of  sanitation and wastewater management. Finally, this type of programming transcends simple technical categories such as ‘irrigation’ in favour of broader concepts such as Agricultural water management; incorporating land management, flood control, and environmental protection.

The Focus Areas offer a framework broadly matched to sectors, but they do not correspond precisely with standard administrative sectors (see figure 4 below). As has already been pointed out in previous chapters, the term ‘water sector’ applies to water-related activities that transcend many sectors, including primary resource sectors such as forestry or mining, productive sectors such as agriculture and industry, social sectors such as public health and urban planning, and sectors such as environment which themselves include water resources and general environmental management.

Box 3.1 Focus Areas - possible administrative departments:

The variety of administrative arrangements for water-related activities, both between sectors and at different levels of national, local and municipal authority, makes it easier to distinguish between categories of activity rather than to classify water activity by sector use. It is a part of the operational philosophy expressed in the Toolkit that, even in countries where there is a separate Ministry of Water Resources – which is the case where scarcity of water or some other factor makes water politically important – water-related policy still requires integration with other ministries, sectors and administrative departments.

Even with the existence of a Ministry of Water Resources; water-related activities can and do have development projects in common with other ministries (or a public sector body answerable to a ministry) such as public health, agriculture or transport. The concept of Focus Areas for programming activity suggests the most appropriate administrative aegis for any given project. Certain water-related projects, especially in the context of basic water supply and sanitation services, may be carried out in direct partnership with community-based organisations and NGOs or be part of a school improvement program within the Ministry of Education. However, even in these cases it will be necessary to consider which government administrative entity or entities need to be involved, or at least kept informed, during the planning and implementation process. Even micro level projects should be integrated where possible with larger water-related development policies, plans and programmes in order for results to be complementary.