Managing water resources equitably, efficiently and sustainably: Programmatic contexts
Programmatic contexts: Managing water resources equitably, efficiently and sustainably.
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, plan and programmes that guide the expenditure in the sector. In the previous chapter, sets of policy principles have been presented as the bedrock of a strategic approach for water-related programming and project activity. These principles provide an operational philosophy and framework for development co-operation 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, usually consisting of low technology, community-managed systems; Municipal services (MS) , which covers major 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 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 programmatic activities covered by the Focus Areas are explored more fully below.
The application of principles to the Focus Areas is intended to be carried out in such a way that all principles are applied in all contexts. This should pre-empt the possibility that any one Focus Area could be treated in isolation from any other. There are many linkages between Focus Areas. Work directed towards provision of basic water supplies which includes sanitation, for example, cannot omit to consider agricultural water management activity, or vice versa. Activities related to Water resources will, by definition, impinge upon activities in all other Focus Areas. The grouping of activities should not detract from the need to view water holistically and foster an integrated management approach across usages and programmatic activities.
The organisation of programming contexts represented by the six Focus Areas aims to accomplish a number of objectives. In the first place, it reflects the broader range of programming activity necessitated by the new thinking about water as a resource whose protection and usage must be comprehensively planned. Secondly, it allows programming contexts with similar social, economic and technological characteristics to be grouped together: Basic services, for example, includes both rural and poor urban settings where small-scale, differentiated installations managed and operated on a local basis are likely to be the norm. Thirdly, it allows the integration of major works for drinking water supplies with those for environmental sanitation, wastewater management and sewerage. And finally, it transcends merely technical categories such as ‘irrigation’ in favour of larger concepts such as Agricultural water use and management, which includes landwater management, flood control, and environmental protection.
The Focus Areas also offer a framework broadly matched to sectors, although they do not correspond precisely with standard administrative sectors (see box). As has already been pointed out in Chapter 1, the term the ‘water sector’ has been strenuously avoided in these Guidelines. Water related activity transcends many sectors, including productive sectors such as agriculture and industry, social sectors such as public health and urban planning, and some new umbrella sectors, such as the environment, which may include water resources management alongside housing, transport and environmental conservation. When the phrase ‘the water sector’ is used, it usually refers only to public health engineering for drinking water supplies and sanitation – which is another reason to avoid it.
The variety of administrative arrangements for water-related activity, both between sectors and at different levels of national, local and municipal authority, makes it easier to distinguish between categories of activity than classify water activity by sector. It is a part of the operational philosophy expressed in these Guidelines 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 will need to be examined in and integrated with the work of other sectors and administrative departments.
The existence of such a Ministry does not preclude the possibility that certain water-related activities receiving development assistance will fall under the aegis of another ministry (or public sector body answerable to a ministry): industry, agriculture, energy or public health are obvious possibilities. The concept of Focus Areas for programming activity suggests, but does not prescribe, 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. 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 need to be notionally integrated with larger water-related development policies, plans and programmes