Introduction

The strategic approach presented in Part I of the Guidelines provides a framework of policy principles and programming contexts for waterrelated interventions. Planners, officials, and development workers are expected to use it as a guide to decision-taking. Part II of the Guidelines is designed to enable users to put the strategic approach into effect.

The application of the strategic approach entails identifying problem areas and appropriate responses at every stage of the programme process. Thus the main content of Part II consists of checklists to assist users to put into practice the policy principles set out in Part I, at each of the different stages of the programme process, in each of the Focus Areas.

The user should bear in mind at all times that this is not a manual: these checklists are not meant to be exhaustive, but to act as pointers. Each situation, each problem area for any given Focus Area and any stage of the PCM, not to mention the course of any project, is subject to so many variables that to produce a definitive set of checklists would be impossible. It would, in addition, be neither efficient nor user-friendly.

The whole emphasis of these Guidelines is to avoid prescription, and instead to facilitate a questioning mode of project development, in which sensitivity to changing trends, local variety of economic, social and environmental circumstance, and especially the input derived from stakeholder and user participation, can be reflected.

It is anticipated that the issues identified, and the possible responses described, will lead the user to pursue the most appropriate line of enquiry, and to perceive problems as soluble if all permutations of possible responses are systematically explored. Technical aids supplementary to the checklists which users can draw upon to assist this process are provided in Part III. In addition, initiative and imagination to put all pieces of the puzzle together, and bring the project to effective fruition, will certainly be needed.

The application of the strategic approach takes place at different stages of the programme process, which is identified here according to the Project Cycle Management (PCM) model used for EC development cooperation. (The next section contains a full description of PCM).

In some parts of the PCM process, the problem issues and possible responses are similar for all Focus Areas, whereas in others they are different.

For some checklists, therefore, the material is generic and applicable for all Focus Areas, whereas for others, each Focus Area is presented separately.

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