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Water

1.1. Water in Africa. The importance of water resources across much of Africa has repeatedly been and continues to be emphasized. Water has not only been the source of sustenance for populations but has also been a root cause of disaster and dispute. Even today, the world community can only stand by helpless while some areas are devastated by floods and others by drought and famine. Africa has a natural legacy of extreme rainfall variability, resulting in endemic drought and occasional floods, and a colonial legacy of numerous international river basins, each with complex water rights issues that in some cases could even escalate to conflict. In addition there is very low coverage of the urban and rural poor with reliable water and sanitation services coupled with rapidly growing and urbanizing populations. There is also heavy dependence on extensive agriculture with low water use efficiency and poor land management leading to degrading watersheds and deteriorating water quality. The challenges are immense and can only be met through cross-sectoral integration of water resources management policy development and reform; creative solutions to reduce the huge water and sanitation service gap and to enhance water use for food production, particularly through the promotion of user and community management and the mobilization of private sector skills and resources.

1.2. The UNSIA and Water. The UNSIA was launched in March 1996 and was devised to encourage the pooling of efforts by the UN’s agencies and organizations, to have a greater impact on the ground and to better assist the African countries. It was expected that the UNSIA would strengthen the coherence of United Nations assistance to Africa, including that of the Bretton Woods institutions, through more effective coordination, capacity-building and most difficult of all, facilitating the formation of genuine partnerships.

UNSIA goals. The goals of UNSIA include the following:

• help Africa help itself; and
• honor the commitment of the UN system to support African development efforts in African-identified priority areas through appropriate country and regional programs.
• Promote enhanced coherence, synergy, and better coordination of UN System’s work in Africa and in the process reduce the transaction cost to African governments.

Water Cluster objectives. The UNSIA water component itself has four clearly defined objectives each with designated implementing organizations:

• assuring sustainable use of, and equitable access, to freshwater (UNEP, World Bank and UNDP);
• household water security (UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank);
• freshwater assessments (WMO, and UNESCO); and
• water for food production (FAO).

2.1. Evaluating progress. Given the real development needs in Africa, a key question to ask is: what have been the true achievements of the UNSIA Water Cluster and, most importantly, what development benefits have accrued to Africa?

The following provide a brief assessment:-

Development impact. It is important to recognize the extensive activities of the individual agencies – and groups of agencies working together - in Africa; the development impacts are likely to be substantial. Returning to the statement by the UN Secretary-General in March 1997 and factoring in the two primary goals of UNSIA it is evident that the UNSIA water component itself cannot be accredited with major program achievements. The UNSIA water progress to date has not been directly on the ground but has been concentrated on playing an advocacy and coordinating role in promoting water to the development agenda.

Partnerships. It is evident that the UNSIA has contributed, to a certain degree, to a consensus among involved UN agencies that working together in Africa in water management and development is an imperative if development program benefits for Africa are to be optimized. The number of water partnerships in Africa has grown and have become pragmatic and action-oriented. There are numerous, effective, formal and informal partnerships which, while not mandated by UNSIA, can be considered to have been inspired by it. These partnerships are substantive, successful and growing, as they provide strong consensus for the region’s water agenda – giving a sense of security to those countries moving forward. These partnerships are a response to problems seeking solutions, and are therefore practical and effective, bringing partners together with complementary capacity and mandates. A question is whether there could be more partnerships, and better ones.

Resource mobilization. This appears to have been an issue – and a source of misunderstanding - since the launch of the UNSIA. The primary focus of resource mobilization remains the Consultative Groups and Round Tables at country level. ODA for Africa has been subject to a global environment of competing demands and general concern about governance. In addition, the absorptive capacity in Africa for soft credit, such as IDA, has been limited, with IDA resources unallocated. There appears to have been expectations that there would be major incremental resources for agency programs. However, seed funding is often needed to jump-start agency programs – such funds are yet to be orchestrated by concerned agencies through the UNSIA Water Cluster.

Interagency dialogue. The Water Cluster has provided a forum for the UN partners to debate their particular view of the situation in Africa as well as to bring forward differing visions and methodologies for achieving progress.

In conclusion, it appears, however, that the process has become stagnant with no solid agenda for the future due to the ongoing debate among organizations as to ownership, funding and accountability of the Water Cluster as well as on development activities being conducted independently or by smaller partnerships, not directly related to UNSIA.

2.2. Factors contributing to lack of progress. There are a number of factors which have contributed to the apparent stagnation of the water cluster in the UNSIA framework compared to what was intended as a more direct, integrated and well financed approach to program delivery. These constraints and limitations include such difficult to overcome barriers as:

multi-sectoral agenda -- water resource management is not a unique vertical sector that can be moved forward in a vertical manner without regards to cross-sectoral integration in such areas as water supply, energy, agriculture, environment, industry, health and others. This is the challenge of integrated water resources management – which makes it so very difficult within a country. This is unlike other UNSIA clusters such as health and education where the skills, interests and objectives tend to be unified with a common, sectoral path;

unfunded mandate -- this initiative in its entirety has long been the subject of misperceptions as regards to how it would be funded. Would there be new additional funds provided? Would it be a recompilation of existing activities trapped in their original commitments and obligations brought together under a new name? These questions have not been answered but past progress reports indicate that a number of water sector activities can be considered to be within the spirit and framework of UNSIA. In reality, funding has come from regular program sources, some internal reallocations, and some trust funds provided by bilateral agencies. Examples include the World Bank and UNEP. In the case of UNEP it has been reported that there are specific budgetary allocations in support of water and other UNSIA activities in which the agency plays a coordinating or participating role.

competing initiatives – since the Dublin and Rio Meetings in 1992, the world has finally recognized the importance of water resource management and has created numerous water related initiatives, many of which are competing for the attention and resources of donors and African governments alike. These include the (earlier) Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council; Global Water Partnership; World Water Council; World Water Commission; Inter-agency Group for Water in Africa (IGWA), as well as others. These partnerships have been established over the past decade to respond to real and perceived problems, and they have mostly been effective in bringing partners together with complementary capacity and mandates. As integrated water resources management has been increasingly recognized to be a critical goal for the achievement of sectoral objectives (e.g. in rural water supply, or irrigation), so national and international partnerships have been perceived as a key instrument to achieve this goal. However, the UNSIA Water Cluster does not appear to have worked with, or benefited from, these other initiatives to enhance program delivery.

lack of communication with other clusters.--lack of integration of lessons from other UNSIA clusters is one of the setbacks. It appears the Water Cluster has operated in isolation from the other clusters of the UNSIA, some of which (e.g. health and education?) have demonstrated successful results. These results need to be analyzed and the lessons learned integrated into a revitalized approach to coordination and implementation activities.

3.1. Re-inventing the Water Cluster. There seems to exist a widespread concern that an ambitious and well financed UNSIA Water Cluster - as envisaged in 1996 - may not have been the best strategic approach to have a significant development impact in Africa. Given the current situation and the common concern that action is needed, it is important to consider re-inventing the Water Cluster and developing a clear coordinated strategy to move forward. This strategy will need to be thoroughly discussed, adopted and then implemented by all of the participating agencies.

3.2. Possible building blocks of a Strategy. Initial elements of such a strategy could be based on the following concepts.

• Prioritize and sharpen the focus of the UNSIA Water Cluster: do less but better.
• Seek to make ongoing and planned programs better through stronger partnerships, optimizing the use of existing financial resources.
• Build on existing partnerships – expanding where value can be added.
• Build new partnerships where critical gap exists and benefits are clear;
• Build upon (integrate with) other initiatives – e.g. GWP Framework for Action;

Consider limiting partnerships to a very few key areas of focus which are in line with the development priorities of Africa and the United Nations. For the purposes of discussion, the following two areas are proposed (each of which would involve many of the UNSIA partners):

focus on basic services to the poor: scaling up Community Water Supply and Sanitation services to the urban and rural poor, including advocacy/promotion, community development, private sector involvement, capacity building and investment aspects; and

focus on water resources management: national water resources policy reform and cooperation on international waters, including resource assessment, legal, economic, institutional, capacity building and investment aspects.

Work on these key areas in a wide range of countries in response to demand and building on existing and planned activities (in contrast to earlier strategy of working on full range of Cluster activities in a few countries and one river basin).

Seek limited incremental resources to fund Water Cluster coordination, communication and promotion activities.

Following substantial, visible and measurable progress:

• additional cluster areas for partnership (water for food, energy, etc.) could be added to the program; and
• there could be an opportunity to push for substantial incremental resources (which will mean reallocation from other development programs).

 

3.3. Developing a Strategy. The further development of a strategy could be launched at the initial consultations in the Hague and further developed at the next Water Cluster meeting. The strategy development process could include considering the following:

‘internal’ factors:

• replicable success factors from other UNSIA clusters;
• relevant ongoing UN initiatives, agency activities and existing partnerships;
• merging similar and complementary UN programs/initiatives (e.g., integrate IGWA with UNSIA –Water Cluster);
• Synergy between the goals of UNSIA and the strategic vision of other frameworks such as UNDAF and CDF;
• improving communications, e.g.:

• web site with newsletter and database;
• special support from the UNSIA Secretariat;
• clarifying agency responsibilities for the Water Cluster; and

‘external’ factors

• linking the Water Cluster to broader water initiatives in Africa, to ensure complementarity;
• critical gaps: prioritize and make recommendations for shared responsibilities to fill these gaps;
• linking the strategy to the GWP Framework for Action for Africa;
• anchoring the process in Africa through an African advisory group;

resources: the specific need for incremental resources (e.g. for advisory group, communications), recognizing the realities of the situation;

monitoring and evaluation: the need for Monitoring and Evaluation of the UNSIA Water Cluster – and potentially of the full range of water partnerships in Africa.

Considering the need for consensus among UN agencies, there are likely to be a limited number of options open to the UNSIA Water Cluster on what directions the Cluster should take. In order to stimulate the discussion at the Hague Meeting, four possible but not definitive options are listed below. Three of these options do provide an opportunity to achieve significant results for Africa. Clearly, any other scenarios which will move the UNSIA agenda forward can be presented and discussed at the Hague Meeting. The four options proposed in order to stimulate the discussions are as follows:

• A free-standing UNSIA water program (major new funding) -- This option would consist of designing and implementing a separate program of action above and beyond ongoing agency or multi-agency activities, mobilizing resources accordingly (close to the original path).
• Pragmatic UNSIA water program (limited new funding) -- A Water Cluster which is downsized from the original model to a level where agency cooperation and a limited program of action produces visible development impact and value added with some incremental resources coming from new commitments (e.g. bilateral sources).
• UNSIA as a promoter, integrator and monitor for water activities (seed funding only) -- Adaptation of the original model to an oversight and coordination function intended to motivate ongoing agency/multi-agency activities to achieve much improved results through integrated action, with seed funding needed only to support the coordination function.
• UNSIA Water Cluster overtaken by events – The gradual phasing out of this cluster as an initiative that has been overtaken by both time and events.

This paper does not recommend any option over another (in order not to pre-empt creative discussions) but will conclude simply by stating that either a concerted effort is needed to develop a truly functioning approach that delivers additional developmental results on the ground, or the UNSIA Water Cluster has no role to play.

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