Report water cluster meeting march 2000, Hague

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Report

UNSIA Water Cluster Technical Working Group Meeting

20 March 2000, The Hague

A Technical Working Group Meeting of the UNSIA Water Cluster was held on 20 March 2000 in The Hague, the Netherlands during the Second World Water Forum. The meeting was organized by the UNSIA Secretariat under the Chairmanship of Mr. K. Y. Amoako, Executive Secretary of ECA and Co-Chair of the ACC Steering Committee on UNSIA. A good number of agency representatives attended the meeting. The agenda and a list of participants are attached.

Introduction:

The Executive Secretary welcomed all the participants and indicated that this Technical Working Group meeting provided a watershed for the Water Cluster. He noted that the Water Cluster has been very problematic from the start, as it cuts across many priority issues such as environment, health, and food production. As a background, he highlighted the genesis and evolution of the UNSIA as a framework for collaborative work among the UN System agencies. He recalled that UNSIA’s vision at the time of its launch in March 1996 was to promote the ownership and leadership of the development process by Africa, ensure enhanced coherence and synergy and better coordination of UN system’s work and reduce the transaction cost of development assistance while also ensuring greater and lasting impact on the ground. He regretted that the Initiative was being driven by what it was not meant to be instead of what it was meant to be. He then clarified that the US$25 billion talked about at the launch of UNSIA was an estimate of resource requirements of which nearly 90% was for the social sectors of Education and Health, and that it was not meant to be additional resources for agencies as many agencies had assumed.

The Chairman reminded participants that contrary to the original vision of UNSIA to focus, many priority areas were added to it at the insistence of many of the agencies. The High Level Retreat of February 1998 that reviewed UNSIA’s progress had recognized that only a few clusters, namely Education, Health, Harnessing Information Technology for Development, and Governance had made notable progress and had therefore recommended that the UNSIA should focus only on those areas while continuing to add others as appropriate. However, the First Regional Coordination meeting held in March 1999 and chaired by the Deputy Secretary General, decided in response to the recommendations of the ECOSOC that UNSIA should provisionally be a mechanism for coordination of all UN system’s work in Africa and be inclusive. This recommendation was endorsed by the ACC in its October 1999 session. These two decisions have left the UNSIA with added responsibility and the dilemma to focus while at the same time being inclusive.

With respect to the work of the clusters, he highlighted the progress made in the clusters on Education, Health, Information Technology and Governance and indicated that there may be some lessons to be drawn from their experiences. With regard to the Water Cluster, he recognized that agencies have been engaged in numerous activities and have developed partnerships since the launch of the Initiative. However, the progress of the cluster in specifically responding to the vision of UNSIA has been disappointing. As a way forward, he encouraged participants to use the Draft Strategy Note prepared for the meeting as a guide in discussing the issues at hand and agreeing on a way forward.

Discussion:

Review of Progress and Lessons Learnt: All the agency representatives highlighted examples of their programmes in Africa, many of them involving two or more UN agencies as well as bilateral and other multilateral donors. They confirmed that they are carrying out these activities outside of the UNSIA framework. They also cited some of the constraints to a holistic water cluster programme within the UNSIA framework. These include:

A multi-sectoral agenda - Water cannot be vertically integrated without cross-sectoral and trans-boundary considerations including energy, agriculture, environment, industry, and health, as well as the lake and river basins. Thus, the formulation of a common unified objective becomes difficult.
Lack of Agency Commitment - Many of the participants acknowledged that agencies have failed to express their real commitment to UNSIA through the allocation of human and financial resources to support its programme. UNEP indicated its being an exception as it has a budget to support UNSIA activities. By and large majority of agencies have continued to engage in activities of their regular mandate while recognizing that there are commonality of objectives with that of UNSIA. Given that there are resources such as the IDA allocation to African countries that have not been disbursed, clusters could help through coordinated efforts and in building the requisite absorptive capacity in these countries.
Competing initiatives and mechanisms of coordination - over the last few years there have been a number of water initiatives put in place. These include the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, Global Water partnership, World Water Council, World Water Commission, and the Inter-agency Group for Water in Africa (IGWA). The UN system is actively involved in all these initiatives. At the country level there are a number of coordination mechanisms including the CSN, UNDAF and more recently the CDF. It has, in the past been difficult to maintain water as an area of priority within these mechanisms due to the trans-boundary nature of the issues to be addressed. Consequently, it is often subsumed under Poverty Reduction. The challenge to bring it out as a clear priority remains and the UNSIA framework can provide for it, an appropriate platform.
Communication gaps – there is insufficient exchange of information not only among the various agencies engaged in the water cluster but also with other clusters such as education and health, where lessons can be learnt. For instance no information has been made available regarding the follow up on the decision of the last Technical Working Group meeting on Water in which four countries and one river basin were identified for joint programming work. As a way of overcoming this difficulty in the future, the World Bank offered to provide financial support to strengthen the capacity of the UNSIA Secretariat to create and manage a web site for the exchange of information among participating agencies.

Value Added of UNSIA: Recognizing that the agencies are developing their strategic partnerships around specific problems, some representatives raised the question of whether there is any value added in working within the UNSIA framework. One agency representative noted that there has been no manifestation of agency commitment and this has posed the problem of reporting on substantive activities of UNSIA to the CPC and other inter-governmental bodies. Others also echoed this sentiment. It was further noted that clear agreements have already been reached through inter-agency dialogue on programmes such as the Water and Sanitation with a clear policy consensus and institutional arrangements worked out with African countries. In such instances, the UNSIA can reinforce these efforts and not duplicate them. Concern was also expressed about UNSIA not featuring in the work of the ACC thematic subcommittees that deal with coordination issues and report to the ACC. In response to these concerns, the Chairman indicated that it was each cluster's responsibility to determine whether UNSIA would add value to its work and on the basis of that decision, proceed with implementation activities. He suggested that the group may wish to consider the Africa Water vision as a common platform, examine the objectives of UNSIA water cluster within that context, identify available instruments and means of implementation and assign responsibilities for action.

Further on the question of value added, the participants considered whether Africa would benefit if the agencies actively engaged in the various partnerships and programmes, organize themselves better around a common vision and identify each other’s comparative advantage and complimentarity in the implementation of the objectives of that vision. It was agreed that having organized their work in this way, agencies could also report collectively on what they are doing to the Regional Consultation and other intergovernmental bodies. The Africa Water Vision presented at the Second World Water Forum was thus considered to be a good starting point. To be demand responsive, agencies identified a number of programmes for collaborative efforts within the UNSIA framework. These include the Water and Sanitation Programme (which was set up with a strong and clear policy consensus but not yet implemented), the Lake Chad Basin, the Nile Initiative, and the Guinea Worm eradication programme (with funding from the Turner Foundation). It was also agreed that institutional linkages that avoid duplication and promote cross-referencing of activities should be forged between the Water Cluster under UNSIA and the IGWA since the latter is based at the ECA. The possibility of the Africa Development Bank setting up a Trust Fund in support of Water was also raised and this is to be explored by the coordinating agencies.

A Strategy for Moving Forward:

The participants agreed on a strategy for moving the Water Cluster forward based on:

A shared vision;
Sharpening the focus of collaboration;
Building on existing partnerships;
Creating new partnerships where there is clear value added;
Rationalized institutional arrangements; and
Effective communication;

Conclusions and Recommendations:

There was a general agreement that the Africa Water Vision would serve as the overarching vision for the UNSIA Water Cluster’s activities by the UN System. It is a vision that has benefited from wide consultation among African countries and embraced by the ECA, the ADB and the OAU. The World Bank, UNEP and WMO as the Coordinating agencies of the Cluster were requested to prepare, in consultation with the other agencies, a forward looking strategy paper drawing on the conclusions of the TWG meeting for presentation to the Joint ACC Steering Committee/Regional Consultation Meeting scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 19 and 20 June 2000.

It was agreed that the Strategy Note should contain key elements of practical programme activities and define/identify the following:

How the UN system would help African countries to implement the Africa Water Vision by identifying 4 or 5 areas of focus in which several agencies would work collaboratively together.

How implementation of the focus areas would be realized at the country level by indicating clearly, how the work would feature in country level exercises involving mechanisms such as UNDAF, PRSP, and CDF and also spelling out the regional dimension.

The kind and nature of strategic partnerships among the UN System agencies as well as with bilateral donor agencies, NGOs, and the private sector. How to ensure better convergence in the linking of investment resources with on-going viable priority programmes so as to help Africa take up and utilize available funds for greater developmental impact.

A communication strategy that includes the development of a website for the cluster that would be based at the UNSIA Secretariat with regular update on the cluster's activities and links to related web sites.

An institutional arrangement that harmonizes the work of the various frameworks and entities such as the IWGA with the UNSIA cluster.

Enhanced coherence and better coordination with broader and substantive information sharing, setting of benchmarks and performance indicators for measuring progress;

A resource mobilization strategy that includes leveraging already existing funds such as GEF, Turner Foundation Grants, etc.

List of Participants

1. Mr. K.Y. Amoako, UNECA

Executive Secretary and Co-Chair

ACC Steering Committee of UNSIA

(Chairman)

2. Mr. Arumyan Kandiah, FAO

Programme Officer

IPTRID

arumyan.kandiah@fao.org

3. Mr. Royal Kastens, IAEA

Head of Concepts and Planning

Section