Thursday, May 8, 2008

Ensuring Partnership Success in the Water and Sanitation Sector

As delegates gather to assess progress and identify challenges and constraints to achieving sustainable development commitments, a consideration of the role of Partnerships is vital. CSD-16 offers an ideal opportunity to draw on some of the experiences of successes and constraints of Type II Water Partnerships in Africa. The Global Public Policy Network on Water Management commissioned a paper Partnerships, and this article summarizes and shares some of the findings.

By: Hannah Stoddart, Stakeholder Forum

The World Summit on Sustainable Development produced two important documents, the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI). Through these negotiated policy documents a new voluntary framework for multi-stakeholder partnerships between governments and other stakeholders was invented. The objective of these ‘Type Two Partnerships’ (TTPs) was to complement governmental efforts. In January 2008, 334 partnerships were officially registered with the CSD, showing how the principle of Partnerships for implementation has been embraced by a number of stakeholders. Whilst their potential as agents for success is considerable, Partnerships are nonetheless a relatively ‘new’ phenomenon and as such require evaluation. This article draws on some of the findings from the GPPN paper on Partnerships, focussing on the EU Water Initiative (EUWI), Partners for Water and Sanitation (PAWS) and the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI). It is significant that there were common problems encountered by each Partnership, and CSD should draw on these experiences to learn lessons for the future.

Equity between Northern and Southern Partners

The principle of Partnership implies equal responsibilities of all parties involved, though the three partnerships under consideration have all encountered problems at some point in ensuring equity between northern and Southern partners. The EUWI suffered for some years from being perceived as a predominantly EU driven process, and an interview with one stakeholder suggested that the involvement of African Partners was compromised due to a “lack of capacity, financial and human, to provide the level of input necessary”. PAWS, in its early years, suffered from similar experiences, and many UK partners felt that it was a northern government-led initiative, with the UK government too firmly positioned in “the driving seat”, most meetings taking place in civil service offices in London and chaired by the government-based Secretariat. WAWI has also encountered difficulties in ensuring equity and shared responsibility between all partners, and a number of stakeholders perceived the dominance of certain actors, in this case the Conrad N Hilton Foundation (CNHF) and World Vision as the biggest funding providers.

All three partnerships have recognised and attempted to address these problems, which should be applauded, but a vital lesson emerges from the experiences of each initiative that whilst the principle of shared governance and parity in decision-making is a good one, indicators should be established for each partnership against which the effectiveness of it operations in relation to its original intentions are assessed.

Inclusive stakeholder engagement

One of the perceived benefits of partnerships has been the potential to involve multi-actor, integrated solutions. This requires effective stakeholder engagement, and both EUWI and PAWS have run into difficulties in this area, especially regarding non-governmental stakeholders at a country level. Operating in Zambia, it was difficult for initiated civil society processes to work due to the weaknesses of civil society organisations focussing on water and sanitation. PAWS has also been criticised for not engaging a wide enough range of stakeholders in its work in South Africa, and in its first five years of existence was heavily focussed on government. In both instances, it may not have been the intention of the partnerships to exclude civil society, so much as a real and perceived lack of capacity. much as a real and perceived lack of capacity. In the case of EUWI in Zambia, the structures did not exist for effective engagement, and in the case of PAWS in South Africa, some key UK NGOs with capacity on-the-ground were effectively not involved with the partnership and as such access to valuable civil society networks were lost.

Both examples illustrate the need for Partnerships to assess capacity for civil society engagement at an early stage in the process. PAWS learnt a great deal from its experience in South Africa and more recent partnership activity in Nigeria has shown more involvement of local civil society actors, facilitated by WaterAid. In addition, the recruitment of a local co-ordinators has helped build legitimacy.

Working through Government and In-Country Ownership

Partnerships work best where they gain legitimacy in the eyes of the government of the country where they are operating. Institutional constraints can often make this difficult. EUWI encountered some problems anchoring the initiative clearly within government, as responsibility in Zambia for water supply and sanitation was shared between five ministries, between. Ensuring all governmental players felt involved with project was therefore a considerable challenge. PAWs also experienced difficulties as there were a number of responsible government departments in South Africa. PAWS surpassed this problem by creating a national Steering Committee which involved representatives from all relevant departments: this should serve as a model for other partnerships where similar problems have been, or potentially could be encountered.

Monitoring and Evaluation

If the intention of Partnerships is to enhance implementation of internationally agreed commitments and targets, then there has to be some way of meaningfully monitoring and evaluating progress. Though evaluating progress of ‘soft assistance’ such as capacity building is more difficult than assessing hard assistance like taps and toilets, there are nonetheless success criteria that can be established which measure against specific outputs. PAWS introduced such measures in 2005/6, and EUWI finalised a methodology of for Monitoring of the EUWI in summer 2006, after a number of years during which accountability and transparency were rather lacking. Within any monitoring criteria should be a set of sensible indicators that define success – for example, the number of latrines or wells that have come about as a result of the WAWI Partnership cannot tell us about their social or environmental impact. NGO Building Partnerships for Development has recently published a detailed study entitled Assessing Partnership Effectiveness which is a valuable tool for developing criteria to evaluate Partnership progress.

This article has intended to highlight some of the problems encountered by three Type II Water Partnerships, many of which have been recognised and addressed by the Partnerships themselves, but which still serve as valuable lessons for the planning, organisation and implementation. As we reach the half-way point for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, with the majority of predictions stating that MDG7 will be not be met, it becomes increasingly important to streamline Partnerships operations and make them as effective as possible from the outset. It is hoped that the analysis of the GPPN in this area will provide valuable insights for the water and sanitation review, and indeed for Partnerships generally, so that lessons can be learned and albeit understandable mistakes may not occur a second time round. After all, we don’t have much time to lose.

This article was written by Hannah Stoddart and is a summary of the paper commissioned by the Global Public Policy Network on Water Management, entitled Partnerships for Water and Sanitation: Lessons Learnt and Recommendations for the Future. This valuable and insightful paper was written by Amy Stewart, and was informed by research for the forthcoming publication by Amy Stewart and Tim Gray:

The Governance of Water and Sanitation in Africa: Achieving Sustainable Development through Partnerships Published by I.B. Tauris & Co.