Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Partner with relevant stakeholders to improve service delivery

Provide evidence that will guide the review and harmonization of laws governing essential service provision and development in the areas of water, roads, physical planning and registration of land title

Engage and educate communities to take care of their environment

Propagate capacity development as about enhancing resourcefulness and not philanthropy

Effectively utilize all resources and equipment available to them



Water utilities
Delegates agreed that access, quality and reliability of water services should improve. Consequently, they asserted that water utilities should:

1. 
   Address issues of non-revenue water
   
2. 
   Establish and properly administer special tariffs for the poor and vulnerable
   
3. 
   Lobby for social (as opposed to commercial) charges for electricity to reduce cost build ups that will make safe water expensive for the poor
   

National level institutions
National level institutions have a role to play in:

1. 
   Mainstreaming of vulnerability issues in national development
   
2. 
   Supporting water and other utility companies in revamping decaying infra- structure, which for water contributes to the high volumes of water unac- counted for
   
3. 
   Harmonizing levies and tariffs on services to reduce cost build up. Examples include NEMA charges for waste collection and for water the burden of levies effectively falls on the consumer
   
4. 
   Building the capacity of subnational public institutions e.g. NEMA.
   

Abbreviations: NEMA, National Environmental Management Authority

5. Discussion

Under LVWATSANI, capacity development was considered an essential project component to ensure sustainable delivery of water and environmental services from the preceding infrastructure investments. The CD interventions were approached from a holistic perspective and engaged with all local actors and their interrela- tions, with organizational and individual capacity gaps, with all WaSH components including water, sanitation, solid waste and hygiene, with the short- and long-term perspectives, and with all issues that were encountered on the ground during the

inception. The CD process was characterized by being responsive to the needs of all local stakeholders, by the integration of relevant technical, economic, behav- ioural and management disciplines, by being issue-based and output-focused, and by aiming both at the creation of effective and learning-oriented individuals and organizations and at improved levels of cooperation between stakeholders. Despite the complexities and challenges involved in implementing the CD programme, the strong and complementary partnership among the international partners, NET- WAS and UN-HABITAT serves as an important leading practice for implementing similar CD programmes.

The capacity development programme comprised 21 different interventions that were implemented through 98 CD events with an average duration of about two days each. They reached out to approximately 2,200 participants from the higher, intermediate and lower organizational levels and social strata and from all stakeholder groups. The CD events resulted in hundreds of action plans, the imple- mentation of which had started even as the CD interventions were still ongoing. A considerable number of the individual and small-scale action plans had even been successfully completed. As could be expected, the larger and more complex plans were encountering problems requiring more time for consultation, resource alloca- tion and alignment with local developmental programmes and processes.

1.