QUESTION
UN interventions in the WES Sector - Need advice on resources and experiences to explore

Original Query: Preeti Soni, UNDP, New Delhi
Posted: 10 July 2006

The UN System in India is in the process of formulating its next UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for 2008-2012 in consultation with partners and stakeholders. The programs of the UN organizations based in India will design their programs within this framework, which is harmonized with the 11th Five Year Plan.

Following a preliminary situational analysis pertaining to the broad objective of achieving environmental sustainability, the key focus areas for the UN in the specific area of water resource management and environmental sanitation have been identified as follows:

  1. Facilitate strengthening of policies and programmes at various levels for pro-poor, equitable and demand-responsive water governance in rural and urban areas.
  2. Work closely with various stakeholders to design and implement system-wide communication and advocacy strategies on critical challenges faced in the water resources and environmental sanitation sector.
  3. Provide critical management and policy support to improve the implementation and sustainability of national programmes such as Total Sanitation Campaign, Swajaldhara, Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme, and others. In this regard, multistakeholder dialogues may also be organized to bring in different perspectives on the relevant issues.
  4. Provide technical guidance and support to programme implementing agencies through a network of technical resource centres and capacity building programmes.
  5. Provide support to government in strengthening result based monitoring systems through appropriate tools such as report cards based assessments, social audits, etc. This can be a part of an overall environment assessment report.
  6. Experiment with new strategies in selected districts in above areas and, where possible, scale them up.

Members may want to offer comments from two perspectives:
a) In your view, are the above proposed focus areas both appropriate and strategic for UN intervention, or are there alternative areas we should be investigating?
b) Can members point the Working Group to resources and experiences we should explore when taking up any of these initiatives?

Please see attachment below for the responses.

by
10 July 2006