Oral Presentations:
Strengthening enabling environments
Improving the resilience of water resource and WASH management and services requires engaging with the human and governance systems behind decision-making and resource allocation. Progressing net-zero approaches to water resources and WASH requires human and governance systems that extend well-beyond these sectors. Achieving the ambitions – of resilient and climate-mitigating water and WASH systems will require enabling environments to embrace a systems view.
A systems perspective helps us to recognise that the water resources and WASH enabling environment need to work effectively as a whole system and is only as strong as its weakest component. A strong enabling system provides the legal, organisational, fiscal, informational, political and cultural contexts to make ‘good’ decisions. Such a system would include clear institutional arrangements, legal and regulatory frameworks, inclusive stakeholder engagement, be supportive of innovation, and require transparency and accountability. It should connect across and between scales, from local to international, and across institutional siloes.
A systems perspective also emphasizes water’s interconnections and interdependencies with many other sectors. Water-related institutions and actors must seek collaborations with other sectors – this too requires capacities, political and cultural contexts that enable such cross-sectoral action and learning of lessons. We must strengthen various aspects of WRM and WASH governance and enabling environments to ensure sound and inclusive water governance that respects and builds on social and environmental capital.
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