Reviewing Sida’s Strategic Guidelines in Water Supply and Sanitation – Phase I and II

In 2012, Sida decided to review the strategic framework for water and sanitation with respect to issues that have more recently come into the limelight of global discourses. Sida commissioned this review process to Sida’s Helpdesk for Environment and Climate within which ORGUT was responsible for the assignment. Sida’s Helpdesk for Environment and Climate Change, co-ordinated by the Centre for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Gothenburg, which is commissioned by Sida to assist Sida staff in integrating environmental (including climate change and disaster risk reduction) perspectives into Swedish development cooperation. The Helpdesk gives support, on demand, by providing advice and strategic guidance on environmental integration at policy, program and project level. It also supports capacity building, development of tools and methods for environmental integration and dialogue concerning environmental issues.

The purpose of the assignment was to ensure policy coherence and strategic focus in Sida’s role as an active participant in the global dialogue as well as to provide operational guidance. The outputs of this process were to:

• Outline Sida’s positions and principles in relation to the emerging issues in WSS
• Provide operational and practical guidance on what these principles mean in practice within Swedish development co-operation.

In this first definition phase of the review process, priority issues were to be identified and assessed in relation to their policy and global development contexts, and a roadmap for Sida’s further strategic and methodological development to be proposed. The definition phase identified two issues that should be given priority in the subsequent phase:

• Implementing the human rights to water and sanitation, and;
• Improving resource efficiency in the nexus of water management, food and energy production.

Sida saw the need in 2012 to review the strategic framework for water and sanitation with respect to issues that have more recently come into the limelight of global discourses. Sida commissioned this review process to Sida’s Helpdesk for Environment and Climate through which ORGUT provides consulting services. ORGUT is part of the association of firms responsible for Sida’s Helpdesk for Environment and Climate Change, co-ordinated by the Centre for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Gothenburg, which is commissioned by Sida to assist Sida staff in integrating environmental (including climate change and disaster risk reduction) perspectives into Swedish development cooperation. The Helpdesk gives support, on demand, by providing advice and strategic guidance on environmental integration at policy, program and project level. It also supports capacity building, development of tools and methods for environmental integration and dialogue concerning environmental issues.