Mutual accountability and multi-stakeholder partnerships in national WASH systems
Kigogo, Tanzania. Credit: Shahidi Wa Maji
The following blog provides a summary of learning from breakout room two at our World Water Week session ‘How accountability is accelerating progress towards SDG6.’ Parts 3, and 4 will be published shortly.
This breakout room featured introductory presentations from Nishrin Qowamuna of the Center for Regulation, Policy, and Governance, and George Njoroge of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Nishrin evaluated different multi-stakeholder platforms in Indonesia. This included the National POKJA AMPL, an ad hoc forum for government institutions in charge of WASH). It also included Jejaring AMPL, a more informal platform, with a broader membership including representatives from government, NGOs, private sector, and external supporting agencies).
Her presentation highlighted how both serve as platforms for communication and coordination but they do not necessarily result in mutual accountability between WASH stakeholders. Institutions in the country tend to be hierarchical. WASH stakeholders are often expected to be deferential, making it difficult to hold government actors mutually accountable for their actions.
To strengthen mutual accountability in the sector, she recommended a forum dedicated to mutual accountability by utilising or redesigning existing multi-stakeholder platforms. This would provide a space for open discussion and debate and adjustments for performance. She concluded by highlighting the potential of SWA’s Mutual Accountability Mechanism to bind stakeholders around commitments and implementation. However, strong government leadership would be necessary to convince other WASH stakeholders to get involved.
George discussed the multi-stakeholder landscape in Kenya, with a frank assessment of relationship dynamics between different stakeholders. He described government-led stakeholder platforms, such as its National steering group on SDG6, as being ad hoc/dormant. However, he observed that other groupings such as the Kenya Water and Sanitation Civil Society Network and the Water Service Providers Association and Water and Sanitation Donor Development remained active.
There was also increasing activity from the sub-national Caucus for County Chief Officers on Water and Environment Officers. While the stakeholder landscape revealed a lack of national leadership, the budget platform for sub-national governments was important for WASH implementation at the county level.
Some stakeholders were missing in the governance process. Research and learning constituencies, businesses and utility providers were underrepresented. This resulted in poor planning and policy implementation. George’s talk highlighted how stakeholder partnerships and interactions are happening on a mutually agreeable basis, but with weak mutual accountability. He referenced as examples, ‘soft accountability’ where stakeholders present unvalidated strategic plans or performance reporting, and weak mutual accountability on agreed objectives, commitments, or outputs. Despite these flaws, George pointed to the SWA Mutual Accountability Mechanism as a remedy to fix such problems.
Group discussion considered SWA’s Mutual Accountability Mechanism as a collaborative framework for governments and other stakeholders to make commitments together on specific actions each actor will take to achieve targets towards the SDGs. Participants agreed on the need for:
Strong multi-stakeholder platforms or partnerships to provide a basis for accountability
A common vision, mission and trust between different actors
Equalising power between different actors so that others can effectively hold governments to account.
Others suggested that business and civil society should align their commitments to government leadership, and expressed concern at the omission of some voices from stakeholder platforms. Participants recognised the need to include diverse voices, including both the private sector and research & learning organisation. The core recommendation emerging from the discussion was to adequately fund multi-stakeholder platforms and partnerships, while also supporting learning about how they can operate effectively.