Why is harmonisation and alignment difficult for donors? : lessons from the water sector

The Harmonisation and Alignment (H&A) agenda offers important opportunities for the water sector. Lessons from seven Danida-supported water projects and a DGIS study on the mainstreaming of water and environment suggest that this framework has increased awareness about H&A at the country level, but that progress in implementing these agendas is patchy and heavily constrained by national, political and socio-economic contexts.

Important lessons for donors are:

1. In harmonisation start small with regular informal meetings and silent partnerships and build from there
2. In alignment, keep engagement flexible and pragmatic, develop roadmaps based on sector-wide approaches (SWAps) or focus on one sub-sector within a SWAp
3. Donors need to revise internal incentives for changing their individual ways of operation, allowing country ownership to grow.

The sector’s progress towards H&A remains piecemeal; substantial differences occur between countries and within the water supply, water resources management and sanitation sub-sectors. Future efforts in H&A need to reach down to decentralised levels of government, in tandem with strengthening implementation capacity.