UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Mainstreaming Gender in Water Management

A Practical Journey to Sustainability: A Resource Guide

Preface

The quest for development has led to a consensus that participation by both men and women - not as objects of development but as equal partners – is essential for sustained interventions. This has encouraged the promotion and use of gender-sensitive approaches in water and sanitation programmes and, more recently, in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Forums such as the International Drinking Water Supplies and Sanitation Decade Review (1990), the Dublin Conference (1992), the World Summit on Sustainable Development (1992), the Beijing Conference (1995) and the World Water Conference (2000) have endorsed these concepts.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has developed a new strategy, drawing on such global thinking on issues of IWRM. The strategy is linked to four UNDP focus areas: poverty alleviation, livelihoods, environmental protection and gender equality. As part of its ongoing efforts to support both IWRM and gender mainstreaming strategies, as well as contribute to more effective integrated water resources management initiatives, UNDP’s Environmentally Sustainable Development Group (ESDG) has prepared this ‘Resource Guide for Mainstreaming Gender in Integrated Water Resources Management’. Launched under the ESDG-wide Global Programme (as part of the Bureau for Development Policy’s (BDP) efforts to develop programmes and policy tools to be used primarily by country offices to enhance UNDP programming), this initiative of the water programme is closely integrated into an overarching strategy on gender and environment within UNDP.

While a lot of effort has been invested in developing gender mainstreaming materials, a major challenge facing programme officers and water and gender specialists is that such information and materials are anchored in different institutions, resource centres, Web sites and organizations. Without a proper guide as to where to find specific information, mainstreaming gender becomes debilitating. It is against this backdrop that UNDP has developed a Resource Guide summarizing the concept of gender in IWRM and guiding the user to existing materials and tools.

The resource guide is by no means exhaustive and is not meant to duplicate, but rather to support previous efforts by consolidating available materials. UNDP and its partners will aim to continually update the guide in order to keep abreast o f new materials, information and concepts.

Developed in consultation with stakeholders in various regions and supported by the Gender Water Alliance, gender specialists and practitioners, the guide consists of five parts:

1.  An introduction and overview notes on gender mainstreaming in IWRM,

2.  A guide to existing tools and materials,

3.     Briefing notes on:

· Bringing a gender perspective to water sector capacity building

· Equality between men and women

· Institutional capacity to promote gender in IWRM Projects

4.     Case studies and good practices

5.  A guide to gender mainstreaming within the project cycle

A Practical Journey to Sustainability should prove useful to development practitioners, gender and water specialists, project managers, researchers and scholars concerned with gender and water.

Shoji Nishimoto

Assistant Administrator and Director

Bureau for Development Policy