The Watercourse programme has been designed to support implementing South Africa’s National Water Resources Strategy, through building capacity and working with stakeholders to develop the required water governance arrangements.

The programme targeted the Inkomati Water Management Area in Mpumalanga and the Mvoti to Umzimkulu Water Management Areas in KwaZulu Natal, and worked with the Department for Water Affairs & Forestry (DWAF) nationally to look at how the lessons from the two Water Management Areas can be shared and applied more widely. Alongside another local NGO, Cinnabar, Khanya-aicdd contributed to the design, delivery and evaluation of stakeholder learning events through the course of the programme.

Following the completion of the initial phase, some of the key lessons for Khanya-aicdd are outlined below.

Adapting the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to ecosystems: The links between the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach and ecosystems are direct, particularly when matching stresses and shocks of livelihoods and people it becomes very real. Applying these tools has helped to embed the discourse on ecosystems into the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, and not just from a delivery perspective. 

Methodology: We’ve also learnt that it is not always possible to have the full methodology written up at the onset of a process. However, you can start out with a methodology that has been outlined within a clear frame of reference, adapt it and refine it along the way, as long as the objective (end) is clear. We refer to this as learning by doing, and can be applied to both content and process.

Multiple stakeholders, multiple interests? How do you bring in multiple stakeholders, who have different interests, and are approaching poverty from different angles, while all the time working to improve the livelihoods of people? Finding common ground among these stakeholders is critical to the process. This emerges as a regular feature  of change processes, and understanding how to facilitate engagement between and within stakeholders is always an asset.