News

The electronic newsletter of Skat is sent to you approximately three times each year. Skat News provides you with brief summaries of recent and ongoing projects, links you to further information and documents, and provides you with relevant contact addresses.

Skat News - September 2008

The "Focus on Mobility" provides half-yearly information on relevant news, current issues & trends, SDC project milestones, recommended readings, upcoming events as well as new web pages regarding development cooperation in the transport sector. The newsletter is a service provided by Skat within the SDC Support Mandate in Mobility. Click on the link below to read the latest issue.

Focus on Mobility - Issue N°10, August 2008

The objective of this study tour was to expose project partners (Ukrainian Governmental officials as Parliamentarians – national and Oblast and Rayon level, social mobilisers, community leaders) to successful experiences with decentralised community-based water supply and other public services delivery in Switzerland.

On 18 - 22 June 2007, the 23rd AGUASAN workshop took place in Gwatt (Switzerland). The presentations, discussions, learnings, and results are summarised in a workshop report.

During five days, 46 development professionals from all over the world delved into the issue topic of “Opportunities and Challenges for the Water and Sanitation Sector in a Decentralised Context” and explored how shifting of power, competen­cies, responsibilities and resources from the central government to local levels particularly affects the way water supply and sanitation (W&S) issues are dealt with.

Looking at four topic cases dealing with decentralised models for service delivery and an analy­sis by a concept working group, the workshop brought up several findings: the W&S sector needs to be flexible to respond to the dynamic decen­tralisation processes, which includes a lobbying and negotiation process amongst the players, and to find its niche. Decision-making power, institutional capacity, fiscal and technical resources for services delivery and their management have to be devolved concommitantly and in an adequate way. In addition, roles and responsibilities in the sector should be devolved to the lowest appropriate and competent level. And finally, an effective decentralisation process should be part of a broader governance and democratisation reform, and neither an isolated nor a universal remedy to W&S sector needs.

The report can be downloaded or ordered in the publications section of the Skat website.

 http://www.km4dev.org/journal/index.php/km4dj/issue/current

The catalyser for this issue on capacity building for networking was a workshop on the 'Management of international networks for knowledge sharing', organised by Skat and Helvetas on the 25-28 April 2006 in St. Gallen (Switzerland). Two contributions ensuing from this workshop can also be found in this special issue that comprises articles and case studies ranging from analysis of what kind of capacity building is needed, to insights in capacity building programmes for networking from a grassroots perspective, as well as from the perspective of networking practitioners.

We hope you will enjoy reading this issue and find some insights that inspire you in your work.
 
The Guest Editors
Urs Karl Egger, Georg Buchholz, and Marc Steinlin
together with Chief Editor Lucie Lamoureux

www.altstadtlauf.ch