This collection of papers explains how knowledge and capacity development can contribute to improved, effective water management with a digest of lessons learned in the areas of development of tools and techniques, field applications and evaluation. The authors are prominent practitioners, capacity builders and academics within the water and capacity development sectors.
Capacity Development for Improved Water Management starts with an introduction and overview of progress and challenges in knowledge and capacity development in the water sector. The next part presents tools and techniques that are being used in knowledge and capacity development in response to the prevailing challenges in the water sector, and a review of experience with capacity change in other sectors. In the third part a number of cases are presented that cover knowledge and capacity development experiences in the water resources and water services sectors. This part also presents experiences on water education for children and on developing gender equity. The fourth part provides experiences with the monitoring and evaluation of knowledge and capacity building.
Guy Alaerts is lead water resources specialist at the World Bank, and professor of knowledge and capacity building at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education. He is involved in research on knowledge and capacity development of public water management organisations, and is working on large-scale water sector reform processes in Asia and South Eastern Europe. Maarten Blokland is an Associate Professor in Water Services Management at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, a position he took up again in 2007, after working fulltime as the Institute’s Deputy Director and Acting Director from August 2002 to October 2007. He has worked in the water supply and sanitation sector since 1975, and worked in more than 25 developing and newly industrialized countries. Matt Hare is senior programme officer at the UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC), in Bonn, Germany. His specializes in the areas of curriculum development and training-of-trainers programmes, and on the themes of participatory integrated water resources management and adaptation to climate change. Judith Kaspersma is working on her PhD research in knowledge and capacity development at UNESCOIHE Institute for Water Education. She has been previously involved in consultancy activities in the field of institutional and organisational development of public organisations in the water sector in Asia and the Middle East.
