5.2.1 Enabling environment
Put simply, an enabling environment refers to the fulfilment of conditions that can enable a certain phenomenon to happen. From your elementary school biology, you will know that a plant seed can germinate and grow only if important elements such as water, soil and sunlight are available. In this example, water, soil and sunlight create the enabling environment. If these factors are partially or totally unavailable, growth will not happen or at least will not be successful. Likewise, for the OWNP to be successful, several prerequisites must be fulfilled. These prerequisites are the foundation for the programme and are described as an ‘enabling environment’. They consist of a wide range of policies, strategies, institutional arrangements and formal agreements, together with the commitment and integrity of personnel at all levels, access to information, compliance with agreed norms and standards, and contractual relations among implementing bodies.
As you have just read, policies, strategies and formal agreements are among the elements of an enabling environment. Can you name one policy, one strategy and one formal agreement that you would include as part of the enabling environment for the OWNP? (It may help you to think back to Study Sessions 2 and 3.)
The Ethiopian Health Policy and the National Water Resources Management Policy are the two main policies. You may also have mentioned the Ethiopian Environmental Policy. From strategies, there is the National Hygiene and Sanitation Strategy and the Ethiopian Water Sector Strategy. The relevant formal agreements are the WASH Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the WASH Implementation Framework (WIF), both signed by Ministry of Health, Ministry of Water and Energy, Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.
Commitment and integrity of personnel are also mentioned as elements of the enabling environment. What do commitment and integrity mean for a potential urban WASH worker? Commitment is the strong feeling and decisiveness of a person to carry out duties and fulfil obligations. Integrity is a person’s quality to carry out duties and responsibilities consistently and honestly. An urban WASH worker, working with communities, would have to be a role model to the people they were working for. This could mean working extra time, at the weekends, and on holidays if it is needed. However, an important aspect of integrity is honesty and no one should promise to people what they may not be able fulfil.
Creating an enabling environment for WASH sector development is a continuous process. The stronger the enabling environment that can be created, the better we can promote WASH to a wider population. In Ethiopia, the basic elements in the making of the enabling environment for WASH have been developed in the past decades and the achievements so far are encouraging. The policies and strategies in both health and water sectors and the formal consensus-building documents such as the MoU and WIF demonstrate this progress. However, there is still a need to strengthen the environment for even better results. For example, the shortage of suitably trained and qualified WASH personnel from federal to woreda levels is still visible. An integral part of the enabling environment for WASH sector development is having a sufficient number of WASH workers at all levels, and this is one of the areas to be improved in the future.
5.2 Enabling environment and good governance