Sustainability Planning and Monitoring

HOW WELL DID THOSE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN FLORES WORK?and refusals to pay. In designing project strategies,it would therefore be cost-effective to allocateresources, skills and time for engagingcommunities equitably in early planning anddecision making, along with providing themequitable access to relevant information formaking decisions. This will help communities planmore realistically, especially in terms of:- The scope and complexity of water supplyschemes attempted, and- The arrangements for sharing waterresources with others.feasible solutions with user communitydemands. For instance, problems such asinadequate source flows cannot be overcomeby project engineers setting arbitrary limits onthe technical options and levels of service,when the majority of users want houseconnections. The only sustainable solution insuch cases is for the user community to makeproperly informed choices about technicaloptions and levels of service that the sourcecan sustain, and to set tariffs to reflect the realcosts of those choices.●●●Equality is not equitable. Nor are communitiesnecessarily egalitarian. Project rules, or rulesset by community leaders which stipulate equalcontributions by all households to capital oroperating costs actually disadvantage thepoor, particularly when the poor have littlevoice in community decisions.Equitable gender and socially inclusivecommunity level management organizationsare a key to sustained services. For long-termfunctioning and financial sustainability ofservices, it is necessary that projects helpestablish such organizations, through genderandpoverty-sensitive planning and capacitybuilding. This is important enough to be astated project objective, against which projectperformance should be judged.Water supply scheme designs need toreconcile technically and environmentally●Technicallyechnically, , water supply systems need to berealistic in terms of distribution of small sourceflows (which need to be measured at minimumdry-season levels) and complexity of operations.It is the project’s responsibility to advisecommunities so that their expectations areguided by the limits of technical feasibility.Compromises in quality of materials andconstruction due to over-ambitious schemescan then be avoided. It is better to meet thereasonable demands of fewer people withinsingle independent schemes, if necessaryhaving several independent schemes servingan area, rather than complex schemes spreadover several villages.At the policy level, the study confirms the generalthrust of the new Indonesian sector policy, with itsemphasis on sustainability and effective use, andthe application of demand-responsive approachesthrough participatory methods.148