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Winrock International

Legacy Project

Sustainable Water Partnership (SWP)

Funder: USAID

Project Timeline: September 27, 2016 - September 26, 2021

Country: Tanzania

Program Areas: Clean Energy and Environment and Water

Contact: Sustainable Water Partnership group, SWPWater@winrock.org

Download Info Sheet

The Sustainable Water Partnership (SWP) is a five-year, Leader with Associates cooperative agreement that supported U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) thought leadership, innovation and action in global water security.

SWP was implemented by Winrock International and its partners Tetra Tech, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Resources Institute (WRI), the CEO Water Mandate and mWater.

The project developed the Water Security Improvement Process, and used it to work with local stakeholders, partners, and USAID Missions to assess water risks and implement targeted activities to improve water security and increase resilience to water risks. SWP’s activities were implemented in Nepal, Southern Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Cambodia, Pakistan, Niger and Burkina Faso, testing and piloting various tools in efforts to enhance regional water security, engage marginalized stakeholders, strengthen local water resources management, improve public health and livelihoods, alleviate poverty, and encourage economic growth.

To increase resilience to water risks, SWP worked on:
• Improving stakeholder awareness and participation in water security.
• Improving stakeholder capacity and tools to assess water security risks.
• Improving planning and water governance capacity.
• Improving capacity and behaviors to implement water resource management measures.
• Ensuring increased collaboration, learning and adaptive response to water risks.

Many tools, lessons and case studies were created during the course of the project, available in the publications below: technical assessments calculating water availability and withdrawals, models and scenario planning, strategies to engage stakeholders, and developing at-scale strategic action plans owned by local decision-makers and communities are highlighted in these documents through examples on river basin, sub-catchment areas, or transboundary aquifers.

Essential SWP resources:
Water Security Improvement (WSI) Toolkit
Water Resources Country Profiles
Water Security Game
Institutional Capacity Assessment Process for Water Security, and template
Analytical Tools to Support Water Security Decision Making
Environmental Flows Technical Guidance

Examples of how these tools were used and adapted to various contexts, leading for example to a Water Allocation Plan in Tanzania and to the Strategic Action Plan for a river basin in Cambodia, are found in additional case studies below.

Project Goals

$13M

Grant amount

6

Partners

14

Focus countries in Africa and Asia, but global in eligibility