We are increasingly able to document such impact, particularly with regards to investments. This is most directly done through the value of investment that GWP has helped to leverage, i.e. support provided to mandated institutions to access funding for project implementation, but also applies to the attribution of downstream investments through national budgets and donor funding for the implementation of the various plans, strategies and initiatives supported by GWP.
There are also cases where impact level results may be more immediate. Demonstration projects, for example, or support in establishing an early warning system for floods are both cases where people’s lives may improve as an immediate consequence of a water security intervention supported by GWP.
Impact stories
As part of our results based management, GWP systematically follows up on the potential impact of the governance outcomes that we have been successful in influencing. Our Impact Stories aim to provide quantified results that help to explain what occurred after a national IWRM plan was approved, a River Basin Organisation was established, a water use allocation tool was operationalised, etc. By showing such downstream results, GWP is in a stronger position to justify why the approach it has adopted to target governance processes is effective in moving towards its vision of water security. Without such an understanding, we are left to rely on the assumption that good governance leads to water security with little direct evidence to back up the claim.
The development of impact stories is therefore a means of demonstrating how GWP’s work positively affects people’s lives on the ground, thereby addressing the challenge of “you supported the development of an IWRM plan. So what?”
The Impact Stories are structured according to the following components:
- The targeted issues and associated institutional and policy/planning context
- The role of GWP
- The governance processes that were influenced
- The quantified impact results, e.g. value of investment, number of beneficiaries, socio-economic statistic, etc., that can be attributed to the governance change enabled and GWP’s contribution
A list of stories that have been developed to date are available in the right-hand column.