Four organisations secure Dutch water management funding

Signed! SNV closes 2018 with an official signing ceremony for the fresh wave of IWRM/ water governance projects financed by the Non-State Actors Fund of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) OmiDelta programme in Benin.

Managed by SNV in Benin on behalf of EKN, Jean-Pierre Fiogbé, Representative of the Director of the General Directorate of Water (DGEau), emphasised that “the implementation of IWRM projects within the Non-State Actors Fund is an excellent opportunity to achieve significant and concrete progress in the operationalisation of IWRM in Benin.”

Following a rigorous selection process, civil society organisations - CDR (Centre International for Development and Research), Protos, VGN International (Agency for International Cooperation of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities), and PNE (Partenariat National de l'Eau du Bénin) - topped the 23 IWRM and governance bids received by SNV.

According to Jaap Jan Speelman, Head of Cooperation at EKN, "the signing of the grant contracts demonstrates the commitment of SNV and its partners to the success of the OmiDelta programme".

"One of the aims of the call for proposals is to support those projects that offer ‘out-of-the-box thinking’ to boost area wide operationalisation of  Benin’s Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM),” said SNV in Benin Country Director Jeanette de Regt.

She added, “our focus was to award the Non-State Actors Fund of the OmiDelta programme to applications that demonstrated concrete, tangible and innovative pilots – with short and medium-term effects – which are likely to reach scale”.

The CIDR project (awarded with 2,000,000 euros for a period of 30 months) in the Adja-Ouéré, Toffo, Ouihi, Zè, Zogbodomey, and Zangannado municipalities aims to increase the resilience of some 260,000 people to flooding. Some deliverables include the introduction of sustainable livelihood activities aligned to the river’s ecosystem, and hydrological regulations to reduce the effects of flooding.

Protos (awarded with 1,954,482 euros for a period of 30 months) seeks to transform the lives of 100,000 people in the Adjohoun, Bonou, Dango and Aguégués municipalities by strengthening stakeholder public knowledge in water resource management and existing ecosystem services, as well as conservation measures. To ensure the sustainability of the project’s positive impacts, Protos will also establish consultation structures to strengthen local ownership and decision-making.

VNG International (awarded with 2,000,000 euros for a period of 30 months) – with an outreach of 250,000 people in the municipalities of Calavi, Zè, Sô-Ava, Sèmè-Podji and Porto-Novo - will endeavour to map out and enable the conditions for inclusive participation in flood management, and scale up good practice across all five target municipalities.

The PNE project (awarded with 800,000 euros for a period of 24 months) commits to strengthening WASH and IWRM governance throughout Benin, with a focus on municipalities financed by the OmiDelta NSA Fund. It will promote the principles of the right to water, and with CSOs: Social Watch, ALCRER, PNE Benin and Water Integrity Network, strengthen the social, political, economic and environmental dimensions of governance. With a focus on IWRM, PNE will facilitate the smooth functioning of consultation bodies, strengthen citizen-led monitoring practice to hold government to account, and test new tools to facilitate, e.g., the payment of water royalties.

Photo by Silvana Summa/SNV.