Service Contract No 2007 / 147-446 Strategic ... - Swaziland

for implementation. For future StrEAs it is highly recommended that the StrEA process istriggered at an early stage of policy-making and planning.Finally difficulties were encountered by the consultants in obtaining certain information andaccessing some specific stakeholders. These shortcomings were especially important withregards to water management issues. The Department of Water Affairs (DWA) proved anelusive stakeholder, to the point that it was not possible to set up any interviews with them.Thus it was not possible to explore in detail the functioning of the DWA, its role in monitoringwater quality and water allocations, its role in the transfer of competencies to the RBAs, orconfirm the particulars regarding the water quality monitoring programme (e.g. location ofsampling stations, regularity of monitoring, parameters being controlled, findings). The teamthus relied on interviews with other relevant stakeholders also concerned with watermanagement issues (e.g. RBAs, SEA, sugar mills) as well as the ample experience of theStrEA team’s local consultant.There are some gaps of information in Swaziland, e.g. in relation to water quality in thecountry’s rivers, quality of effluent discharges and atmospheric emissions, agricultural runoff,water balance for the different river basins, recent forecasts for water use in differentsectors, and effects of climate change (down-scaled models). Some of these gaps ofinformation were more important than others. The analyses in this StrEA Study made someassumptions when these were realistic and there was other information to back them up, butalso acknowledged gaps of information. Sometimes recommendations are clearly focused onensuring such gaps of information are covered, and then outline possible action points incase the information generated eventually shows an undesirable situation (e.g. in relation towater contamination from agricultural run-off).In spite of the above observations, these were not significant shortcomings, and our overallappreciation is that the positive aspects of this StrEA by far outweighed its shortcomings.The findings of this StrEA are solid; they have been validated by the multiple consultationswith stakeholders; and points of uncertainty are clearly pointed out (e.g. where informationwas not available). Care has been taken to provide focused recommendations on the areaswhere key issues can be tackled in a more efficient and effective matter. In this sense theStrEA only focuses on key aspects, and these were prioritised; the driving factors (causes)contributing to the significance of the impacts were identified in order to be the focus ofremedial actions; and care was taken to address all relevant components of each key aspect(institutional, regulatory, biophysical, etc).RDMU (Strategic Environmental Assessment of the National Adaptation Strategy) - Page 17