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Enhanced Methodology for Participatory Assessment for Equitable and Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation

Brief Remarks by
Arjun Thapan
Director General, Southeast Asia Department; Chairman, Water Committee
Asian Development Bank

15 January 2007
ADB Headquarters

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. On behalf of the Asian Development Bank and as Chair of the ADB Water Committee, I would like to welcome you to ADB Headquarters and the Philippines.

I'm sure you will agree with me that this workshop is different from most of the workshops you have attended. Why do I say this? In other workshops, your typical role is to listen and participate in discussions, either in plenary or workshop groups. In this workshop, you will be the speakers and we will be your listeners. You will tell us about your experiences in going through the MPA methodology and give us your views about what needs to be improved or changed.

As will be explained to you further later, the overall objective of this workshop is to capture key lessons learned from the TA and identify opportunities for mainstreaming the methodology into ADB projects. Obviously, you are the best people who can share with us some lessons learned because you yourselves have gone through the process.

From our end, we would like to see how the design of future projects, implementation of on-going ones and evaluation of those already completed can benefit from this methodology. Participation is key to ADB's development work and this methodology is certainly a good example of how genuine participation could be achieved in the design, implementation and evaluation of projects. Water as you all know is one of the sectors that promotes increased participation, particularly by those who stand to benefit and be responsible for sustaining the projects.

As you are now considered MPA practitioners, we trust that you will continue to advocate this methodology in your other projects not only with ADB but with other donors. The wealth of information you have now generated from completing the exercise is no doubt very valuable that you should continue to use them and build on them.

This workshop paves the way for broader participatory development which can contribute significantly to strengthening our commitment to water management for poverty reduction. I hope you will find the workshop informative, productive and enjoyable.

Good morning and thanks to all of you for your participation.