Building the capacity of water professionals is needed to close human resources gap, adapt to the rapidly changing reality, provide knowledge exchange, and thus ultimately contribute to fostering a learning culture around improved water governance. This Tool provides an overview of the rationale behind training water professionals, discusses key training formats and methods, highlights the need to design interdisciplinary training initiatives, and suggests how learning loops can contribute to building organisational learning.
Training is a vital component of a multi-level capacity building process (Ferrero et al., 2019). Capacity development in the water sector encompasses equipping individuals, organisations, and societies with skills and competencies to solve water-related problems to complement “water hardware” with “human software” (UNESCO-IHE, 2020). Training water professionals is indispensable for several reasons:
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Insufficient supply of water professionals: Many countries from the Global South are lacking water professionals with necessary knowledge, experience, and skills to achieve progress in the WASH sector (estimated human resources gap of approximately 800 thousand professionals in 10 African and South-East Asian countries to achieve global coverage) (IWA, 2014).
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The need for flexibility and adaptability: Water professionals should be incentivised and given the opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge in a rapidly changing environment.
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Demand for intensive knowledge exchange: Future and existing water leaders should have necessary tools and platforms to share expertise (Tool B4.03).
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Requirement for creating participatory mechanisms and capacity in line with IWRM principles: Participation of various stakeholders in decision-making process is only possible with created participatory capacity, such as awareness raising, confidence building and education supported by the economic resources, especially for women and marginalised social groups (Agarwal et al., 2000).