Weak Institutional Capacity Research Articles

Somalia: Second and Final Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program and Request for a New Staff-Monitored Program-Press Release and Staff Report

This paper discusses Somalia’s Second and Final Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program (SMP) and Request for a new SMP. Program implementation through end-December 2016 and end-March 2017 was broadly satisfactory. In view of this performance and the remedial measures by the authorities to address shortcomings in performance under the first SMP, the IMF management agreed to the completion of the second and final review of the program. Risks to the program and the outlook are high, including the fragile security situation, weak institutional capacity, and major refugee and humanitarian crises. However, the authorities’ continued commitment to the program and sustained and coordinated international support should help mitigate these risks.

An Approach to Drainage System Sustainability in Wolaita Soddo Town: A Case Study from Southern Ethiopia

Urban drainage systems have existed as a vital city infrastructure to collect and convey storm water and wastewater away from urban areas. Despite development over the years, it remains a significant challenge to design sustainable and effective functioning of drainage system. This study assessed the approach to drainage system sustainability in Woliata Soddo town. To this end, households of the town and public sector officials were interviewed to obtain necessary information for the study. Inadequate coverage, poor quality and inappropriate provision of drainage infrastructure were problems identified in the study. Weak technical and institutional capacities associated with lack of finance, lack of integration among concerned bodies, lack of community participation and poor operation and maintenance are factors constraining proper drainage infrastructure provision and worsening the situation in the study area.

A causal relationship between trade efficiency and economic efficiency: Evidence from dynamic simultaneous equations models

ABSTRACTThe objective of this study is to examine the causal relationship between economic efficiency and trade efficiency using dynamic panel data in simultaneous equations models for global panel of 50 countries over the period 2000–2014. The study also implements this interrelationship for two groups of countries based on their level of development. Two models applying different factors reflecting countries’ economic and trade policies are proposed to measure the targeted efficiencies using data envelopment analysis method. Evidence from the simultaneous equations models to identify a relationship between economic efficiency and trade efficiency supports the bidirectional causality between them in all three categories of countries. It has been also found that both economic and institutional factors have a significant positive influence on trade and growth performance, with the effect of political factors being especially pronounced for developing countries that suffer from weak institutional capacity. These empirical findings are of particular interest to policy-makers as they help to build sound policies in order to maximize trade performance as well as economic efficiency.

Harmonisation and standardisation of health sector and programme reviews and evaluations - how can they better inform health policy dialogue?

BackgroundHealth sector and programme performance assessments provide a rich source of contextual data directly linked to implementation of programmes and can inform health policy dialogue, planning and resource allocation. In seeking to maximise this opportunity, there are challenges to overcome. A meeting convened by the World Health Organization African Region discussed the strengths, weaknesses and challenges to harmonising and standardising health sector and programme performance assessments, as well as use of evidence from such processes in decision making. This article synthesises the deliberations which emerged from the meeting. Discussing these in light of other literature we propose practical options to standardising health sector and programme performance assessment and improve realisation of using evidence in decision making.DiscussionUse of evidence generated from health sector and programme performance assessments into regular country processes of sectoral monitoring, dialogue and policy modification is crucial. However, this process faces several challenges. Identified challenges were categorised under several themes, namely the weak institutional capacities for monitoring and evaluation in reference to weak health information systems, a lack of tools and skills, and weak accountability mechanisms; desynchronised planning timeframes between programme and overall health sector strategies; inadequate time to undertake comprehensive and good quality performance assessment; weak mechanisms for following up on implementation of recommendations; lack of effective stakeholder participation; and divergent political aspirations.ConclusionThe question of what performance assessment is for in a country must be asked and answered clearly if the utility of these processes is to be realised. Standardising programme and sector reviews offers numerable opportunities that need to be maximised. Identified challenges need to be overcome through strengthened Ministry of Health leadership, effective stakeholder engagement and institutionalising follow-up mechanisms for agreed recommendations. In addition, health sector performance assessments need to be institutionalised as part of the accountability mechanism, and they must be planned for and funding secured within annual budget and medium term expenditure frameworks.

Business as usual in Indonesia: governance factors effecting the acceleration of the deforestation rate after the introduction of REDD+

Indonesia has the third largest extent of tropical forest in the world and has been extensively involved in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). Despite significant commitments from the Government of Indonesia (GOI) and the international community, the deforestation rate in Indonesia has not stabilized or decreased in the initial years after REDD+’s introduction in 2007, and as of 2012 was arguably the highest in the world. Globally, it is essential to understand how REDD+ is going to affect the deforestation rate as it is implemented in many countries. In order to constructively evaluate these continued increases in rates of deforestation in Indonesia, this article will explore some of the challenges of forest governance in Indonesia as identified by stakeholders of REDD+ and as described in the policy documents and other literature. Despite a number of changes in laws and regulations that came about as a result of REDD+ in Indonesia, weak institutional capacity and corruption have resulted in a situation that might be described as essentially, business as usual. Furthermore, new policies that have resulted from the introduction of REDD+ designed to help forest governance, such as the presidential moratorium on new licenses for forest use, may in fact have motivated some parties to initially act in ways that have contributed to the increase in deforestation—particularly through leakage from institutionally recognized forests to non-institutionally recognized forest areas. Problematic governance and corruption continue to pose problems that haunt the forestry sector and allow encroachment onto protected areas.

English

Over the past three decades, most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have developed national policies, legislations, plans, and institutions that are geared towards biodiversity conservation and management. However, evidently lacking in these instruments is the mechanisms for the generation, processing and sharing of biodiversity information. This study reviews the current biodiversity policy and institutional landscapes, and their impacts on the generation, processing, sharing, and use of biodiversity information for decision-making in SSA. We employed an integrated approach for data collection including literature review, telephone interviews and questionnaire administration. Findings show that biodiversity information has primarily been mobilized in an ad hoc manner through project surveys and academic research endeavours. Currently, majority of SSA countries still do not have standalone biodiversity policies that could prioritize biodiversity information and provide specific mechanisms and structures for the mobilization, processing and sharing of biodiversity information. Rather, efforts have focused on mainstreaming strategies and action plans into related sector policies and planning activities with potential impacts on biodiversity information. This move has not been entirely successful in sustaining efforts on biodiversity data and information generation, utilization and sharing. While the relevance of biodiversity information for national development is acknowledged by stakeholders, there are still major obstacles including: the lack of funding for data mobilization, weak institutional capacity, lack of individual competencies, and inadequate training on techniques for mobilizing biodiversity data and information. Advocating for value-added and demand-driven biodiversity information has the potential to garner policy support and legitimacy to reach the level of importance required for investment, capacity development and specialised institutions for biodiversity conservation in SSA.   Key words: Biodiversity, information, policies, institutions, sub-Saharan Africa.

Charcoal supply chains from Mabalane to Maputo: Who benefits?

In urban centres of Mozambique, charcoal is the major energy source for cooking. Growing demand drives high wood extraction rates over increasing areas of miombo and mopane woodlands. Charcoal production can lead to changes in ecosystem service provision and woodland degradation while also significantly contributing to rural income and, possibly, poverty alleviation. As such, understanding charcoal production and trade has important implications for rural areas and for the sustainable development of woodland resources. Here, we investigate charcoal production and trade through empirical research conducted in Gaza Province, the main charcoal supply area for Maputo, Mozambique.We analyse the present structure of the main charcoal supply chains from Gaza province to Maputo and the profit distribution along them. Seven villages in the Mabalane district, Gaza, at different stages of engagement with the charcoal industry, were selected for investigation. We conducted household surveys and semi-structured interviews with key informants (village leaders, charcoal producers, licence holders, wholesalers, transporters and forest technicians), from May to October 2014.Our results highlight two main charcoal supply chains comprising four main actor groups a) Local small-scale operators producing charcoal on a small-scale with household labour, who sell to wholesalers b) Large-scale operators producing and commercialising large volumes of charcoal using migrant labour, who sell their own production to wholesalers. While charcoal production constitutes an important income source for rural households in Mabalane, under supply chain a) more than 90% of the monetary benefits do not reach local communities and remain with external agents. Two of the main factors impeding the generation of greater revenues at community level are: 1) bureaucratic burdens in obtaining charcoal commercialisation rights in the form of licences; and 2) weak institutional capacities for woodland resource governance.We conclude that access to markets and control over woodlands is key if local communities are to generate greater benefits from charcoal production while aiming at sustainable charcoal production. Strong local institutions for obtaining commercialisation rights and managing woodland resources have to be developed, while the restructuring of the licencing system in favour of small-scale producers and more rigorous control of the regulations could support this process.

Incentivizing REDD+: How developing countries are laying the groundwork for benefit-sharing

Benefit distribution plays a central role in incentivizing action in REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation and forest enhancement). Conceived as a global performance-based incentive mechanism to reduce land-use emissions in developing countries, REDD+ involves changes in resource governance by many actors at multiple scales, in order to minimize the climate impact of land-use activities or to maximize their contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A key governance issue for developing countries is how to incentivize action among stakeholders and the way countries design their benefit-sharing mechanisms (BSMs) is therefore seen as a critical factor in determining the success of REDD+ in the long term. This comprehensive research investigates up-to-date national level REDD+ planning documents to provide new evidence on how countries are planning to implement BSMs, including an analysis of common governance themes and where gaps exist. Our unique comparative study based on five country cases reveals that there is a lack of comprehensive participatory, transparent and accountable processes among country strategies and in particular, shortcomings in preparation for local and subnational governance, financial disbursement and dispute-resolution mechanisms. Furthermore, countries are making slow progress on land tenure and carbon rights reform. In fact, such ambiguous legislation on carbon benefits, coupled with weak institutional capacity and ineffective dispute-resolution mechanisms, may make it difficult for REDD+ stakeholders to participate fully in initiatives and receive a fair distribution of benefits. This research indicates that REDD+ actors including donors and national governments will need to further rethink strategies and policy frameworks to improve their BSMs and to guarantee effective, equitable and efficient REDD+ outcomes in the long term.

The West African Health Organization's experience in improving the health research environment in the ECOWAS region.

BackgroundThe West African Health Organization (WAHO) implemented a research development program in West Africa during 2009–2013 using the Knowledge for Better Health Research Capacity Development Framework, developed by Pang et al. (Bull World Health Organ 81(11):815–820, 2003), on strategies used to improve the research environment. The framework has the following components: stewardship, financing, sustainable resourcing and research utilization. This paper describes how WAHO implemented this research development program in the West African region to help improve the research environment and lessons learnt.MethodsThis is a retrospective review of the regional research development program using a triangulation of activity reports, an independent evaluation and the authors’ experiences with stakeholders. This program was designed to address gaps along the components of the framework and to improve partnership. The activities, results and challenges are summarised for each component of the framework. The independent evaluation was conducted using over 180 semi-structured interviews of key stakeholders in the West African region and activity reports. WAHO and major stakeholders validated these findings during a regional meeting.ResultsAll 15 ECOWAS countries benefited from this regional research development program. WAHO provided technical and financial support to eight countries to develop their policies, priorities and plans for research development to improve their research governance. WAHO, along with other technical and financial partners, organised many capacity-strengthening trainings in health systems research methodology, resource mobilization, ethical oversight and on HRWeb, a research information management platform. WAHO helped launch a regional network of health research institutions to improve collaboration between regional participating institutions. Further, WAHO developed strategic research partnerships and mobilised additional funding to support the program. The program supported 24 health research projects. High staff turnover, weak institutional capacities and ineffective collaboration were some of the challenges encountered during program activity implementation.ConclusionThe regional collaborative approach to health research development using this framework was effective given the challenges in the West African region. The achievements particularly with improved research partnerships and funding helped strengthen local health research environments. This highlights WAHO’s role and the common experiences in the West African region in improving health research.

Los Atlas de Riesgo municipales en México como instrumentos de ordenamiento territorial

Municipal Risk Atlases are one of the policy instruments that Mexican government has prioritized in the last few years in order to consolidate the territorial regulation of human settlements in the country. This paper reviews the legal, institutional conceptual and methodological developments of these documents and analyzes its current scope and limitations within the Program of Risk Prevention in Human Settlements (PRAH), which had been designed and implemented by the Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL) between 2010 and 2012, and by the Ministry f Urban, Territorial and Agrarian Development (SEDATU) from 2013.The objective of the paper is to understand the conditions under which the Municipal Risk Atlases have been produced to regulate human settlements in risk-prone areas, as one of many juridical instruments that operate in the fields of land use planning and natural hazards provisions. In the first place, we review different approaches that have been used by different agents within the federal government to produce cartographic information to identify and reduce disaster risk. That includes the different concepts and methodologies used to identify different risk components (such as ‘vulnerability’, ‘affected systems’, ‘disturbances’) but also under which institutional context each of them emerge, how they relate to each other and how are they integrated with other policy devices.This legal and institutional review leads to a conceptual framework based on recent contributions of the field of legal geographies and socio-legal studies on disasters. The paper discusses the process of juridification of risk Atlases (that is, how have they become policy instruments), together with a complex set of normative documents, including laws, codes, programs, land use plans and planning acts, among others. The main contributions from theorists of the field of legal geographies of disasters are discussed to understand how Risk Atlases have become important documents for the ‘juridical production of the territory’.These documents are part of a normative universe that is embedded in a complex and decentralized scheme of both natural hazards provisions and urban development planning. Many of the agencies involved in these two fields have superimposed functions and scopes, while others that should be closely related because they complement each other's objectives, are in fact separated and with no legal linkages among them.In particular, the current program under which Risk Atlases are produced is nested in the government office in charge of the land use national policy and used by the urban development offices of municipal governments, to prevent human settlements to consolidate in risk-prone areas. Nevertheless, Risk Atlases are defined in several laws as key tools to prevent risk and manage emergencies. That means that they are increasingly used by many other agents involved in the National System of Civil Protection (an arrangement to co-ordinate different stakeholders, including national, provincial and municipal governments, together with federal agencies, private and social sectors) for objectives that fall far beyond land use regulation.However, despite its undeniable importance, there is still a remarkable inoperative character of many of these Atlases. The paper intends to explain the reasons behind this problem by identifying the distance between the normative content of these documents and their conditions of enforcement. The authors review the laws and programs that define the scope and the actual rules of implementation of the Atlas, and discuss why the expected outcomes on risk reduction and land regulation are not possible under the current normative and organizational structure within which Atlas operate. Some of these reasons are the vagueness about what kind of information should an Atlas contain and how this information should be used; the lack of clarity regarding who should implement that in each government level; and finally, the lack of sanctions if the restrictions derived from the risk analysis contained in the Atlases are unfulfilled. The paper concludes that Atlases have emerged as an informative rather than regulatory document, in a context of weak institutional capacities at the municipal level. With that conclusion the authors urge policymakers to review the position of risk Atlases within the National System of Civil Protection, as well as the legal framework of natural hazard provisions and land use planning in order to strengthen them.

A Probabilistic Approach to Fiscal Space and Prudent Debt Level: Application to Low-Income Developing Countries

What constitutes fiscal space or a prudent level of debt to conduct countercyclical policy while ensuring debt sustainability? This paper addresses the question by exploring the relationship between debt dynamics, and the probabilistic distribution of the primary balance and the effective interest rate. This proposed approach is useful in situations where the lack of relevant data makes it difficult to estimate detailed fiscal reaction functions. Applying this approach to Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) and based on various debt ceiling assumptions, we find that about 60 percent of these countries presently have fiscal policy space to address adverse shocks, subject to the availability of domestic and external financing. Countries with strong institutional capacity tend to have more fiscal space, and countries with weak institutional capacity, mostly countries in conflict and fragile states, tend to lack fiscal space.

Evaluating Barriers to Effective Implementation of Project Monitoring and Evaluation in the Ghanaian Construction Industry

Construction projects monitoring and evaluation is a vital process in project delivery which is aimed at ensuring that major objectives and goals are achieved. However, the implementation of monitoring and evaluation in the Ghanaian construction industry have seen numerous challenges and as a result, the poor performance of the industry. This paper identifies and evaluates the barriers faced by projects in the implementation of monitoring and evaluation in the Ghanaian construction industry. Literature was reviewed and subsequently, a semi-structured questionnaire developed to stimulate the relevant response from the major stakeholders in the Ghanaian construction industry. The collected data were analysed using the one sample t-test. Literature revealed ten (10) challenging factors to the implementation of monitoring and evaluation. Weak institutional capacity, limited resources and budgetary allocations for monitoring & evaluation, weak linkage between planning, budgeting and monitoring & evaluation, weak demand for and utilisation of monitoring and evaluation results and finally, poor data quality, data gaps and inconsistencies were identified as the most significant contributing factors to the implementation of PM&E in Ghana construction projects. The study contributes to the body of knowledge on the challenges to effective monitoring and evaluation of construction projects.

Environmental health efficiency and urbanization: The case solid waste management in Bor municipality of South Sudan

This paper is aimed at studying the environmental health efficiency of solid waste management in Bor Town, South Sudan. Many studies have been carried out about efficiency of solid waste management in many developing countries, but no such study has been done in Bor Town so far. In light of the increasing urban population, the chronic absence of data on domestic solid waste management practices, lack of waste management facilities, weak institutional capacities and inadequate financial resources, the households and the municipality are finding it difficult to efficiently management solid waste in Bor town. To meet the objective, the study have assessed the existing waste management practices, determine waste generation rate and composition as per income groups, develop the performance indicators and apply these indicators in assessing the capacity of waste management institution in managing solid waste effectively.

A Probabilistic Approach to Fiscal Space and Prudent Debt Level: Application to Low-Income Developing Countries

What constitutes fiscal space or a prudent level of debt to conduct countercyclical policy while ensuring debt sustainability? This paper addresses the question by exploring the relationship between debt dynamics, and the probabilistic distribution of the primary balance and the effective interest rate. This proposed approach is useful in situations where the lack of relevant data makes it difficult to estimate detailed fiscal reaction functions. Applying this approach to Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) and based on various debt ceiling assumptions, we find that about 60 percent of these countries presently have fiscal policy space to address adverse shocks, subject to the availability of domestic and external financing. Countries with strong institutional capacity tend to have more fiscal space, and countries with weak institutional capacity, mostly countries in conflict and fragile states, tend to lack fiscal space.

Analysis of Accessibility to Water Supply and Sanitation Services in the Awutu-Senya East Municipality, Ghana

Despite the essence of water supply and decent sanitation services to mankind, access to these basic services is a challenge in the Awutu-Senya East Municipality. The paper examined accessibility to water supply and sanitation services in the Awutu Senya East Municipality and the accompanying consequences. In the analysis of water provision responsibility, it was established that the contribution of private individuals constituted 64.2% of daily water production while public water provision effort constituted 35.8%. In spite of the enviable contributions of private individuals in water provision efforts in the Municipality, however, about 45% of the water sources are salty while 28% are impure and contaminated. Aside the inability of the Ghana Water Company Limited to supply desirable water quantities in the Municipality, the Assembly has also not been able to regulate the prices charged on water by private water operators, or make meaningful effort to augment water provision in the Municipality. Management of sanitation in the Municipality has proven to be daunting for authorities. The factors that lead to poor sanitation in the Municipality are diverse, ranging from weak institutional capacity to wrong attitudes. Consequently, the inefficiency of waste collection companies encourages indiscriminate disposal of wastes in the Municipality. For this reason, the Municipal Assembly should issue a minimum water quality requirement to all identified private water operators in order to ameliorate the quality problems associated water supply in the Municipality. Additionally, the Assembly should devise a better monitoring tool for ensuring that tasks assigned to waste collection companies in the Municipality are efficiently executed.

An indicator framework for assessing the technology aspect of Integrated Lake Basin Management for Lake Malawi Basin

Lake Malawi is one of the African Great Lakes and is well known for its fish biodiversity which is the greatest in the world for freshwaters. The lake basin is a valuable resource to the riparian countries. Activities associated with the derivation of the values offered by the lake basin, however, result in the generation of wastes and pollutants that also impact on the lake basin. Such anthropogenic activities within the lake basin place considerable strain on the lake system and may lead to the degradation of the lake basin. Proper application of technology can effectively supplement command-and-control measures and economic instruments for better lake basin management. Currently, no comprehensive framework exists to assess the management of the lake basin. Such a framework is necessary to guide managers and policy-makers in the formulation of management plans and strategies for the sustainable management and utilization of the lake basin. We propose an indicator framework for assessing the technology aspect of Integrated Lake Basin Management (ILBM) in the context of the Lake Malawi Basin. We further demonstrate applicability of the proposed framework through a study conducted in the Malawian side of the basin. We applied a five point Likert-type scale in our indicator assessment. Overall, our results show that the technology aspect of the management of the lake basin is weak to moderate. This threatens the sustainability of the lake especially in the areas of solid waste management, sanitation services, pollution control and protection of wetlands and lagoons which performed from very low to moderate. The major challenges are weak institutional capacity, weak regulation enforcement, and insufficient resources.

A multi-dimensional assessment of urban vulnerability to climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper, we develop and apply a multi-dimensional vulnerability assessment framework for understanding the impacts of climate change-induced hazards in Sub-Saharan African cities. The research was carried out within the European/African FP7 project CLimate change and Urban Vulnerability in Africa, which investigated climate change-induced risks, assessed vulnerability and proposed policy initiatives in five African cities. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) was used as a main case with a particular focus on urban flooding. The multi-dimensional assessment covered the physical, institutional, attitudinal and asset factors influencing urban vulnerability. Multiple methods were applied to cover the full range of vulnerabilities and to identify potential response strategies, including: model-based forecasts, spatial analyses, document studies, interviews and stakeholder workshops. We demonstrate the potential of the approach to assessing several dimensions of vulnerability and illustrate the complexity of urban vulnerability at different scales: households (e.g., lacking assets); communities (e.g., situated in low-lying areas, lacking urban services and green areas); and entire cities (e.g., facing encroachment on green and flood-prone land). Scenario modeling suggests that vulnerability will continue to increase strongly due to the expected loss of agricultural land at the urban fringes and loss of green space within the city. However, weak institutional commitment and capacity limit the potential for strategic coordination and action. To better adapt to urban flooding and thereby reduce vulnerability and build resilience, we suggest working across dimensions and scales, integrating climate change issues in city-level plans and strategies and enabling local actions to initiate a ‘learning-by-doing’ process of adaptation.

Toothless wildlife protection laws

Granting legal protection to an endangered species has long been considered a major milestone for its conservation and recovery. A multitude of examples such as wolves in the contiguous USA (Boitani 2003) or many large carnivore populations in Europe (Chapron et al. 2014) have revealed how instrumental wildlife protection laws can be for species recovery. However, legal obligations to conserve endangered species may be useless if the rule of law is not properly enforced. Such situation is not exclusive to countries with political instability or weak institutional capacities but can also be relevant, for instance, to member states of the European Union and therefore bound to European legislation on nature conservation.

On the banality of forest governance fragmentation: Exploring ‘‘gecko politics’’ as a bureaucratic behaviour in limited statehood

Governance of tropical forests at both the international and the national level is more and more fragmented because of the large constellation of actors, ideas and interests influencing forestland policies for their conservation or change. In public policy area, fragmentation is to some extent the result of competing interests and objectives that lead to a power play in policy-making between actor groups (both public and private), i.e., state bureaucracies, Intergovernmental organisations, nongovernmental organisations and private companies. In this power relationship for the control of tropical forestlands, the hegemony of state bureaucracies in forest governance processes is increasingly contested because of the growing influence of external actor groups in forest governance. Our findings show that the fragmentation of forest governance, which might be considered specific to pluralistic systems, became banal even in tropical countries with a state-centred system like Cameroon where the state claims hegemonic ownership of forestlands. This fragmentation is particularly reinforced in limited statehood where state bureaucracies are attracted to/dependent on external resources for dealing with weak institutional capacity and to face the government's lack of ability to supply public goods and services. But despite the governance fragmentation constraints, this article reveals that some governments and sectoral bureaucracies in limited statehood are capable of using cunning behaviours to secure their own interests in domestic forestland policies and avoid pressure from external actors. In the case of Cameroon for example, the strategy being used relies on a wait-and-see game, uncertainty and recourse to sudden, ambiguous decisions; this is what we call “gecko politics”. Broadly, this article seeks to understand how a government or state bureaucracy in limited statehood with a state-centred system can try to impose its own interests in the context of forest governance fragmentation?

Sustainable Development in South Asia: Need for Cooperation in Food-Water-Energy Security

Sustainable development in the ambits of food, water and energy is a matter of paramount concern for all the nations throughout the world and specifically for South Asia. South Asia has interminably been facing the brunt of population growth rate and unfavourable variations in climate change have made the situation murkier. Consequently, the basic sectors of human sustenance are grappled under the claws of excessive resources degradation that has raised concerns over the quality of human life and brought the concept of sustainability on the forefront. The intimate link between food, water and energy on very many occasions have been disturbed by variable hydrology of the region combined with high poverty and population density; concentration of regions’ poor on degrading agricultural sector; water dependent subsistence livelihoods; over exploitation of natural resources; and limited intra-regional cooperation and weak institutional capacity. Moreover, the present climate subtleties are most likely to have economic, social, political, environmental and security implications that are still imprecisely understood by this region. The debate on food, water and energy securities and its effects on South Asia have fanned out throughout the world, demanding attention from various national and international organizations to come to its rescue. The present paper has tried to use the concept of sustainable development in three vital sources human sustenance for addressing the challenges of insecurities and scarcity. Through the intimate linkages between food, water and energy, this paper has tried to explain how repercussions from one sector can affect the other two sectors in an unfavourable way. The paper has laid emphasis on the need for having strong and efficient regional governance frameworks as a key to address these challenges in South Asia. Regional Cooperation has long been viewed as a solution for addressing the scarcity issue in the ambits of food, water and energy. South Asia has been successful to a certain extent in shaping a regional governance framework in relation to food and energy security (SAARC Food Bank, Seed Bank, SAARC Energy Charter) but till date none of the countries have come to a general consensus on framing a regional governance framework for water security. Until and unless a strong regional governance charter is established in South Asia that prudently handles the issues related to food, water and energy securities, it will be nearly impossible to reach the goal of sustainability in these three vital areas of human subsistence.