Operational Enviroment
What Is the Operational Environment, and Why Is It Significant?
The operational environment stands for political, social, legislative, economic, cultural and
natural environmental factors that significantly affect the implementation of any
cooperation. These factors need to be considered during planning in order to ensure the
cooperation fits the operational environment and is based on current local conditions.
Cooperation is successful only when the operational environment is taken into
consideration. This means:
1. do the right things
2. in the right way
3. with the right groups
A cooperation which is planned and conducted in isolation undermining its contextual
factors is doomed to fail.
Though it is a challenge to fully understand the operational environment of a development
cooperation project, an open mind and a humble attitude are always helpful in the learning
process.
The rights-based approach uses human rights as a reference point to place problems
caused by poverty seeming local into a national, regional and global context. This is one of
the additional values that the rights-based approach brings – it actually gives development
cooperation a broader and more complex perspective. Therefore it is absolutely necessary
for rights-based operations to analyse the operational environment, obstacles and interest
groups from a human rights perspective.
Besides taking the operatinal environment into account, it is also vital for the cooperation
to notice any potential opportunities and initiatives. When needs for change arise from the
