Participants at the IRC Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery symposium, Addis Ababa, April 2013. Photo: Ermias Woldeamlak
Governments are not only investing more in national monitoring systems, but their leadership in country monitoring is also now generally accepted. With this acceptance, however, come expectations about good governance and transparency. Monitoring is politics: agendas and power influence what is monitored and how the results are used. National systems, too, go beyond WASH sector monitoring and should include data from donors and NGOs as well.
Photo: IRC/Petra Brussee
These are some of the conclusions we can draw from a symposium attended by over 400 participants from UN agencies, government, donors, NGOs and research institutes. Hosted by the Government of Ethiopia and organised by IRC and its partners, the Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery symposium was held from 9 to 11 April 2013 in Addis Ababa.
Symposium presentations and discussions focussed on six main themes: monitoring finance, government-led and country-wide monitoring, project monitoring, ICT for monitoring, monitoring sanitation & hygiene, and global-regional-national WASH monitoring.
One of the most quoted WASH statistics was recently “downgraded”. For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, not $8 but “only” $4 is returned in economic returns through increased productivity. This recalculation [1], says the World Health Organization, is mainly a result of higher investment cost estimates and the more complete inclusion of operation and maintenance (O&M) costs.
Providing a better insight into O&M costs has been one of the achievements of the WASHCost project of the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. WASHCost has published minimum benchmarks for costing sustainable basic WASH services in developing countries [2]. The project collected data from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Andhra Pradesh (India) and Mozambique.
The main message is that spending less than the minimum benchmarks will result in a higher risk of reduced service levels or long-term failure. NGOs claiming that “US$20 can provide clean water for one person for 20 years” have clearly forgotten to include annual recurrent costs for operation and maintenance, capital maintenance and direct support.
The real cost for 20 years of basic water supply from a borehole and handpump would be, per person, between US$ 20 and US$ 61 for construction plus US$ 3-6 every year to keep it working. In total for the 20 years this would amount to US$ 80 to US$ 181 per person.
Similarly, for the most basic sanitation service, a traditional pit latrine, the combined costs would be US$ 37 – 106 per person over 20 years.
The number of US philanthropists with a passion for sanitation has now doubled. Following in the footsteps of Bill Gates who launched Reinventing the Toilet, “Chief Toilet Hacker” John Kluge aims to provide 1 million toilets in the developing world. To kick-start this endeavour, Eirene, a company that Kluge co-founded with fellow toilet hacker, Michael TS Lindenmayer, is launching a global Sanitation Hackathon in December 2012.
For the Sanitation Hackathon, Eirene is teaming up with the World Bank’s Water Practice and ICT unit and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), which hosted the successful Water Hackathon in October 2011. Other partners supporting this initiative include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gensler, IDEO.org and Columbia University.
At least 1,000 toilet hackers from across 9 countries are expected to join in.
We have dug into the problem at the most local level and have asked some of the greatest global minds to also tackle the issue as well. These toilet hackers come from all kinds of backgrounds. Engineers, material scientists all the way to street artists, micro-entrepreneurs and inventors of all stripes are all becoming toilet hackers
Forbes has identified John Kluge (29) as one of “philanthropy’s up-and-coming faces”. He is the adopted son of John Kluge Sr., “once the richest man in America, and is is committed to ensuring 95% of his late father’s assets go towards philanthropy”. His company Eirene focuses on tackling problems like sanitation that affect at least 1 billion people. Kluge is also a resident fellow at the EastWest Institute and a memnber of UNICEF USA’s Next Generation Steering Committee.
Follow John Kluge on Twitter @klugesan and the Sanitation Hackathon with the Twitter hashtags #toilethacker and #sanhack
Source: John Kluge, Hacking Toilets the World Over, Huffington Post, 25 Sep 2012 ; Forbes 400 Richest Americans – Ones to Watch – John Kluge
British multinational bank HSBC has launched a new US$ 100 million, five year partnership with WaterAid, WWF and the Earthwatch Institute. The HSBC Water Programme will bring safe water and improved sanitation to over a million people; tackle water risks in river basins; and raise awareness about the global water challenge.
The programme is backed-up by report [1] commissioned by HSBC, which warns that the predicted high-growth rate in several of the world’s most populous river basins may not materialise because of their unsustainable water consumption . The report also highlights “the powerful economic rationale for improving access to freshwater and sanitation, at a time when total aid for water access and sanitation has actually declined”.
H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor - Former President of Ghana and Chair of Sanitation and Water for All
Ministerial delegations from 40 countries have announced serious commitments to tackle the global water and sanitation crisis. Developing countries have promised that they will provide safe drinking water to 60 million more people and improved sanitation to another 80 million people within two years. The governments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom announced that they will collaborate to also get water and sanitation to millions of people.
Speech by Nigerian Finance Minister and World Bank Presidency candidate Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Convened by UNICEF and hosted by the World Bank and Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), the second High Level Meeting (HLM) on Water and Sanitation of the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Partnership took place on 20 April in Washington, D.C. On the previous day, ministers responsible for water and sanitation from 40 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America had met to prepare a joint statement.
At the High Level Meeting, the Netherlands Secretary of State for Development Cooperation Ben Knapen announced a new cooperation between the Netherlands and United Kingdom with UNICEF and local authorities to bring water and sanitation to an additional 10 million people in nine countries – mostly fragile, post-conflict states in West and Central Africa. The Dutch commitment is part of a four-year plan to bring safe drinking water and sanitation to 25 million people.
“I am very pleased with the fact that UNICEF is prepared to guarantee the operation of water systems, pumps and last but not least water quality for at least 10 years. It’s not just about installing water pumps but providing sustainable services to the user. Independent third parties will monitor a representative sample of water points on an annual basis and report back to us”. He added: “UNICEF greatly appreciates Dutch knowledge and expertise in the field of drinking water and sanitation. At least 20-25% of the Dutch support will therefore be used to deploy Dutch knowledge and expertise to achieve sustainable results and local capacity building.”
“By seeking guarantees for sustainability and water quality as a pre-condition for financial support, the Netherlands is an international leader in increasing aid effectiveness,” says Simavi Director Rolien Sasse, who is also a member of the SWA Steering Committee on behalf of End Water Poverty.
The UK Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, announced that the UK is doubling the number of people they intend to reach with water, sanitation and hygiene education by 2015, from 30 million people to at least 60 million people globally.
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah (USA) en Director-General of AusAid Peter Baxter (Australia) announced at the High Level Meeting that they would join the Sanitation and Water for All Partnership, which now has over 80 members.
Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) is a partnership of governments, donors, civil society and international organisations. It was established in 2010 as an initiative of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to help developing countries, especially those that are most off-track, to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for water and sanitation.
The IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre is a member of SWA and of the SWA Steering Committee. IRC supported several countries, including Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa, to prepare their inputs for the SWA High Level Meeting.
Agencies, donors and NGOs alike need to regard sustainability as a critical mission and to re-think fundamentally their role in the sector, conclude the organisers of the WASH Conference 2011. The conference, which was held in Brisbane, Australia, from 16-20 May 2011, attracted 237 people from 40 countries.
The recently published WASH 2011 synthesis report provides an overview of the key messages on: functional and environmental sustainability; institutional sustainability; behavioural change and social sustainability; and financial sustainability.
The first key message, brought in by the IRC-led Triples-S (Sustainable Services at Scale) initiative, was that the focus on ‘coverage’ should be reduced in favour of a move to a service delivery approach. Related to this was the need to move gradually from community management to professionalised service delivery (the community management PLUS model) and to move from counting infrastructure to monitoring services.
Partnering with the private sector can play an important role in scaling-up sanitation as well as behaviour change. Enabling local entrepreneurship to flourish through the sanitation marketing approach has proved successful in Cambodia. In Indonesia a public-private partnership for hand-washing with soap made the partnership win-win for each group.
[1] International WaterCentre (2011). WASH Conference 2011, Brisbane, Australia : towards sustainability in water, sanitation and hygiene : conference report. 20 p. Download full report
“Our Smart Water Networks Forum is aiming to help water utilities do the right thing: investing in operation and maintenance and sustainability of their data-driven smart water networks and not only focusing on pipe and pumps”, Smart Water Networks Forum Chairman Guy Horowitz told IRC’s Dick de Jong at the 2011 Aquatech Amsterdam SWAN session on 1 November 2011. Inefficient water distribution and poor water efficiency are the culprits.
Mr. Horowitz is Vice President Marketing of TaKaDu, a water infrastructure monitoring software pioneer based in Israel shared recent research findings that show the connection between water prices and water loss rates. Based on information from 42 urban water networks all over the world, their research found that higher water tariffs are associated with lower water loss and a more sustainable outcome. In most cities where the price of water is very high or very low, low and high NRW (non revenue water) rates are observed respectively.
This holds true across different countries and regions and even cities. Manila East and Manila West for instance have two different private sector operators. Manila West scores 12 percent non revenue water, Manila East scores 53 percent water losses.
Thus, when setting policy and water tariffs, policy makers should consider all possible implications of low pricing to avoid infrastructure deterioration. Regulatory tools such as on-going benchmarking of water utilities and incentives for improved performance can be used, as well as a tiered pricing model for domestic consumption, TaKaDu concludes.
The technology and innovation-focused search for a silver bullet for the WASH sector by the Gates Foundation is flawed, argues the director of a water NGO. Improving sanitation for people in developing countries requires person-to-person education within each community, writes Water 1st International’s Marla Smith-Nilson in the Seattle Times. How many more people has the Gates Foundation given access to water and toilets as a result of its US$ 200 million expenditure over the past six years, asks Smith-Nilson?
I’d like some evidence that their approach is effective and not just driven by the desire to invent a philanthropic silver bullet. Meaningful results to me are how many women are no longer carrying water and how many people now use a toilet instead of defecating behind a bush?
To mark World Water Day, 22 March 2011, World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an agreement making it easier for the U.S. Government and World Bank to work together to address global water challenges.
While the Bank and the U.S. have partnered before on water issues, this provides the World Bank access to experts in 17 U.S. government agencies and departments to address issues such as lack of safe drinking water and sanitation, diminishing aquifers, drought, flooding, and climate change impacts.
The signing was preceded by presentations by Steve Hilton of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, who announced a US$ 50-million pledge for water projects, and Jeff Seabright, Vice President of Coca Cola, who announced a US$ $6 million pledge for water and sanitation projects.
New US legislation proposes to appoint an International Water Issues Diplomatic Coordinator and to set up a Bureau for Global Water Aid at USAID.
Democratic representative from Texas Sheila Jackson-Lee introduced the Global Water Access and Equity Act (H.R.6565) in Congress on 21 December 2010. It has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Among other things, the proposed bill would create the position of “Coordinator of United States Government Diplomatic Initiatives to Provide Safe Water and Sanitation Globally” at the State Department with the responsibility of advising the Secretary of State on U.S. efforts to improve water and sanitation access in developing countries. The bill also establishes the “Bureau for Global Water Aid” at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) headed by an Assistant Administrator who will “be responsible for the oversight and coordination of all United States Government activities to provide safe water and sanitation to developing countries” including those requirements as outlined in the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-121). Finally, the bill authorizes appropriations in the amount that “may be necessary to carry out this Act.”
Read the full details of the bill and its status on Thomas
