If the maximum acceptable time needed to collect water is taken as 30 minutes per round trip, then drinking water coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa drops by eight percentage points, the report says. Similarly, if you include water quality as an indicator, then the 2008 JMP estimates of access to safe drinking water would go down by 16% for Nicaragua, 11% for Ethiopia, 10% for Nigeria and 7% for Tajikistan.

The new report analyses existing JMP statistics in more detail and includes increased disaggregation of water service levels and analyses of trends across countries and regions. It focuses on the three key challenges of equity, safety and sustainability. Disparities in terms of geography, wealth and gender are explored, as well as the role of household water treatment and safe storage in water safety, and the unique threats posed by climate change to the sustainability in rural and urban contexts.

National and global monitoring will require a major evolution, concludes the report, to meet demands for targets and indicators that take equity, safety and sustainability into account.

[1] WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP), 2011. Drinking water equity, safety and sustainability. (JMP thematic report on drinking water ; 2011). New York, NY, UNICEF ; Geneva, World Health Organization. 62 p. : 40 fig., 2 tab. 23 ref. <Available at: http://www.unicef.org/media/files/JMP_Report_DrinkingWater_2011.pdf>

Related news:

• Monitoring: new tools meet demand for more transparency in the water sector, E-Source, 05 Dec 2011
• Angelica de Jesus, First consultation on developing post-2015 monitoring indicators, Berlin: Refocusing the monitoring approach, E-Source, 02 Aug 2011

Related web site: WHO / UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation – http://www.wssinfo.org/

Source: UNICEF, 20 Dec 2011

In 2079, worldwide drought and nuclear plant meltdowns have diminished the earth’s water supply by 88 per cent. The only hope for survival is to send war criminal Grant Clarke to Jupiter’s distant moon, Europa. Clarke must obtain a sulphur-based bacteria and get it back to earth in time to decontaminate the nuclear waste and save the world’s water supply.

That’s the plot of Europa, a 17 minute thesis film directed by David Gidali and produced by Avi Quijada for the American Film Institute (AFI). Post production of the AFI student film was completed in December 2011 and we can’t wait for its release.

We are also still eagerly awaiting the release of another sci-fi water film, Shekhar Kapur’s Paani. Elizabeth director Kapur announced the plans for his big budget film (the cost has apparently increased from US$ 30 million to US$ 50 million) at Cannes in 2010, but so far there is no confirmation that filming has actually started.

Related news: Global water crisis gets Bollywood Sci-Fi treatment, WASH News International, 18 May 2010

Related web sites: Europa – The Movie: Facebook | www.europamovie.com/

Source: PR.com, 21 Dec 2011

Using the example of Darfur where militants took over villages after poisoning wells, Jan Eliasson illustrates the link between peace and access to clean water.  He then explains the importance of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7, which aims to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

Jan Eliasson is chairman of WaterAid Sweden, former Minister of Foreign Affairs in Sweden and since 2010 he serves in the UN Secretary-General’s MDG Advocates Group.

A Child’s Right installs clean water systems in orphanages, schools and children’s hospitals in urban areas in the developing world. In October 2011, the NGO launched Proving It, a web site that tracks the status of all its projects, from inception to installation and then routinely thereafter. A Child’s Right is not afraid to stick the label “failed” on projects when systems are no longer working, explaining what went wrong and what has been learned.

One year after its introduction Water For People’s monitoring tool FLOW (Field Level Operations Watch) has become so popular that the NGO is looking for another organisation to take care of technical support. One of the candidates is the Amsterdam-based NGO AKVO.

The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) has used FLOW to map 7,400 water points in Liberia [1]. In July 2011, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation granted US$ 500,000 to Water For People and the African Regional Centre for Drinking Water and Sanitation (CREPA) to use FLOW to assess the functionality of 1,500 wells co-funded by the Foundation in West Africa [2].

[1] New Mobile Technology Helps Liberia Map Rural Water Points, Informs Strategy, WSP, 22 Jun 2011

[2] Amelia Gingold and Marissa Feinberg, Water For People receives grant from Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Water For People, 08 Jul 2011

Related web sites:

• A Child’s Right – Proving It
• Water for People – FLOW
• akvo.org

Related news: Monitoring: three new mapping tools launched, E-Source, 03 Nov 2010

Source: Alex Goldmark, GOOD, 01 Nov 2011

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

Related web sites:

• WASH Conference 2011
• IRC – Water Services that Last

Related news:

• Leading sector organisations launch Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Sustainability Charter, E-Source, 04 Oct 2011
• Costing sustainable services training is successful, Brisbane, E-Source, 04 Aug 2011

Source: International WaterCentre, 26 Sep 2011

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.

Related web sites:

• TaKaDu – Research
• Smart Water Networks Forum (SWAN)
• International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET)
• IWA Water Loss Specialist Group

Related news: Dick de Jong, The SWAN Forum: Defining the future of Smart Water Networks, WASH News International, 02 Nov 2011

Smart Water Network (SWAN) solutions improve the efficiency, longevity, and reliability of the underlying physical water network by better measuring, collecting, analyzing, and acting upon a wide range of events. SWAN brings water industry leaders together to promote awareness, effectiveness, and use of smart data systems for water networks.

The SWAN forum encourages targeted, technical discussion to:

• Raise awareness for smart water networks.
• Create and report upon the methodologies, standard performance indicators, and industry best practices.
• Develop new approaches and solutions to improve network operations.
• Share members’ experience, case studies and research.
• Promote interoperability, synergy and common measurements.

Membership fees range from Euro 950 for individuals (students free) to Euro 4,900 for platinum members.

www.swan-forum.com

contact: Email: swanforum@live.co.uk

Catarina de Albuquerque. Photo: OHCHR

The new resolution is based on ongoing efforts by UN Special Rapporteur Catarina de Albuquerque to get states to go beyond Millennium Development Goals and strive for universal service provision.

States should maximise investments so that:

water and sanitation systems are sustainable and that services are affordable for everyone, while ensuring that allocated resources are not limited to infrastructure, but also include resources for regulatory activities, operation and maintenance, the institutional and managerial structure and structural measures, including increasing capacity

The resolution emphasises universal service provision, giving priority to realising a basic level of service for everyone before improving service levels for those already served. It also calls on states to:

• consider wastewater management, including treatment and reuse
• include disaggregated data in monitoring indicators
• ensure that national standards are applied in decentralised services

[1] Right to water and sanitation: finally declared legally binding in international law, E-Source, 19 Oct 2010

Read the full text of UN Resolution A/HRC/RES/18/1

Related news:

• Leading sector organisations launch Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Sustainability Charter, E-Source, 04 Oct 2011
• Right to water: Bolivia’s Evo Morales calls for UN declaration against water privatisation, E-Source, 16 Mar 2011

Related web sites:

• OHCHR – Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation
• The Rights to Water and Sanitation
• Water services that last

Source: OHCHR, 28 Sep 2011 ; Council of Canadians, 28 Sep 2011

The manifesto’s author Timeyin Uwejamomere of WaterAid said:

“Water and sanitation have proved time and time again to be a critical factor in health and economic development. We only need to look at the development of the ‘Asian Tigers’ to see that long-term, reliable funding into urban water and sanitation infrastructure has a powerful impact on economic productivity, as well as driving down poverty.”

Cities in the developing world are expected to double in population size every 15 years, with the vast majority of residents ending up living in unplanned slums, with little or no access to fundamental services such as water, sanitation and electricity.

At present, the diarrhoeal diseases caused by a lack of safe water and sanitation are the biggest killers of children under 5 in Africa, and the second biggest killer in South Asia.

Current investment into water and sanitation in the slums is inadequate and is failing to reach the poorest and most vulnerable people. Only 6% of World Bank sanitation-related commitments from 2000-2005 went to slums, with the vast majority going to more established urban areas.

In the manifesto WaterAid has formulated three main objectives to refocus on urban WASH needs:

• Champion the cause of poor urban communities by developing city-wide plans for urban basic services and prioritising poor urban communities within urban WASH investments;
• Increase understanding and awareness of the needs of poor urban communities through improved data collection and targeted investments
• Commit to long-term action by providing a global strategic leadership for urban issues and agreeing an ambitious post-MDG target for improving the lives of urban slum-dwellers (see Former foreign minister of Sweden Jan Eliasson’s blog post in the Huffington Post).

Download full report: Uwejamomere, T. (2001). Sanitation and water for poor urban communities : a manifesto.  London, UK, WaterAid. 14 p.

Source: WaterAid, 03 Oct 2011

UNICEF Pakistan launches ‘Sabu’

Over 1 million children took part in Pakistan, where UNICEF supported the launch of a new animated children’s character, ‘Sabu’, to help teach children the importance of handwashing with soap.

Celebrations in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Peru, India

In Afghanistan, 1.7 million children from 1,700 schools washed hands; in Eritrea, 326,809 children in 1,272 schools did the same. In Peru, the government declared a national handwashing week as of 10 October, and events involved 3.5 million students in 20,000 schools. In India, eight million children in Rajasthan and all 154,000 schools in Uttar Pradesh participated in handwashing events (listen to Head of UNICEF’s hand washing campaign Lizette Burgers on UN Radio).

Two-week handwashing campaign in Haiti

UNICEF and its partners undertook a two-week handwashing campaign in Haiti, which included the distribution of 300,000 bars of soap, reaching 1,500 schools, 10 hospitals and more than 160 county health centres.

Global Handwashing Day 2010

These and other activities promise to surpass celebrations in 2010, which saw 200 million people and 700,000 schools in over 70 countries honouring the day. The mass handwashing demonstrations in Bangladesh , involving 18 million children from all the schools, were used as a platform to launch the government’s National Hygiene Campaign.

Obstacles to handwashing with sosp

One of the biggest obstacles to handwashing is determining how people are supposed to practice good handwashing behaviors without water and soap, writes Kerry Gallo of Children Without Worms.

In many schools and communities in sub-Saharan Africa, clean water in sufficient quantities is a rarity [...]. In the dry season [when] every spare drop of water is needed for drinking and cooking — little wonder then that handwashing will be seen as an unnecessary waste of this precious resource. [I]n schools where kids and teachers come from poor homes, the use of soap is guarded, meaning kids must ask to use it—creating another point where the handwashing system falters.

Handwashing station installed by CARE. Unfortunately there was no soap. Photo: Kerry Gallo:

Low-cost, low-tech handwashing stations made of buckets with simple taps attached are a good option for many rural schools, says Gallo, but they need to be maintained, especially during the dry season. For an overview of options consult WSP’s Enabling Technologies for Handwashing with Soap Database.

The value of private sector involvement in handwashing promotion

Sarika Bansal asks, in her blog post, whether the private sector can drive meaningful social progress, based on the success the public-private partnership that set up Global Handwashing Day. Such advocacy efforts, Bansal explains, can only succeed if there is a clear link back to a revenue stream, like selling more soap in the case of Global Handwashing Day. The public sector benefits from the great experience of consumer goods companies in promoting behaviour change. A second condition for success is that the social cause should be bigger than the company.

Changing Behaviours through Song and Dance

Juliana Rincón Parra has collected some fun handwashing song and dance videos from Japan, Mexico, Cambodia, Philippines, Mozambique, Colombia, Haiti and Honduras.

Not included, but destined to become a classic is “I wanna wash my hands” by Doctor Doctor.

For a list of recent research and other resources on handwashing see WASHplus Weekly, no. 7, 07 Oct 2011

Related web site: Global Handwashing Day

Source: UNICEF, 14 Oct 2011 ; UN Radio, 15 Oct 2011 ; UNICEF, 19 Oct 2011 ; Kerry Gallo, End the Neglect, 15 Oct 2011 ; Sarika Bansal, Forbes, 13 Oct 2011