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.

Project monitoring

Personal and institutional donors are challenging NGOs to be more accountable. This has led to ICT-driven innovations in bottom-up project monitoring.  The focus so far has been on tools and data analysis; now this has to move to building capacities to analyse and use monitoring outcomes to make better decisions. This needs to be taken one step further, so that project monitoring uses, supports and reinforces national monitoring systems.

Dr. Guy Hutton, Consultant to the
WHO/UNICEF
Joint Monitoring Programme. Photo: Ermias Woldeamlak

Global-regional-national coherence

Ongoing discussions about the post-2015 development agenda are challenging the direction of global WASH monitoring. Do we want more coherence or more complexity/flexibility to accommodate national priorities? Should we move from global to regional monitoring? The two main global systems – GLAAS (Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water) and the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation – continue to evolve to address the above challenges. GLAAS and JMP are recognised as distinct efforts with differences understood.

Finance

Financial terminology derived from IRC’s WASHCost project related to the life-cycle cost approach is now flowing through the sector.

More finance data is being collected about expenditures and value-for-money. We see examples of how finance tools and financial data are being put to use in national policy making as well as in local service delivery.

What we still don’t really know is how much (sustainable) monitoring actually does, or should, cost.

Monitoring human resources

Ironically we have less data about human resources in the WASH sector now than 20 years ago when such data was collected by the pre-JMP global monitoring system. New initiatives to collect human resources data are making progress but are still at an early stage. Indicators and benchmarks need refining; we don’t really know if the right people with the right skills are in the right positions.

Sanitation and hygiene

In the sector we have been talking about water services for several years, but only now is there the start of an emerging discourse about sanitation and hygiene as services. Another emerging area ispost-ODF (open defecation free) monitoring.

Since hygiene services have both public and private costs and benefits, a general agreed principle is to use public funds for hygiene promotion and let users pay for products such as soap. Then the question arises, how do know if investments in hygiene are having an impact? The answer may lie in the use of proxy indicators for handwashing to measure hygiene behaviour change at scale.

There is a growing interest in market-based approaches to sanitation. These require a good understanding and monitoring of the needs of both consumers and private sector providers.

Proliferation of sustainability-related tools

Susan Davis of Improve International recently published a list of 11 WASH sustainability framework tools. The feeling was that we should just let the best tools emerge and use them.

Another conclusion is that the process of involving multiple stakeholders is more important than the tools themselves. As most (or all?) tools were not locally developed, their ownership was questioned.

#WASHmon V. thoughtful blog by J. Annis on bi-lateral sustainability check instruments and where responsibility lies washmonitoring.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/sus…

— Harold Lockwood (@haroldlockwood) April 15, 2013

ICT

Information and communication technology (ICT) will play a prominent role in future monitoring efforts but we should not forget that we need competent people to make sense of all the data. Monitoring systems need to be kept simple, relevant and action-oriented: we should only collect data that lead to decisions and actions.

ICT is not a panacea, there are data quality and quantity issues. The replacement of piles of paper by huge volumes of digital data files, has not yet led to better accessibility of the data.

Many different tools are available, mostly developed by NGOs. These tools support bottom-up monitoring processes which, NGOs claim, promotes sustainability and transparency. The biggest success so far is the national inventory of water points in Liberia, made possible by the NGO-developed Akvo Flow tool, which the government will use for its national investment plan. This development signals a shift from NGO-managed to government-managed monitoring.

Monitoring challenges

Gaps remain and there is still more to learn. We are still collecting a lot of unused information. We need to know more about the costs of monitoring, how to monitor equity, how to monitor for asset management and preventive maintenance, and how to use data to engage consumers.

Speaking in his role as Vice Chair of Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), Darren Saywell said he would like to see a less fragmented WASH sector in the future. He called for harmonisation and standardisation of the monitoring landscape at both the national and the international level. And to make this happen, we all need to “step outside [our] institutional egos”.

More information:

• www.irc.nl/symposium2013
• washmonitoring.wordpress.com
• Twitter: #WASHmon

Sources:

• Butterworth, J., 2013. Synthesis of symposium outcomes. Powerpoint presented at IRC Symposium 2013: Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery, 9-11 April, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Available at: http://www.irc.nl/page/78740
• Dietvorst, C., 2013. Expert views on WASH monitoring. Water, sanitation and hygiene service monitoring. Available at: http://wp.me/p2alV1-2P

The objective of this high-level summit is to take stock of the various developments, in and outside the UN system, in preparing water-related goals for the post Rio+20 development agenda. The expected outcome is one overarching SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on water and sanitation that corresponds and responds to multidimensional challenges.

Confirmed speakers include  Hungarian President Mr János Áder, UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki-moon, the heads of OECD, UNEP, UNIDO, WMO, WHO, UNDP and FAO, Prof. Jamie Bartram, Ms Catarina de Albuquerque, Andris Piebalgs, Prof. John Briscoe and Julia Bucknall.

Organised by: Government of Hungary in collaboration with the World Water Council and UNESCO

Theme: The Role of Water and Sanitation in the Global Sustainable Development Agenda

Topics:

• Striving for universal access to water and sanitation
• Integrated water resources management for the 21st century
• Good water governance
• Green economy for blue water
• Investment in and financing of the implementation of a water and sanitation SDG

Programme

• Plenary
• Sessions
  • Striving for universal access to water and sanitation
  • High-level panel discussion: How to WASH?
  • Integrated water resources management for the 21st century
  • High-level panel discussion:  How to serve a growing population with water in a changing climate?
  • High-Level Water/Energy/Food Nexus Evening Panel
  • Good water governance
  • High-level panel discussion: How to govern water wisely with SMART SDGs?
  • Green economy for blue water
  • High-level panel discussion: What is this green stuff?
  • Investment in and financing of the implementation of a water and sanitation SDG
  • High-level panel discussion: Does money matter?
  • Joint plenary session (afternoon): reporting the outcomes of the five Summit sessions and the stakeholder Forums and Meetings, synthesis, conclusions and recommendations for the water SDGs
• Closing ceremony
• Parallel stakeholder meetings
  • Science Forum
  • Youth Forum
  • Civil Society Forum
  • Business Leaders Forum and Expo
  • Philanthropy Roundtable

Website: budapestwatersummit.hu

In recent years many more people have gained access to an improved water supply; unfortunately access to sanitary facilities is still lagging behind. One of the biggest challenges is how to sustain these newly built water facilities and make sure that people have continuous and reliable access to a supply of good quality water in sufficient quantities.

Much is needed to sustain water and sanitation services—from support to communities after construction of facilities; to improved regulation; to financing of all costs including those for support and replacement; to strengthening the capacities of local authorities; to activating supply chains; and to monitoring.

Monitoring is a critical building block for sustaining water and sanitation services. Which water and sanitation system are exactly out there? What is the status of these systems? Are they functional? Do they provide safe quality water? Are the cues and waiting times not too long? Knowing is necessary for correcting, adapting, and planning for sustainable WASH service delivery.

There is momentum to improve monitoring systems. Momentum because sustaining services is now more important than ever. Momentum because the international community is preparing indicators for the post-2015 development goals including those for water, sanitation and hygiene. Momentum because new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offer opportunities for faster and more efficient monitoring.

The Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium builds on this momentum and provides a platform for gaining knowledge and discussing the challenges for improved monitoring. It presents the latest thinking and experiences in monitoring from all over the world. It discusses how country-led monitoring could be strengthened. It discusses the need and possibilities for alignment of national and global monitoring systems and of project and country led monitoring systems. It provides an opportunity to sector experts to engage with new technologies for data collection and with examples of how monitoring resulted in sustainable water and sanitation service delivery.

The symposium will be attended by some 380 WASH sector experts from all over the world.

The symposium is hosted by the Ministry of Water and Energy and the Ministry of Health of the Government of Ethiopia; it is organised by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in partnership with: the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), WaterAid, Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA), the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN), the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) and Water For People.

The symposium will be preceded by a seminar on Monday 8 April, “National WASH Inventory in Ethiopia: lessons learned and maximising value”. 150 Ethiopia water and sanitation experts will attend the seminar.

For more:

• Visit our website: www.irc.nl/symposium2013
• Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ircwash
• Converse with us on Twitter – mention and/or follow @IRCWASH, and use the hashtag: #WASHmon
• Contribute to our blog: washmonitoring.wordpress.com – please contact Petra Brussee (brussee@irc.nl), Angelica de Jesus (dejesus@irc.nl), or Cor Dietvorst (dietvorst@irc.nl)
• For more information about the seminar on the Ethiopia National WASH Inventory please contact Inge Klaassen (klaassen@irc.nl)

• guaranteed access to water and sanitation services for all EU citizens, including the 2 million currently without access and those threatened with disconnection because they can’t afford to pay their bills
• no liberalisation of water and sanitation services
• more European action to ensure that everyone in the world can enjoy the human right to water and sanitation

While the one million signatures are enough to get the proposals on the European political agenda, a further requirement is to reach a minimum number of signatures in at least seven EU countries. Up to 12 March, five countries have  met this requirement: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia and Slovenia.  The organisers have collected 1.35 million signatures so far, and aim to get 2 million signatures by September 2013

The organisations behind the water is a human right campaign include the following trade unions and NGOs:

• Aqua Publica Europea
• European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN)
• European Environmental Bureau (EEB)
• European Public Health Alliance (EPHA)
• European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU)
• European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
• Public Services International (PSI)
• Social Platform and 
• Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF).

The ECI is the first transnational instrument of participatory democracy in world history. It is considered to be one of the major innovations of the Treaty of Lisbon.

Watch the campaign video.

Related websites:

• Water is a human right campaign - www.right2water.eu
• Initiative for the European Citizens’ Initiative - www.citizens-initiative.eu

Source: EPSU, 11 Feb 2013 ; EurActiv, 12 Feb 2013 ; right2water, 07 Mar 2013

Dr. Jamie Bartram

Jamie Bartram’s team from UNC’s Water Institute calculated that 1.8 billion people (28% of the global population) used unsafe water in 2010 [1] and that 4.1 billion (60% of the global population ) lacked access to improved sanitation [2]. The corresponding official United Nations (UN) estimates are 783 million and 1.2 billion respectively.

The UN estimates are taken from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) [3]. The JMP definition of safe water is linked to the use of improved drinking-water sources. In their definition of safe water, Bartram’s team also looks at the water quality and sanitary risk of the improved sources. For their calculations, they modelled and extrapolated data from a WHO/UNICEF study on the Rapid Assessment of Drinking-Water Quality (RADWQ) in 5 countries.

However, water quality alone does not guarantee an adequate water supply. A study by Water Institute partner, the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre,  in 3 districts in Ghana revealed that more than 30% of the surveyed infrastructure was not functional, and as little as 2% was providing the basic level of service for which it was intended [4].

Just as with water, the JMP definition of “improved sanitation” only measures whether hardware – in this case toilets and sewerage – is in place. The Water Institute researchers classified connections to sewerage as “improved sanitation” only if the sewage was actually treated before disposal. Using data on sewage treatment in 77 countries, they developed an empirical model to estimate treatment prevalence for 47 additional countries [2].

It is not only definitions that under discussion. The reliability of JMP’s sanitation monitoring data was recently questioned by Szántó, Letema and Van Lier [5]. They analysed JMP data on the levels of urban sanitation coverage in East Africa from 2006, 2008 and 2010. Their conclusion: the massive change in coverage recorded over those 4 years was unrealistic.

The international WASH community is promoting universal coverage for water and sanitation in the post-2015 development agenda [6]. WASH Advocates CEO John Oldfield hopes that the UNC studies “will help us define what exactly we mean by ‘universal coverage’” [7].

[1] Onda, K., LoBuglio, J., Bartram, J. 2012. Global access to safe water: accounting for water quality and the resulting impact on MDG progress. International journal of environmental research and public health, 9 (3), pp. 880-894. doi:10.3390/ijerph9030880

[2] Baum, R., Jeanne, J. and Bartram, J., 2013.    Sanitation : a global estimate of sewerage connections without treatment and the resulting impact on MDG progress. Environmental science & technology, 47 (4), pp. 1994-2000. doi: 10.1021/es304284f

[3] WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation – www.wssinfo.org

[4] Adank, M., 2012. It’s about sustainable water services, not just about pumps and pipes : assessing and monitoring water services in Ghana. Powerpoint presentation World Water Week Stockholm 2012. The Hague, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available at: www.irc.nl/page/73942

[5] Szántó, G., Letema, S. and Van Lier, J., 2012. (Un)reliability in sanitation monitoring : analysis of East African urban data. Global water forum, 18 Dec 2012

[6] Catarina Fonseca, Universal WASH services that last in our time?, E-Source, 21 Feb 2013

[7] Brett Walton, Report: new sanitation figures compete with UN statistics for meeting Millennium Development Goals, Circle of Blue, 26 Feb 2013

Related news:

• Have your voice heard, water in the post-2015 development agenda, E-Source, 21 Nov 2012
• Towards better monitoring: taking drinking water equity, safety and sustainability into account, E-Source, 07 Jan 2012

Related web sites:

• Water Institute at UNC
• IRC – Water Services That Last
• JMP – Post-2015 Monitoring

The Thematic Consultation on Water (the water consultation) in the post-2015 development agenda is now open for inputs on the www.worldwewant2015.org/water website.

The water consultation is part of the UN-system led “global dialogue” comprising of 50 – 100 Country Consultations and eleven global Thematic Consultations, among them the one on water. It is co-led by UN-Water, UNDESA and UNICEF.

Another, but more technical consultation process started in 2011 to develop target and indicator proposals for post-2015 global monitoring of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Leader of this technical consultation is the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP).

The water consultation aims to contribute to a shared vision on key future challenges in water and a new global water goal in the post-2015 development agenda.

Participants can engage directly on the web (www.worldwewant2015.org/water), via Twitter  @WaterPost2015 using the hashtag #waterpost2015 and on the Facebook page WaterPost2015.

The water consultation is divided into two parts: a global water consultation (21 November 2012 – 3 March 2013) and thematic sub-consultations on WASH, water resources, waste water management and water quality (mid-January – 3 March 2013). The final outcome in the form of policy recommendations will be transmitted to the High-level Panel on Post-2015 appointed by the UN Secretary General at the end of March 2013.

For more information read the full announcement and a one pager on how to engage.

Related web sites:

• The World We Want – The Post-2015 Water Thematic Consultation
• WHO / UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation – Post-2015 Monitoring
• UN – Beyond 2015

The Gates Foundation’s Sanitation Science and Technology Programme has over 80 projects. SEI and SuSanA have been tasked to share the results from these projects in an open public forum engaging a broad range of experts and the general public.

Over the next 15 months SEI will work with the Programme Grantees of the Foundation in order to broaden understanding and discussion about their work. The grantees will be encouraged to work through SuSanA that has about 200 institutional members and some 2000 discussants on its Discussion Forum (www.forum.susana.org).

In August 2012, the Foundation gave a grant to the Water and Sanitation for   Africa (WSA) to set up the Africa Sanitation Think Tank (ASTT).

Related web sites:

• Gates Foundation - Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
• SEI – Managing Environmental Systems
• SuSanA
• IRC - Sanitation

Source: SEI, 09 Nov 2012

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.

WASHCost provides figures as well for the capital and recurrent costs of piped water schemes, and VIP and pour-flush/septic tank latrines.

WHO used WASHCost data, among others, for the above-mentioned recalculation of benefit-cost ratios for water and sanitation investments.  At the global level, WHO calculates that the benefit-cost ratio for water has declined from 4.4 in their original study [3] to 2.0 in the new study [1], and from 9.1 to 5.5 for sanitation.  Combined water supply and sanitation interventions have a benefit-cost ratio of 4.3. A more sobering statistic from the WHO study is that it still may take 20-30 years to achieve universal coverage.

Other mediagenic WASH statistics have come from the Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI) of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) [4]. In 2012, ESI calculated that inadequate sanitation costs 18 African countries around US$ 5.5 billion each year and that it costs Pakistan up to 3.9% of GDP. Previous ESI studies provided these figures on the percentage of GDP lost through poor sanitation: Bangladesh – 6.3%; India – 6.4%, Indonesia – 2.3%, Cambodia – 7.2%,  Lao PDR – 5.6%, The Philippines – 1.5% and Viet Nam – 1.3%.

One final statistic, released by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for Global Handwashing Day: the lives 603,000 children aged 1-59 months could be saved annually from diarrhoea and pneumonia by handwashing with soap [5].

[1] Hutton, G., 2012. Global costs and benefits of drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to reach the MDG target and universal coverage. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. WHO/HSE/WSH/12.01. Available at: <washurl.net/emq8c7 >

[2] IRC, 2012. Providing a basic level of water and sanitation services that last : cost benchmarks. (WASHCost Infosheet ; 1). The Hague, The Netherlands: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.
Available at: <www.washcost.info/page/2386>

[3] Hutton G. and Haller, L., 2004. Evaluation of the non-health costs and benefits of water and sanitation improvements at global level. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. WHO/SDE/WSH/04.04.
Available at: <washurl.net/et3px7>

[4] WSP – Economics of Sanitation Initiative

[5] Greenland, K.,  Cairncross, S. and Curtis, V. 2012. What can hand hygiene do for the world? London, UK: Environmental Health Group, Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Available at: <washurl.net/4fmsqr>

John Kluge. Photo: EastWest Institute

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

London-based NGO Tourism Concern has launched a campaign to “Demand an end to Water Injustice in Goa”, India

Visitors to Bali, the Gambia and Goa use 16 times as much water as local residents. Such disproportionate use of fresh water by tourists in developing world destinations is causing local conflict, exacerbating poverty and helping to spread disease, says NGO Tourism Concern in a new report [1].

The report examined five coastal destinations popular with international tourists – the Gambia, Bali in Indonesia, the islands of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania, and Goa and Kerala in India.

“While hotels may have the money and resources to ensure their guests enjoy several showers a day, swimming pools, a round of golf, and lush landscaped gardens, neighbouring households, small businesses and agricultural producers can regularly endure severe water scarcity,” says the report.

Some hotels in Zanzibar hotels employ security guards to prevent sabotage of water pipes by angry locals who claim they are facing extreme water shortages. A deadly cholera outbreak in 2010 was partly blamed on groundwater contaminated by sewage from hotels.

Tourism Concern is calling on the international tourism industry, destination governments and tourists to urgently address this problem of “massive inequality”. Their report offers nine Principles of Water Equity in Tourism for governments, the tourism sector and civil society, as well as detailed recommendations for each set of stakeholders.

[1]] Noble, R., Smith, P. and Pattullo, P. (eds), 2012. Water equity in tourism : a human right, a global responsibility. London, UK, Tourism Concern. 31 p. Available at: <www.tourismconcern.org.uk/uploads/Campaigns/WET%20Report.pdf>

Related web site: Tourism Concern – Water Equity in Tourism

Source:

• Leo Hickman, Charity condemns tourists’ use of fresh water in developing countries, Guardian, 08 Jul 2012
•  New report reveals massive water inequity between tourism and locals, Tourism Concern, 09 Jul 2012