I have learned that a blog post can only be 1300 words, so here is part 2 of my report from the expert consultation meeting on Sustainability and Non-Retrogression convened by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation.
Published on: 21/03/2013
The first part dealt with the main challenges of linking different concepts in human rights law and water and sanitation, and what more might be done on the sustainability issue. Something interesting that came up continually during the meeting was the whole area of paradigms, alternatives and innovation in service delivery models.
Is sustainability about feeding and sustaining the old system? Often that's an assumption thinks one of the invited experts. Or does it include innovation and finding new ways to provide water and sanitation services? Two interesting examples were discussed around alternative models of service delivery: community provision of water in slums in Latin America and Self Supply in rural areas. Are these second class services and considered retrogressive, or a good step forward and a way to serve some hard to reach citizens more quickly? Utilities often don't want to work in peri-urban slums in technically challenging terrain and where people might not pay. It's especially hard where urban authorities ignore these communities. The best utilities, we heard, are even then finding ways to support alternative water supplies e.g. providing bulk water supplies for communities to distribute through their own (not quite as good) systems. Is this second-class and discrimination, or better than not providing any service at all (which is common)? It's probably alright and entirely justifiable if it's done in consultation with that community, was the view of one of the legal specialists.
Self Supply – with interesting experiences from countries like Nicaragua, Zambia, Mali and Ethiopia – is similar in promoting low cost access based on household investment e.g. through the digging of family wells and promoting improvements over time in protection and lifting devices to raise quality levels. It's generally not an alternative but complementary to communal rural water supplies. Again the only practical way to do this at scale is to accept an initially rather low level of service (with water quality better than the river but worse than an improved community supply) but then to work on improvements over time. Improvements in low costs steps are integral to the approach. Otherwise the incentives and economics don't work for families.
Research done by IRC and partners in Ethiopia (see download below) has shown that basic protection costing US$ 10 of a family well that might initially cost US$ 50 reduces contamination levels threefold. Such approaches are important to consider because they can mobilise additional sources of finance (from households in this case) and we know that building improved community-management sources in countries like Ethiopia is a task that will still take decades despite the huge progress that is being made. One view expressed in the discussion was that Self Supply can be consistent with the human right if the approach is appropriately supported and monitored by government.
An intervention from the urban sector brought us down to earth in highlighting the political economy of the sector, which is often bad. The human right can surely be a force for good if it reaches the ears of presidents, vice-presidents and finance ministers, especially in countries where there is a lack of coordination or leadership (the Sanitation and Water for All effort in engaging finance ministers on the topic has been great progress). In urban areas, it's about utilities of course. Utilities, public or private, need autonomy but also support from governments. Unfortunately it's not possible to engage with many on sustainability as there are bigger governance issues to address first. The commercially-orientated utilities (public and private) keep an eye on costs and will be working on asset management. Client-orientated utilities that focus on their customers know that poor O&M harms services and they are likely to invest in preventative maintenance. You can engage both these kinds of utilities on sustainability issues, we learned. A third group are the product oriented utilities with a 'Ministry of Public Works' mentality and an interest in big pipes and plants. It's more difficult but there's scope to address sustainability here too. But there is not much to do with utilities that have been captured by politicians as vote-winning devices, or in the worse cases as sources of funds for political parties and elites. In these cases, governance has to be improved first.
The big question in the end is reconciling the need to extend services to achieve universal access with the need to invest more to ensure sustainability of existing services? That's ultimately a political decision everywhere of course. A balance has to be struck. There might be a few win-win solutions like Self Supply. And there are surely ways to use money better and make it go further. But at the moment there is just not enough information in many countries available to the right people to be able to strike the right balance. That's a call for more and better monitoring and research, and transparency and use of that information (see part 1). Let's see what the Special Rapporteur's report suggests later this year. It could be illuminating.
At IRC we have strong opinions and we value honest and frank discussion, so you won't be surprised to hear that not all the opinions on this site represent our official policy.
