| Abstract |
The Second Global Forum of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) was held in Rabat, Morocco on 7-10 September 1993. The 185 participants included sector professionals from 50 developing countries and 49 external support agencies. The Collaborative Council's mission is to enhance collaboration among developing countries and external support agencies, so as to accelerate the achievement of sustainable water supplies, sanitation and waste management services to all people, with emphasis on the poor.
The report begins by reviewing the comprehensive reports of each of the seven Working Groups established at the WSSCC's first meeting in 1991. Working Groups were set up on the following issues: Country Level Collaboration; Urbanization; Operation and Maintenance; Applied Research; Information Management; Information, Education and Communication; and Gender Issues. The Rabat discussions of these reports focused on developing workable action programmes in these areas for the WSSCC and for individual Council members. Country level collaboration was seen as essential to the successful development of the sector and further to WSSCC interests, analysis including costs and benefits, and monitoring of CLC activities at country and regional levels was recommended. The report on urbanization focused on finding more effective ways of
serving the urban poor and taking a positive view of the process of urbanization. Immediate action was sought on six priority issues: security of tenure, people's participation, cost recovery and resource mobilization, appropriate technologies, institutional reform and capacity building, and water resources conservation and management. It was felt that the Working Group on Operation and Maintenance had developed a comprehensive package of tools to help sector agencies in the adoption of strategies to improve O&M, but that further work was needed to explore the interlinkages between technical O&M and other "social" issues such as gender analysis, education, information dissemination and to deal with the question of private sector involvement in financing and managing O&M. The report from the Gender Issues Working Group outlined recommendations for gender-sensitive programming and the Rabat discussions commended the attempt to include gender issues in all other working groups as an effective strategy, and stressed the need for further research on gender analysis and on the time and energy spent on water-related activities and how these constrain women's development.
The meeting also sought to explore a number of important sector issues, and to identify ways in which these issues could be addressed further through Council-mandated initiatives. The new issues included: pollution control - the Council
could take an advocacy role, raising awareness of the importance of water quality management in developing countries and economies in transition; water demand management and conservation - the Council could develop guidelines for demand management and initiate demand management practices on existing projects; promotion of sanitation - Council members were urged to focus on high-risk populations and to work towards incremental achievements; institutional and management options - the Council recommended the establishment of a new Working Group to establish institutional structures and management procedures for sustainable sector development; more partners (a) the role of NGOs and the consumer - the Council should promote greater involvement of NGOs as equal partners with the community and sector agencies in WSS programmes; (b) the role of professional associations - the Council should promote the role of professional associations as a local, moderate-cost solution to communication, training and standards setting within the sector; (c) the role for the private sector - the Council should form guidelines to enhance the beneficial involvement of the informal private sector in WSS and utility operations. Throughout these recommendations the Council's role as information gatherer and disseminator was emphasized.
The report outlines progress on Council initiatives which include the development of: a set of guidelines indicating strategies for planning, operation and maintenance of WSS programmes in mega-cities, a regional technical cooperation programme now in operation in the Pacific Island countries, and a list of actions covering an institutional framework, human resource development, and information management in the five Lusophone African countries. Three distinct elements were recommended for the Council's programme for the next two years: (1) the Rabat action programme; (2) Council-sponsored working groups on promotion of sanitation and on institutional management options, including water demand management and conservation; and (3) Council-mandated activities on water pollution control; services for the urban poor, especially urban waste management; operation and maintenance; applied research; communication and information; and gender issues.
|
