House of Commons - International Development

Select Committee on International Development Sixth Report

4 SUPPLYING WATER

80. For many poor people globally, the daily struggle to access water seriously depletes energy, health, money and time. Inequalities based on wealth and location, together with flawed policies, mean that poor people pay the most and travel the furthest for water. Achieving even the basic minimum standard of access to water—20 litres per day of clean water from an improved source within one kilometre of the home—remains a huge challenge, with 1.1 billion people, including half of all Africans, unable to meet this basic requirement.[140]

81. Accessing an 'improved' source entails acquiring water from an in-house connection, standpipe, pump or protected well—not a vendor, water truck or stream.[141] Bringing an improved source to within one kilometre of every single home worldwide is an enormous responsibility for governments and donors, but one that cannot be shirked if the full range of MDG targets are to become a reality. Working out the mechanisms by which clean water can be delivered to all is thus a policy imperative for DFID.

Finding the right role for the private, public and informal sectors

82. The question of whether the public or private sector should supply water tends to be given disproportionate attention in international dialogues around water provision. Simplistic public versus private debates miss the point: as the UNDP's Human Development Report states, "The criterion for assessing policy should not be public or private but performance or non-performance for the poor".[142] However, it would be irresponsible to ignore the lessons of the 1980s and 1990s: an over-reliance on the private sector to deliver water equitably and affordably to the poor does not work.[143] In the 1990s, donors—especially the World Bank—promoted privatisation as a means to deliver finance for investments, efficiency improvements, and better governance in the water sector. Yet the expected benefits never arrived: research by the University of Greenwich has found that since 1990, only about 600,000 households have been connected as a result of investment by private water operators in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and east Asia (outside China), representing less than 1% of the people who need to be served in those regions to meet the MDGs.[144]

83. Simultaneous to donor realisation that private sector involvement would be no panacea for expanding water access, and that they had oversold its merits, the large private water companies found far fewer opportunities to invest. Accordingly, they retrenched. Companies realised that the available returns often failed to compensate for the political and regulatory risks involved in developing country water investments.[145]

THE PRIVATE SECTOR'S ROLE AS A CONTRACTOR

84. Following the privatisation experience and the retrenchment of the private sector, attention has turned to finding the right role for the private sector: one that will simultaneously expand poor people's access to water and pull in much-needed funds for infrastructure, in particular. Limited transfers of responsibility to the private sector including service and management contracts are widespread in Africa. These arrangements can work well, depending on how they are operated.[146] As Aquafed, the International Federation of Private Water Operators, pointed out in their written evidence, management contracts between experienced private operators and their local partners—public utilities—can be an effective way of building capacity.[147] It is crucial, however, that such contracts contain specific pro-poor requirements, with implementation of these clauses monitored, and that transparency of contracting procedures is built into the process so that performance targets are publicly known.[148] Limited service and management contracts can be mutually beneficial for the private sector and public water providers, but only if contracting procedures are transparent, include provision for training and capacity building within local communities, performance targets are publicly known and contracts include effectively monitored pro-poor requirements.

NGO-DELIVERED AND COMMUNITY-MANAGED WATER SERVICES

85. As well as advocating and raising public awareness about inadequate sanitation and water, NGOs also serve as water providers, particularly in un-networked areas. Often communities themselves manage water services, without the involvement of a formal NGO, but with wide user participation including water and sanitation committees. Both forms of provision can work highly effectively in improving access for poor people. For example, the NGO Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH) supports 50-60 projects a year across Nepal and uses its Gender and Poverty Approach to promote equitable access to water.[149]

86. Yet even successful NGO and community schemes need to work within a government framework so that they are sustainable and so that, for example, schemes are legally registered and therefore accountable in cases of poor standards or corruption. Co-operation between community providers and the government also ensures that the creation of parallel structures is avoided. During our visit to Ethiopia, we saw an example of an NGO provider working successfully in this way. WaterAction has implemented 34 water and sanitation programmes, helping 600,000 people, since it was established in 1995 by Ethiopian professionals with the assistance of WaterAid UK. In Alaba, a small town in a water-stressed area in the Southern Nations region, we saw how women's journeys to collect water—previously around six hours' walk—had been greatly reduced by the provision of 14 borehole schemes and 59 water points, which have increased water coverage from 12% to 35%. We were told that before this scheme was introduced, forced abductions and women giving birth during the long journey had been frequent occurrences. WaterAction puts the responsibility on communities to manage their needs: water and sanitation committees are established at the outset of any project and are involved throughout the process, facilitated by community mobilisers who are usually women. The committees set tariffs, so that water is charged for at levels affordable to even the poorest in the community (10 cents for a 20 litre can). Regional and woreda (district) level government is also involved from the start: stakeholder workshops, which include government representatives, are held at the beginning of a project and construction of boreholes and wells is done in co-ordination with the authorities.

87. NGOs and communities themselves are important water providers, but to work effectively they must operate within government frameworks so that legitimacy and sustainability are ensured. We recommend that DFID encourage partner governments to engage in NGO and community schemes so that co-ordination and sustainability of water provision schemes can be maximised.

THE INFORMAL SECTOR

88. For many poor people, the small-scale, informal private sector—including water vendors, kiosks and trucks—will be the only or, at least, the most important water supplier. In Nairobi, Kenya, for example, 60% of the urban poor are supplied by informal providers. The key problem with informal private suppliers is that they fall outside regulatory frameworks and thus quality and price controls.[150] Water obtained from vendors is often 10-20 times more costly than water delivered through a utility.[151] Kevin Watkins from the UNDP emphasised the importance of proper regulation of private vendors in slum areas, and the need to license vendors so that poor people in slums are not paying more than people in high-income suburbs.[152] Informal suppliers perpetuate the harsh reality that the poorest tend to pay the most for their water. Block tariff systems—which raise the price in line with the volume of water acquired—mean that middle men, buying water in bulk subsequently to sell on to poor households, charge high rates. Households connected to the utility would pay far less per unit, but given that connection fees are generally prohibitively high for poor people—in urban Kenya connection costs approximately six months' income—poor people remain locked into obtaining water informally.[153] This, as Kevin Watkins told us, is a fundamental inequality and results in situations like that in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, where a totally privatised water market exists because of informal provision.[154]

LOCALLY APPROPRIATE SOLUTIONS TO WATER SUPPLY

89. The answer to addressing this inequality, we were told, lies in support for locally appropriate solutions to water supply. David Satterthwaite from the International Institute for Environment and Development suggested, "you have to go down to each locality and ask who is providing what and who is capable of improving provision."[155] Will Day from Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor agreed, saying that communities should be "supported in such a way that they can have a proper engagement and voice in the process and the capacity to deliver water in such a way that it is locally affordable and environmentally sound."[156]

90. The vision of a locally appropriate, government-supported solution to water supply that reduces inequalities in access is an appealing one—but making this happen at the scale required is a huge challenge for governments and donors. Ultimately, achieving this ideal solution is likely to involve working concurrently towards a combination of outcomes, including: strengthening public utilities; boosting governance within the water sector; building local capacity and technical expertise; and ensuring that DFID's own advisory capacity is of high quality, in order to support in-country partners effectively. The remainder of this chapter will examine each of these objectives, to assess how donors can provide a package of support that redresses the fundamental inequalities that currently impede water service delivery to poor people.

Strengthening public utilities

91. Public water utilities are mandated by government to supply water to a designated area. The public sector is responsible for more than 90% of the piped network in developing countries. The performance of many public utilities has been lamentable in terms of quality of service—for instance, hours of supply and water quality—and extension into urban poor areas. However, there are a number of success stories which show that public utilities can work extremely well. In 1993, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, saw a process of utility reform begin, and since then quality of service has greatly improved, staffing inefficiencies have disappeared, meters have been installed for all connections and most bills are paid. Most importantly, provision has been pro-poor: by the end of October 2006 the utility had arranged nearly 14,000 connections for poor households and service now covers 90% of the city.[157]

92. Strengthening and reforming utilities requires identifying the sources of weakness, which include poor governance, infrastructure that is not fit for purpose (with leaking pipes a major problem) and poor revenue collection. Failing to enforce bill payment, setting tariffs too low to recover even operation and maintenance costs, and loss of water from leaking pipes, lead to large deficits which cause utilities to struggle to provide regular supplies to those with existing access, let alone to extend services.[158]

93. DFID supports several international programmes that aim to strengthen public operators. It has provided around £1 million to the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities, which is managed by the World Bank and seeks to increase the transparency of utility performance and monitor their efficiency. DFID has also given just under £0.5 million to Building Partnerships for Development, an informal network that uses research to demonstrate the use of partnerships for local operators.[159]

94. Sharing good practice between public utilities is something that DFID acknowledges it should do more of.[160] 'Public-public partnerships' (PUPs) offer one mechanism by which utilities can share knowledge and learn from each other's successes.[161] PUPs enable a public utility which is strong in one area of performance to be linked with another utility that is keen to gain knowledge and experience in that particular area. The UN Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation has included Water Operators Partnerships—a similar notion to PUPs—as one of the six key objectives in its Compendium of Actions.[162] Vicky Cann of the World Development Movement told us that DFID should support PUPs, because they promote the sharing of "south-south" knowledge and can address a wide range of issues, from the technical detail of, for example, particular types of pump or treatment systems, to becoming more accountable to users.[163] Public utilities are responsible for the vast majority of service delivery. Reform of public utilities is essential if they are to operate more effectively and efficiently and increase service coverage for poor people. We recommend that DFID investigate the promotion and funding of 'public-public partnerships' between public water operators, which can help utilities in developing countries support each other, share knowledge and learn from each other's successes.

Water governance

95. Water governance is an integral part of strengthening public utilities. Successful utilities are those which are accountable and transparent to users, efficient in their operations, deliver according to clear performance standards and targets and which recycle the revenues generated to make ongoing improvements to the service they provide.[164] Water governance represents the systems and processes—whether social, institutional, ecological or economic—which society sets in place to manage its water resources and deliver water services.[165] Governance of the water sector has tended disproportionately to benefit affluent sectors of society: poor people bear the burden of unregulated private providers, inadequate public provision, corruption and insecure land tenure.

96. As in many other sectors, tackling corruption is an important part of securing good governance.[166] Two major areas for concern are corrupt relations between utilities and their customers, and between utilities and their contractors.[167] Several witnesses noted that a primary way of tackling corruption was paying water staff a decent wage.[168] Vicky Cann from World Development Movement cited evidence from Dhaka in Bangladesh and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where prioritising wages has been a significant factor in tackling low-level corruption.[169] Tackling corruption is of core importance to improving governance of the water sector. Corruption is less likely if utility employees do not need to supplement their pay through bribes. We recommend that DFID encourage partner governments and the private sector to prioritise paying water sector staff a decent wage.

97. But witnesses warned that addressing corruption would by no means solve all governance problems in the water sector.[170] Building accountability is a pivotal part of securing good governance, so that governments, utilities and the private sector include poor people, especially women, in water policy design, implementation and monitoring processes.[171] This should be a two-way process so that donors simultaneously help build accountability mechanisms with water providers whilst supporting civil society's capacity to articulate demand for an improved and transparent service.

98. Antonio Miranda Neto, Director for International Affairs for the Brazilian Association of Municipal Water and Sanitation Public Water Operators, told us of his experience of successfully reforming the public utility in Recife, Brazil, where top-down decision-making frameworks had been replaced with more democratic, community-based processes including multi-stakeholder supervisory committees: "Ordinary people are not engineers, are not biologists, but they can play a very important role in asking essential questions and they have the sense of reality that many times our experts do not have."[172] Mr Miranda Neto suggested that the International Financial Institutions should replace the conditionalities they use for lending to certain water projects with requirements for accountability, transparency and democratic decision-making processes.[173]

99. Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), an international multi-stakeholder initiative established in 2004, aims to provide water supply in poor urban areas building on the central working relationship between the water supplier, the local service provider and the community. WSUP contends that the sustainability of projects seeking donor funding is compromised by current donor tender funding cycles: they take too long, with protracted feasibility assessments and consideration periods. This lengthy funding cycle, WSUP believes, precludes sustained engagement between a capacity- building partner and the community and makes the establishment of mutual trust difficult.[174]

100. WaterAid highlighted experiences in Latin America of successful citizen-led accountability mechanisms—for instance, citizen councils scrutinising the investments and performance of the utility in Caracas, Venezuela and Porto Alegre, Brazil.[175] During our visit to Ethiopia, we visited the town of Alaba, where the NGO WaterAction had set up water and sanitation committees to promote, build and maintain reliable water supply. Under the initiative, women are encouraged to assume leadership and decision-making roles, often by working as village hygiene communicators and chairing committees. We recommend that DFID work to ensure that improved accountability and transparency mechanisms are built into national decision-making processes. This will facilitate a clearer voice for consumers and civil society, and help to ensure that water systems are based on the realities of poor people's needs. This should include looking at the length of donor funding cycles which, if too protracted, can compromise the mutual trust that should be at the heart of the supplier-provider-community relationship.

Boosting local capacity and technical expertise

101. In our view, the lack of institutional, organisational and individual capacity at the national and local level is a more serious constraint on the water sector than lack of finance, particularly within decentralised governments where the responsibility for sanitation and water lies at the municipal, regional and district level.[176] The competency shortfall manifests itself in a number of ways, including weak diagnostic, scientific, technical, monitoring and analytical capacity.

102. A primary issue relates to poor educational opportunities and a resulting deficit of technical knowledge for designing, implementing and maintaining water systems. John Chilton from the British Geological Survey told us that there has been a "terrible decline" in postgraduate education for water professionals, and that the consequent decline in national water resource capacity in, for example, Malawi was nothing short of "heartbreaking".[177] Even for the fortunate few who train at postgraduate level, the content of courses is often outdated and inappropriate. Dr Darren Saywell of the International Water Association told us, "If you look at the engineering curricula in parts of Africa, it is still based upon Western European modes of engineering [which are] completely inappropriate."[178]

103. DFID has cut back on funding the training of water professionals.[179] The British Geological Survey's written evidence told us that, "Post-graduate training of hydrological, hydrogeological and irrigation professionals seems almost to have disappeared."[180] David Hall and Emanuele Lobina, from the University of Greenwich, stated in their submission:

181

DFID officials told us that the Department now prefers to focus on "learning within the project and programmes"—that is, building up local institutions and strengthening community capacity—rather than risk training individuals who may then chose to work for other organisations.[182] But DFID could support national water professionals without the need to fund individuals: by negotiating a quota of funds from budget support or other form of assistance that is ringfenced for water professionals' training and salaries, DFID could simultaneously support training and help to mitigate the 'brain drain' of professionals from developing to developed countries.

104. One route that DFID could take to strengthen capacity at professional and technician level, whilst managing the risk of funding individuals' training, is to offer more support to regional centres of excellence.[183] Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Head of DFID's Sustainable Development Group, told us that DFID has supported resource centres on sanitation and water in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and India.[184] This support was offered for five years, from 2001-06. The Department also supports UK-based resource centre schemes for DFID staff and programmes to call on for professional knowledge.[185] Increased support to local resource centres could greatly assist regional, national and sub-national level officials in developing locally appropriate solutions. The key is identifying solutions that have worked elsewhere and modifying and applying them in particular institutional and social contexts. Resource centres need to be set up in a way that is sustainable and allows them to attract business and function as financially viable entities.[186] We recommend that DFID do more to strengthen capacity in sanitation and water to provide policy support and technical advisory services for national governments and development partners. One route towards this would be increased support to regional, national and sub-national resource centres in Africa and Asia. The centres could support knowledge transfer, develop appropriate training courses, provide policy advice and encourage the development of locally appropriate solutions to sanitation and water. Centres should be established in a way that is sustainable and allows them to attract business and function as financially viable entities.

105. Dr Darren Saywell of the International Water Association suggested that another way in which DFID could help address capacity constraints was by brokering expertise, so that countries suffering from a particular technical problem within their water systems could be linked—possibly through professional associations—with experts or practitioners with experience of solving similar problems. Twinning and mentoring are key ways to facilitate this sharing of experience, and are already being used amongst system providers in Africa and Asia.[187] The multi-stakeholder Partners for Water and Sanitation initiative has facilitated demand-responsive twinning relationships with in-country partners that provide support through short-term, clearly focused inputs. In South Africa, for example, a British water company has twinned with a municipality and provides long distance support and advice.[188] Dr Saywell told us that DFID does make use of professional associations but on a rather informal basis, and that "a more positive engagement [...] would allow a ripple effect to go across the water and sanitation sector and its professionals."[189] DFID should build a more formal relationship with professional water associations, which can assist in brokering expertise between countries experiencing similar technical problems in their water systems, using methods such as responsive twinning and mentoring to provide support for water operators in developing countries.

106. A linked area of concern relating to building capacity is hydrometric data collection. Data on the hydrological cycle—precipitation, river flows, lake levels, groundwater levels, water quality and so on—must be collected and analysed by adequately trained personnel so that water access needs can be assessed, water resources can be managed efficiently and the impacts of climate change accurately measured. The British Geological Survey identified a decline in the necessary expertise for data collection and analysis and the Institution of Civil Engineers highlighted the risks this poses for the poor design of water supply schemes (see Chapter 5 for further detail about the importance of accurate data collection). Both organisations believed that DFID should do much more to address the data deficiency and associated capacity constraints.[190] DFID should encourage partner governments to boost staff numbers and develop training programmes to improve the collection of accurate hydrological data, which is essential to pinpointing water access and management needs.

DFID's advisory capacity in the water sector

107. A final issue in assessing how to ensure that water supply is pro-poor and locally appropriate concerns DFID's own capacity to advise and assist in-country partners. Part of this centres on DFID's research capacity in the water sector. The Secretary of State told us that, as part of the doubling of DFID's overall research programme, an £18 million water and sanitation research department has been agreed.[191] This is a much-needed step: witnesses expressed concern that DFID's research capacity for water has weakened. Dr Darren Saywell told us that, in the past, DFID had very large knowledge and research programmes that have subsequently declined.[192] The UK National Committee for the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO discerned an "imbalance within DFID towards social sciences, at the expense of the physical sciences [...] too few DFID staff have physical sciences backgrounds, which has resulted in an apparent bias in policy implementation."[193] DFID officials were clear that their own research capacity was only half of the equation: Mark Lowcock said, "One of the big issues on research is uptake, who gets it and the capacity of local institutions to use [research]."[194] The Secretary of State said, "It is not [...] that we lack for knowledge about what can work in the right circumstances, it is how you get people to apply that knowledge and make it happen on the ground."[195] DFID's decision significantly to boost its own research capacity on water and sanitation is welcome. We particularly support the focus on building local capacity for research. The Department needs a clear strategy for deciding in which areas research is required and how findings will be communicated and used within partner countries.

108. DFID focuses water expertise within its cadre of infrastructure advisers, and, following a drop in 2005, the headcount of this grouping has recently grown again.[196] However, the impact of civil service efficiency targets—which are likely to entail a 10% headcount cut for DFID—and the expansion of the water and sanitation budget by 2011 will place substantial pressure on DFID's advisory capacity. A National Audit Office audit of DFID's support to the water sector in 2003 stressed the need for DFID to "balance its new resource requirements with the retention of appropriate technical expertise, to maintain sufficient knowledge of the country's sectoral needs and to facilitate policy dialogue in individual sectors".[197] A number of written submissions articulated the concern that there is a significant lack of in-house technical expertise within DFID—and there was further disquiet that DFID is trying to manage an expanding aid budget with a limited complement of technical staff.[198] Fewer advisers will be handling more money and responsibilities: this potentially compromises DFID's ability to service in-country partnerships and communicate knowledge within the Department—especially between Policy Division and country programmes.[199]

109. Given the overall lack of capacity within the water sector, these constraints on DFID's own specialist expertise are worrying, especially given that DFID has channelled its advisory capacity innovatively and with good results in recent years. A particular success has been the secondment of two infrastructure advisers into ministries to work on national water and sanitation strategies: in Uganda the secondment of DFID's Simon Kenny into the Ministry of Finance "had beneficial impacts on the water programme out of all proportion to the cost"[200] and in Ethiopia we heard from a number of in-country partners, including the EU Water Initiative, that the secondment of Mark Harvey into the Ministry of Water Resources was proving very helpful in improving co-operation within the water sector.

110. Issues around DFID's need to do "more with less" are discussed in Chapter 2 in relation to sanitation and in Chapter 3 in relation to channelling more funds for sanitation and water through multilateral institutions. Mark Lowcock, DFID's Director General for Policy and International, called the headcount-resource expansion dilemma "the biggest challenge we face" and said that the Department will have to use partnerships "much better" in order to ensure adequate coverage of the water sector.[201] But beyond this smarter use of partnerships, no coherent strategies were offered when we pressed officials on the subject.

111. When we asked the Secretary of State how many infrastructure advisers DFID plans to have in place by 2011 to accompany the massively increased budget for the sanitation and water sectors, we were astonished to be told that they did not know and that no needs assessment had been carried out. We were told that capacity would only increase by "one or two" people by 2011.[202] This reflects a worrying tendency in DFID, on which we have commented before, to focus too heavily on financial inputs—how much it is spending—rather than on ensuring it has the necessary personnel and structures in place to provide certainty that increasing funds are spent effectively.[203] While money is part of the solution to reaching the sanitation and water MDGs, and we very much welcome the increase in DFID's allocation, it is not sufficient on its own. Developing countries have an urgent need for technical advice and capacity building in the water sector, which will require increased human resources within DFID. DFID must address its own tendency to focus too heavily on financial inputs without adequately assessing the necessary human resource requirements for efficient expenditure of funds.

112. DFID's staff reductions come at a time when other donors are also having headcounts capped, so DFID cannot necessarily rely on others stepping into the breach.[204] DFID gave us no evidence that it has thought about how to fill the inevitable void in in-country sanitation and water advisory capacity that will result once headcount restrictions begin to bite. A comprehensive needs assessment of DFID staffing requirements that covers the full period of programme expansion up to 2011 and a strategy for a co-ordinated response to potentially weakening in-country donor advisory capacity, given other donors' potential retrenchment from the water sector, are two urgent priorities for DFID. As we stated in paragraph 103, DFID should also support the training and salaries of national water professionals as there is no substitute for sustainable, appropriate, local knowledge. Headcount restrictions—within DFID and other donors—risk leaving a void within in-country donor advisory capacity just at the time when progress is urgently needed on the sanitation and water MDG targets. We recommend that DFID urgently carry out a needs assessment of staffing requirements until 2011 and work on a strategy for a co-ordinated response to the possible weakening of in-country donor advisory capacity.

140 UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, pp. 80-81. Back

141 UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, pp. 80-81. Back

142 UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, p.10. Back

143 Ev 253 [David Hall and Emanuele Lobina, PSIRU, University of Greenwich] Back

144 Ev 253 [David Hall and Emanuele Lobina, PSIRU, University of Greenwich] Back

145 Ev 222 [Christian Engineers in Development] Back

146 Ev 87 [DFID] Back

147 Ev 124 [Aquafed] Back

148 Ev 92 [DFID] Back

149 Ev 153 [Nepal Water for Health] Back

150 UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, p.11. Back

151 UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, p.83. Back