7 CONCLUSION
163. We are pleased that DFID has brought sanitation
and water back into focus after "taking its eye off the ball"
in recent years. The doubling and re-doubling of funds for sanitation
and water in Africa by 2011 is a proportionate reaction to the
scale of the problem that faces millions of poor people in finding
clean water and adequate sanitation every day. But extra money
will not automatically ensure universal access to these basic
human requirements. Capacity at local and national level to implement
scaled-up efforts on sanitation and water is a particular source
of concern: training far more water professionals who understand
local needs and can design and maintain systems, as well as carry
out the crucial task of collecting data on progress, is of signal
importance to ensuring new aid money is invested sustainably and
efficiently.
164. Sanitation is currently very much the poor relation
of water within DFID and this imbalance needs urgent correction.
The MDG sanitation target faces decades of delay unless governments
and donors wake up to the need to alert and educate people about
this major public health issue. Intersecting barriers such as
entrenched stigma and poor understanding of the links between
sanitation and health lock out public attention to this undeclared
global crisis.
165. Improving latrines and managing human waste
links closely with interventions on water, health and education
and a multi-disciplinary approach is sensible. But, within this,
sanitation is a distinct sector that needs discrete strategies
such as raising demand and social marketing. Such techniques require
different skillsets to the technical and engineering solutions
required in the water sector. DFID needs to reconfigure its staff
expertise to reflect this: the current system whereby infrastructure
advisers, rather than health or social development advisers, have
primary responsibility for sanitation is illogical and inefficient.
DFID should step up as a global champion on sanitation and push
it right to the top of the global MDG agenda.
166. There is a fundamental inequality in that poor
people currently pay the most for their water and this must be
addressed quickly and sustainably. The answer lies in finding
locally appropriate solutions to bringing taps and showers close
to people's homes, whether they live in a Delhi slum or a remote
mountain village. Making this happen will require donors and governments
to work on a package of measures including strengthening public
utilities, boosting governance and building local capacity.
167. Central to the success of this package will
be DFID's own advisory capacity. Our visit to Ethiopia showcased
high quality staff deployed innovatively. Yet civil service headcount
reductions could compromise DFID's capacity to spend its much-needed
extra funds efficiently. DFID has no strategy in place to match
its human resources to its expanding financial resources for the
sanitation and water sectors. This reflects a worrying tendency
within the Department, on which we have commented before, to focus
on financial inputs at the expense of determining linked human
resource requirements to achieve the desired outcomes.
168. Decisions about how the quality and quantity
of water is managed will be put into increasingly sharp focus
as climate change, population and economic growth and urbanisation
all constrain availability. Despite its inseparable relationship
with increased water supply, Water Resources Management receives
insufficient attention from donors. DFID should work with other
donors towards a reaffirmation of the 2005 target seeking to ensure
that countries have water resources management plans in place,
and as part of this should support countries to introduce time-bound,
co-ordinated plans with monitoring mechanisms attached.
169. Sanitation and water sit at the heart of achieving
the MDGs, but the intersection with health and education targets
is particularly sharp. Just as sanitation work needs to be aligned
more closely with health expertise within DFID, water and health
advisers need to collaborate far more. The same is true for education:
it is astonishing that DFID's recent education strategies barely
mention either the need to educate children about sanitation and
water, or the huge time burden—and concomitant educational
cost—faced particularly by girls in collecting water daily.
The intersection of water, sanitation, education and health as
development targets requires some concentrated thinking on DFID's
behalf about how to facilitate collaboration across the sectors:
both staff deployment and sector strategies must provide the multi-disciplinary
approach that is so crucial to making progress on all the MDG
targets.
170. By making access to sanitation and water a reality
for millions of people worldwide, DFID could secure a series of
development 'wins', from a vastly reduced global disease burden
to large-scale enrolments of girls in school. DFID has shown
its recognition of sanitation and water's position at the heart
of the development nexus through its proposed Global Action Plan.
It now needs—urgently—to secure international agreement
to the Plan, and to ensure the necessary personnel and organisational
resources are in place to support its implementation. Only then
will the development 'wins' be truly won.
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