Memorandum submitted by Professor Sandy
Cairncross[44]
Prompted, possibly, by your inquiry, DFID's
Senior Water Adviser organised a brainstorming session on sanitation
on Wednesday 20 December, to which we were invited. It was a lively
and productive meeting, and a remarkable degree of consensus was
achieved, on a number of issues, including the following:
— Although more funding is clearly
required in the sector overall, it is important that finances
are used wisely. The pressure to spend by some donor agencies
can be very destructive, particularly when it leads to subsidies
which undermine more sustainable approaches.
— An important constraint is the absence
of successful institutional models appropriate to local conditions,
and of knowledge among funding agencies of which local projects
and organisations deserve support and help to enable them to scale
up.
— Stable long-term partnerships and
continuity of staffing at country level are essential to foster
the experimentation, bring about the changes in approach and build
the local capacity needed to develop and implement successful
programmes at large scale.
— DFID, like most other donor agencies,
is under constant pressure to reduce its staff in relation to
its spend, but the fact that other agencies are subject, and often
succumb, to such pressure only renders the need for staff with
development experience and local knowledge more acute.
DFID has in the past striven to circumvent the
downward pressure on staff by using consultants. A few years ago,
it could be said that DFID spent more on consultants than any
other Ministry except Defence, and excluding Defence it spent
more than all other Ministries put together. It also sought to
reduce the lack of continuity resulting from this practice, by
establishing Resource Centres as outsourced centres of expertise.
However, these do not provide local knowledge or strengthen local
policy communities. The downward pressure on staff is increased
by the Treasury's insistence that DFID reduce its staffing by
a further 20%, while being required to handle an increased aid
budget. As you know, the planned increase in the water and sanitation
sector is especially large.
We feel in hindsight that in the testimony some
of us gave to you, we did not give sufficient emphasis to our
firm belief that DFID can potentially play a central role in transforming
the sanitation sector, but only if the staffing problem is confronted
head on, so that DFID is able to station full-time water and sanitation
advisers (preferably, sanitation advisers) in the principal countries
where it seeks to influence sector performance.
DFID has a historic opportunity to take a bold
lead with new thinking and practices with sanitation. These could
have a huge impact, enhancing the wellbeing of tens or hundreds
of millions of poor people, especially but not only women and
children, and making a massive contribution to all the main Millennium
Development Goals. To achieve this requires imagination, guts
and vision. DFID needs to muster these, if this extraordinary
opportunity is not to slide away unseen and unseized.
|
| Sandy Cairncross | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
|
| Ken Caplan | Building Partnerships for Development in Water and Sanitation
|
| Robert Chambers | IDS, University of Sussex
|
| Val Curtis | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
|
| Barbara Evans | Freelance consultant
|
| Lyla Mehta | IDS, University of Sussex
|
| Peter Newborne | Overseas Development Institute
|
| Peter Ryan | Water Aid |
| David Satterthwaite | International Institute for Environment & Development
|
| Darren Saywell | International Water Association
|
| Laura Webster | TEAR Fund |
|
| January 2007 | |
44
With input from other organisations, noted at the end of the
memorandum. Back
|
