Memorandum submitted by the Groundwater
Programme, British Geological Survey (BGS)
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The British Geological Survey is a component
institute of the Natural Environment Research Council. The Survey's
Groundwater Programme undertakes research and provides consultancy
and advice on all aspects of groundwater resources and groundwater
quality, both in the UK and overseas. Staff from the Programme
have a long association with DFID and its predecessors, and have
undertaken work in their Technical Cooperation and research programmes
and provided support and advice on groundwater issues since the
early 1970s. The Programme also undertakes groundwater work for
the EU and for the international agencies, particularly the World
Bank, UNESCO, UNEP, UNICEF, WHO and UNECE.
2. WATER SERVICE
DELIVERY—THE
GROUNDWATER CONTRIBUTION
2.1 Improved water service delivery is an
explicit target within Millennium Development Goal 7, but is also
an essential contribution to meeting many of the other MDGs. We
welcome DFID's clear commitment to poverty elimination and the
MDGs and its recently-confirmed pledges of increased funding support
for water and sanitation in Africa (DFID, 2006).
2.2 While there are many institutional,
social and financial constraints on meeting this target which
are being addressed by DFID, we should not lose sight of the constraints
imposed by the physical environment. Many of the current DFID
focus countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including some which have
most to do to achieve the MDGs (WHO/UNICEF 2004), are dependent
on groundwater for the provision of rural water supplies. This
is because in these semi-arid countries there is often a lack
of reliable and perennial surface water resources. Rural populations
numbered in the tens of millions live in these semi-arid areas
(MacDonald et al, 2005) and a high proportion of these
remain unserved with good water supplies.
2.3 Increased attention needs to be given
to groundwater. Experience (including that gained by BGS in both
DFID's technical cooperation and research programmes) indicates
that the search for groundwater can be problematic (Foster et
al, 2000). Moreover, as water supply coverage increases, areas
which are most difficult for groundwater are likely to be left
and this situation will be exacerbated. Both quantity and quality
factors constrain water service delivery from groundwater in Sub-Saharan
Africa. Firstly, without going into complex geological detail,
the aquifers are generally not very productive but can provide
adequate domestic supplies given the right technical knowledge
and skills. Thus from a quantity point of view, improved understanding
of the occurrence of groundwater and methods of exploring for
and developing such groundwater as does exist in these marginally
productive rocks is needed. Secondly, from a quality point of
view, natural contaminants, especially fluoride, can limit the
usefulness of these groundwater resources. Millions of people
in the countries of eastern and central Africa are affected by
high fluoride concentrations (Foster et al, 2000) and further
work is needed on the geological controls on fluoride in groundwater,
so that these can be mapped and predicted. Although an evaluation
of the KaR programme commissioned by DFID (Technopolis and ODI,
2005) commended the relevance and importance of much of the existing
programme, both of these topics remain as "unfinished business".
In fact a project on fluoride was initiated and then cut by DFID
due to lack of funding (to the considerable disappointment of
the Tanzanian partners in the project).
2.4 After lengthy consultation, DFID still
appears not to have a coherent strategy on water research. The
UK water research community contributed ideas to the development
of DFID's research programme (OASIS, 2005), but there appears
little prospect from its present formulation (DFID, 2004) that
water resources issues of a technical nature will be eligible
for funding. While there are certainly important socio-economic
and institutional issues in water service delivery which are worthy
of DFID's research interest, the quantity and quality issues for
groundwater mentioned above are among the important researchable
technical constraints on water service delivery which are not
currently being addressed by DFID. Although the location of the
new DFID research programme for water in Ethiopia should enhance
the capacity for the research to be more demand-led, the terms
of reference for the programme do not suggest that the technical
aspects of water service provision will have much prominence.
2.5 Sanitation coverage currently lags behind
water supply provision (WHO/UNICEF, 2004). However, as it begins
to catch up, there is greater potential for the former (latrines,
septic tanks and wastewater collection facilities) to impact on
the latter (wells and boreholes). In vulnerable groundwater environments
with shallow water tables and permeable ground conditions, this
can lead to significant groundwater quality impairment from both
microbiological and chemical pollution. In terms of environmental
health and protection and management of water quality therefore,
it is important that water and sanitation strategies and programmes
are fully connected from a technical standpoint within DFID, and
that the potential for them to interact, with negative impacts
on the physical environment, is understood and adequately researched.
3. FINANCING
AND AID
INSTRUMENTS FOR
WATER AND
SANITATION
3.1 The current policy of DFID is to increase
the proportion of funding which goes directly to developing country
partner governments as budget support (DFID 2006). The targets
for rapidly increasing this proportion are ambitious, at the expense
of the more traditional programme and project financing mechanisms.
The intention is that this meets DFID's objectives in enabling
its support to be "demand led" and allows partner governments
to use the funds according to their development needs. From a
water resources management and water service delivery perspective,
this is likely to produce unsatisfactory outcomes for the reasons
given below.
3.2 Responsibilities for water (both management
and supply) are often divided between several government ministries—such
as Agriculture, Irrigation, Public Works, Health and Environment.
Compared, for instance, to other "spending" ministries
such as Transport, Education, and Health, water often has a weaker
voice in putting its case for central government funding, including
the component of DFID budget support. A dramatic example of this—in
Malawi recently, following a government re-shuffle and re-organisation
of ministerial portfolios, responsibility for water disappeared
completely for several weeks until the community of NGOs and multilateral
agencies working in the country managed to have it re-instated.
3.3 There is considerable research evidence
that communities (both rural and urban) put improved water services
as a high priority when articulating their own development needs
(DFID, 2005). However, weak voices and poor institutional and
political representation in the chain up to central government
means that these needs often do not get transmitted upwards and
do not result in adequate government responses. The weakness of
this linkage is widely recognised, and there is a specific DFID
commitment in the 2006 poverty White Paper to support civil society
organisations to help them demand better access to water and sanitation.
Enhancing this voice should attract greater external support from
agencies such as DFID, and we welcome this commitment. If water
supply does not feature strongly enough in national Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers (PRSPs), then it doesn't get funded.
3.4 The professional capacity in water within
government in many of DFID's African focus countries has withered
away to such an extent due to funding constraints, decline in
external training opportunities and the ravages of AIDS, that
ministries responsible for water are poorly equipped in terms
of staff complement to "demand" their share of budget
support funding. The contribution of the British Council and DFID
(and its predecessors) to post-graduate training of hydrological,
hydrogeological and irrigation professionals seems almost to have
disappeared.
3.5 In many countries, responsibility for
water service delivery is being de-centralised to provincial and
local government tiers, often for sound institutional reasons.
However, the technical capacity, limited in any case for the above
reasons, often resides at national or federal levels, and this
also weakens the potential for local government to demand its
share of funding for water, and to implement programmes if funding
is available. DFID should do more to strengthen capacity at professional
and technician level, and in both national and local institutions.
3.6 Linked to this, the availability of
basic data on water from hydrological and hydrogeological networks
has declined dramatically for many of the same reasons. This often
makes the marshalling of an effective argument (supported by evidence)
for improved management of water resources very difficult.
3.7 The combination of these factors means
that many water professionals in the UK have severe doubts that
a fair proportion of the budget support funding will eventually
contribute to improved water resources management and water service
delivery. In fact, if the budget support financing mechanism does
become dominant, how can DFID even be sure that the promised doubling
of assistance to water and sanitation in Africa actually occurs?
3.8 An important potential benefit of the
project based TC funding method was the cyclical linkage between
this and the DFID research programme. By this, the research results
could be fed back into the development programme. Although DFID
and its partners, including ourselves, were not as good at doing
this as we should have been, strenuous efforts have been made
in the last five years to improve dissemination of research results
by methods and routes likely to promote uptake. Likewise, newly-arising
constraints on development (whether, technical, social or economic)
identified in the TC programme could be fed back into and addressed
by the DFID research programme. Budget support funding (as opposed
to project-based funding) is likely to make the already tenuous
links between the development and research activities of DFID
even less effective.
3.9 External support for water and sanitation
should comprise a range of aid instruments and funding mechanisms
which should include direct budget support, technical assistance
programmes, training and capacity building, research programmes,
resource centre schemes with calldown arrangements to draw on
UK expertise, and longer-term, low-level, targeted support for
twinning to build implementation and research capacity, and support
to the UN agencies. Developing regional centres of excellence
in research and of professional capacity for advice and support
to governments and others would be a very positive step which
DFID should encourage and support. These could be initiated through
the networks built up by the existing UK-based resource centre
schemes, but be nurtured to develop a viable life of their own.
It should be made easier to obtain from DFID modest levels of
funding support for longer-term partnerships.
4. DFID'S ORGANISATIONAL
CAPACITY TO
SUPPORT WATER
AND SANITATION
4.1 The validity of the "demand-led"
argument for the budget support financing route in helping towards
the water component of the MDGs pre-supposes in-country demand.
For the reasons mentioned above, articulating in-country demand
for water is problematic and needs external support. However,
DFID is decreasingly able to provide this support because the
cadre of experienced infrastructure advisers with adequate knowledge
of technical water issues posted to or with responsibility for
focus countries has declined in recent years. This lack of professional
capacity and strength in depth was surely a contributing factor
to the widely publicised and heavily criticised decline in visibility
and status of water within DFID during the 2003 and 2004 restructuring.
It is now a constraint on DFID's ability to deliver on its promise
to reach a funding level of £200 million per year for water
in Africa by 2010-11 (DFID, 2006).
4.2 This situation is often exacerbated
by the rapid turnover of DFID staff overseas (or London-based
with specific geographic responsibilities). While it is clear
that really long-term assignment could produce staleness, a single
two to three year posting is often not enough to become familiar
with the specific development needs of the country or region.
Moreover, it is insufficient to see the project cycle through;
limiting true ownership of such activities.
4.3 Clearly, however, DFID cannot itself
carry detailed and specific expertise in all areas that it needs
to engage with from time to time. This has been recognised in
the establishment of technical Resource Centres, with the intention
of allowing DFID to draw on UK and developing country expertise
by a simple calldown procedure. Since 2002, BGS has been a leading
member of the consortium in the OASIS Resource Centre for Water
Resources. Our experience during this time has been that there
have been some highly effective uses of resource centre expertise
to support DFID programmes and staff, and to support DFID's development
partners in the UK and overseas. However, the potential could
have been exploited to a much greater extent if there were more
technical/infrastructure advisers with the right knowledge to
call on Resource Centre skills and experience.
4.4 Overall, we believe that the focus of
DFID in water has moved too far from the technical to the social
and institutional, and this imbalance fundamentally underlies
many of the issues raised in this note. A restored balance between
the social and the physical sciences is urgently needed within
DFID.
5. WATER RESOURCES
MANAGEMENT
5.1 A key international target from the
2002 Johannesburg summit on sustainable development was for countries
to develop integrated water resources management plans (IWRM)
by 2005. The Global Water Partnership (GWP) has strongly supported
this effort with technical and advocacy materials, and DFID has
provided considerable financial support to GWP. At its water forum
discussions, DFID has defended its own very limited activity in
this area by saying that it is being done by GWP. However, while
GWP has produced impressive and useful tools for IWRM, the promotion
of environmental issues including IWRM within national Poverty
Reduction Strategies should be a task for the bilateral development
support agencies of a country. We believe that DFID's ability
to do this properly is hampered by its decline in technical capacity.
5.2 Sustainable exploitation and management
of water resources requires the use of data from the hydrological
cycle; precipitation, river flows, lake levels, groundwater levels,
spring discharges, water abstraction, water quality. Observations
of BGS staff travelling in Africa during the last ten years suggest
that, for both surface water and groundwater, data collection
has been declining due to lack of appreciation of the need for
routine monitoring, and consequent lack of funding. Further, the
decline in staff expertise and numbers means there are less senior
professionals to demand and manage monitoring programmes and to
process and interpret the data, and less junior technical staff
to actually collect the data.
5.3 For groundwater, improved data collection,
archiving and accessibility is also needed in water supply projects
so that new projects use and learn from the results and knowledge
of previous projects. This incremental learning process becomes
especially important in the difficult geological environments
referred to above; how many times have we seen on our travels
a new dry borehole drilled near to an old unsuccessful borehole
whose record was not available to the new project. The wasted
investment in the second borehole could so easily be prevented.
DFID must do much more to address the data deficiency and associated
capacity constraints in sub-Saharan Africa.
References
DFID (2004) DFID Research Funding Framework,
2005-07. DFID, London, 24 pp.
DFID (2005) Water Action Plan—a DFID policy
paper.
DFID (2006) Eliminating world poverty: making
governance work for the poor. DFID, London, 128 pp.
Foster SSD, Chilton PJ, Moench M, Cardy F and
Schiffler M. (2000) Groundwater in rural development: facing the
challenges of supply and resource sustainability. World Bank Technical
Paper, no 463. The World Bank, Washington DC. 98 pp.
MacDonald AM, Davies J, Calow RC & Chilton
PJ (2005) Developing groundwater: a guide to rural water supply.
ITDG Publishing, Rugby, UK, 400 pp.
OASIS (2005) Scoping Study for Possible DFID
Funding of Research into Water for Development. 64 pp.
Technopolis and ODI (2005) Evaluation of DFID's
Engineering Knowledge and Research (ENgKaR) Programme. 83 pp.
WHO/UNICEF (2004) Meeting the drinking water
and sanitation target: a mid-term assessment of progress.
WHO Geneva and UNICEF New York, 33 pp.
October 2006
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