Memorandum submitted by John Banyard
INTRODUCTION
I have forwarded separately a copy of my Brunel
Lecture: "Water for the World—Why is it so difficult?"
which is a background document to my responses below. [Not
printed].
It is now more than three years since I wrote
that paper, and I have the benefit of having delivered it in many
countries, additionally I have also refereed a number of research
papers on various aspects of the topic. If I were to write the
paper again, I would not omit anything that was included, but
would inevitably modify the paper to reflect some of the later
experience. I set out below a few of these issues, where they
impact on my responses to the questions posed by DFID.
AN ECONOMIC
GOOD
The Dublin Principles come down heavily on the
side of an "Economic Good". This has been adopted by
the World Bank, but there are numerous web sites devoted to condemning
the World Bank position, and in Bangladesh I found that there
was widespread opposition to it and indeed conviction that the
Dublin Principles had been misrepresented, and were only supposed
to be applied to irrigation.
I am also aware of an initiative by a French
academic who is trying to promote the view that developed nations
are obliged to pick up lifetime operational and maintenance costs
of infrastructure they provide, and that this should be funded
from a levy on water bills in the developed world. The model given
is that people are willing to pay more for "Fair Trade"
products, and will feel the same about a compulsory third world
levy on Utility Bills. The flaws in this argument are many, but
at the highest level, it is unrealistic to believe that the developed
world can fund the sustainability of both its own infrastructure
and that of developing countries. So I conclude that if infrastructure
is to be provided it must be accompanied by a proposal to charge
and recover both the capital cost and operational and maintenance
costs ie it must be recognised as an economic good.
CORRUPTION
I do not cover the issue of corruption in my
paper. This was deliberate, I lacked space and did not want to
have to tackle the issue in some of the countries visited. The
estimates of funds required to meet the MDGs assume that monies
will be used for the purpose intended, so this culture of widespread
diversion of funds simply increases the funding gap.
I have no solution to address the cultural issues
involved, but against this background the DFID policy of providing
monies to governments as budgetary supplements, rather than trying
to control expenditure on specific projects must be questionable.
MAINTENANCE
Work at Loughborough University (WEDC) over
the last five years has highlighted the difficulty of maintaining
infrastructure in a serviceable condition once it has been installed.
Current estimates are that between 35-50% of installed water infrastructure
is no longer operational in sub-Saharan Africa. Nor is it simply
the complex installations that are affected it has been reported
that over 40% of village hand pumps are non operational.
SUMMARY
In summary it is an oversimplification to believe
that engineers can on their own achieve the water based MDGs.
The funding gap is huge and magnified by the effects of endemic
corruption in many recipient countries.
The lack of understanding of the need for a
rigorous operational and maintenance programme for the management
of infrastructure, condemns much of what is provided to a much
shorter useful life than expected, again increasing the overall
scale of the problem.
Finally water must be recognised as an economic
good, which has to be paid for. Without this no solution no matter
how well it addresses the other issues, can ever be sustainable
in the long term.
DFID RESPONSES
Water Service Delivery
There is a need to clearly identify the primary
objectives and concentrate methodologies on delivering those.
It is important to remember that it is impossible to do all things
equally well; therefore choices have to be made. Burdening projects
with multiple objectives will frequently result in none of the
objectives being properly achieved. This does not imply that hurdles
such as lack of technical skills can be ignored there must be
proper training and administrative institutions, but these are
a means to the desired end, not an end in themselves.
The question of balance of public/private involvement
is a very different issue. The answer is that the culture within
the recipient country must be fully understood, and used to define
the delivery mechanism most likely to lead to long term success
in that location. There is no point in proceeding with a scheme
on a public involvement basis if the public institutions lack
the capacity to deliver. Equally it is pointless to insist on
private involvement if the outcome is that at some point the private
contractor will be dismissed and the scheme fails, wasting all
of the monies that have been applied to that date.
DFID's role in enhancing accountability and
overall water governance should be proactive, but avoid detailed
interference. DFID must ensure the long term sustainability of
the projects that it sponsors and that should include requiring
proof that they are still functioning as intended, before sanctioning
further expenditure in that particular country. In many cases
this will require considerable emphasis on the provision and delivery
of operation and maintenance budgets, enabled by appropriate charging
mechanisms; together with the creation of appropriate institutions
that can deliver the necessary skills and the disciplines to apply
them. As far as water governance is concerned, it is essential
that waste such as inefficient irrigation practices are curtailed,
which can best be achieved through charging policy and insistence
that water is an economic good.
Co-operation, co-ordination and capacity building
are difficult areas, and cannot be imposed. The best that can
be hoped for is that successful projects will deliver clear benefits
that are seen to assist in kick starting local economies as well
as delivering significant improvements in public health. Thus
encouraging governments to seek to maximise the benefits that
might be obtained by replicating the projects elsewhere. However
with the relatively short life of most governments this may be
expecting too much.
I am uncertain that DFID should be too concerned
about "best practice". It was Voltaire who said that
"The best is the enemy of the good," and with cultural
differences so severe between countries, best practice will necessarily
vary from place to place.
Three Core Aspects to Sanitation
The importance of hygiene promotion, household
sanitary arrangements, and sewage treatment are rightly highlighted
by DFID. However it might be beneficial if a fourth element "conveyance"
were to be recognised instead of being contained within Sewage
Treatment.
It should be remembered that Bazalgette's sewers
did not afford treatment, the sewage was stored and released on
the outgoing tide, thus ensuring that for communities down stream
of Becton and Crossness the Thames remained an open sewer. Even
so by conveying the sewage away from the length of the Thames
that ran through London, Bazalgette made a significant contribution
to the public health of the capital. Conversely those municipalities
that sought to avoid the high capital costs of sewerage, and opted
for pail closet systems, were rapidly forced to recognise the
inadequacy of their decision, and reinvest in waterborne sewerage
systems.
While systems like "Twin Pit Latrines"
are undoubtedly satisfactory in rural areas, and remove the need
for systems of conveyance, they are unlikely to prove sustainable
in urban areas, and after 140 years of experience it is hard to
see any alternative to waterborne systems. In many major cities,
inadequate sewerage results in flooding of raw sewerage into streets
with even moderate rainfall, presenting health hazards to the
poor. Changing the third core aspect to "Sewerage and Sewage
Treatment" might therefore be a move forward.
The question of prioritisation of sanitation
must be addressed, there is ample historical a evidence to demonstrate
that provision of potable water alone will not deliver large improvements
in public health.
FINANCING AND
AID INSTRUMENTS
The concept of providing aid through budgetary
support needs to be re-examined. Not only does it facilitate dilution
of the amount applied to the desired objective through corruption,
it also reduces the ability of DFID and other agencies to influence
the achievement of their broader objectives. It would be wrong
to return to a system of imposing schemes on recipient countries,
but where a country requests support for a specific scheme, then
DFID should control the flow of funds to ensure that they are
applied to delivering the defined outputs. Such a discipline would
allow donors to decide which projects would deliver the desired
improvements to the poor.
The issue of priorities is complex, however
I would point out that the inclusion of water in the MDGs is itself
disappointing being only a subset of one of the later goals. Sewage
and sanitation were initially omitted and only included retrospectively
two years later. I realise that there are political realities
that have to be addressed, but it is worrying that something as
important as the MDGs can relegate water to such a minor position.
History tells us that the provision of good quality water and
adequate sanitation was the greatest public health advance of
the last 150 years. It allowed populations to flourish and undoubtedly
underpinned the economic development of the western world, I can
see no reason why it should not at least provide a platform for
economic development in many third world countries, particularly
those that could benefit from a large tourist trade. I would therefore
suggest that water should have a far higher prominence than it
currently enjoys.
Improving Health and Education
Education is vital if the benefits of water
supply and sanitation are to be realised in full. Lack of personal
hygiene will inevitably undermine the benefits achieved.
However education alone is not enough, cultural
issues need to be addressed. Water for People report that only
60% of rural communities in Bangladesh are prepared to install
treatment plants to reduce arsenic levels in water. The 40% who
decline are Fatalists who believe that personal health is decreed
by the gods, and has nothing to do with contamination of food
or drinking water. There are numerous other examples of this type
of problem which goes beyond simple education and challenges fundamental
beliefs.
Even so, wherever possible introduction of water
and sanitation should be accompanied by a co-ordinated education
programme that seeks to maximise the potential benefits to be
achieved.
Climate Change
Climate change is an exercise in uncertainty;
there are numerous models available each predicting different
consequences. At present it is impossible to say which one will
prove correct. Additionally it is scientifically impossible to
say that any specific event is a result of climate change; all
recent natural disasters have been on the scale of what has happened
historically—what we appear to be seeing is an increased
frequency of extreme events.
Against this background it is not possible to
design for climate change; what we can and should do is to build
flexibility into infrastructure to allow it to be modified or
supplemented in the future when the impact of climate change becomes
clearer. Climate change should not be seen as a reason for squandering
existing resources on potential white elephants, nor as a reason
for doing nothing.
The prospect of conflict over water, so called
water wars, is certainly a possibility, but the areas of dispute
are frequently politically as well as hydrologically based. Both
Bangladesh and Pakistan blame India for the potential water shortages
that they face, but then they blame India for many things.
I would suggest that while water shortages may
be used as an excuse for war, they are unlikely to be the real
reason for wars even with the advent of climate change. The water
shortages are not going to appear over night, nor are dams constructed
in a matter of days or weeks. There should be plenty of opportunity
to find diplomatic solutions to these problems if the parties
are willing and that is where effort should be applied. If these
issues can be settled in the next 10 -15 years, then infrastructure
can be developed to accommodate the political settlements in most
cases. There will be some exceptions, but many of the so called
flash points are capable of rational solution.
November 2006
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