Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
THURSDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2006
MR WILL
DAY, MR
DAVID SATTERTHWAITE
AND MR
KEVIN WATKINS
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon to you
all and thank you for coming along. We are only just getting started
on this inquiry into Water and Sanitation and I think it would
be fair to say that the Committee, even at this early stage, can
see what a huge, huge challenge it is and how many gaps there
are in the system to deliver. Obviously your evidence is going
to be extremely helpful. Perhaps I could start off by asking you
all what you think government, public sector and the private sector
respectively have to bring to achieve these Millennium Development
Goals on water and sanitation? In other words, what are the strengths
and weaknesses of government and the private sector? We have had
a teach-in with some advisers who have indicated to us that the
private sector has not been hugely successful, but there are obviously
counter views to that. Perhaps all of you could give us a flavour
of what you think are the relative strengths and weakness of the
two sectors.
Mr Day: I am Will Day and I am
here as independent Chairman of WSUP.[1]
You will have seen from our paper[2]
that we are seeking to bring together private and non-profit players
to try to overcome some of the weaknesses and deliver the strengths
we think the two sectors have. You asked a specific question,
what can the governments bring to this? I think more than most
things it is legitimacy; it is the fact that water is seen as
a basic requirement and the representative government particularly
has a duty and responsibility to ensure that is delivered to each
citizen. The fact remains that government—be it national,
local or regional—has significantly failed to do so to large
numbers and, as you have heard I am sure before, those numbers
are growing rapidly. Our interest is in urban and peri-urban poor
areas of cities growing by anything between a hundred and two
hundred thousand people a day around the world. This is an issue
which is running out of the control of governments. As to the
private sector strengths and weaknesses, I suspect the strengths
are to do with technical competence, project management and commercial
discipline but, as you have rightly recognised, these have not
been properly delivered for many reasons, partly the business
model simply does not seem to work at the bottom of urban societies
in the poorer parts of town. The risks are perceived to be too
high; businesses cannot deliver or, if they have tried, they have
done very badly delivering water through various private sector
models so the model is broken effectively, it does not work. I
think there are strengths and weaknesses tied in there.
Mr Watkins: Maybe I could just
start by saying that one of the most important things that this
Committee can do—indeed has done by deciding to do a report
on this subject—is to signal the importance of this issue.
I do think there is a very real sense in which we need to stop
treating water and sanitation as a problem in development and
start treating it as a crisis in development because it is a crisis
on a grand scale. In the Human Development Report this
year we document the scale of this crisis.[3]
I do not want to go into detail, but just to give you a flavour
of some of the headline numbers that come out of this, this is
the second biggest cause of child death in the world—there
are about two million child deaths annually; it is a crisis that
wipes off about 5% of Africa's GDP annually which is roughly equivalent
to what the region receives in aid and debt relief; it is a major
driver for gender inequality across the developing world because
of the burden that it imposes on women's time. What we are dealing
with here is really a grave and systematic violation of a very
basic and fundamental human right, which is the right to water.
If we look back historically I think it is interesting that in
this country the crisis was resolved as a result of a marked shift
in public policy. Indeed, this House was closed down in 1858 because
of the stench from the River Thames. There was a whole succession
of crises—cholera, typhoid, high levels of death from diarrhoea—which
drove government through coalitions for reform that would span
the public sector, the private sector to drive change. We really
need to see that sort of impetus for change across the developing
world. Part of the problem that we identified in the report is
that this is not treated as a major crisis either at a national
level or at a global level. You asked a specific question about
the role of the public sector and the private sector. I think
if you look at the evidence from across the world, one thing that
comes out really is that a lot of the debate on public versus
private has been misplaced. One can certainly find very positive
experiences of private sector involvement in water and sanitation
in some developing countries—Chile is a very good example
of that. You can find many disastrous experiences where privatisation
has left very adverse outcomes for poor people. That has tended
to be in environments that are characterised by two fundamental
problems which are chronic under-finance and under-regulation,
the inadequacy of national regulatory bodies. One of the lessons
is that if you privatise or if you bring in the private sector
on a large scale without first having in place adequate regulatory
institutions that is indeed a prescription for disaster. I do
think it is the case that the private sector can play an important
role in the delivery of water and sanitation services.
Q2 Chairman: As contractors do you
mean or as providers?
Mr Watkins: Contracting in to
provide the pipes, to maintain the water filtration systems and
sewage collection systems and so on. The underlying starting point
is that this is something that governments have to deliver as
a right of citizenship. This is not something that can be left
to the private sector to provide the human right; that is up to
government. We argue in the report that one of the strongest positive
examples that we can point to is the South African experience
where South Africa has made water a fundamental human right, not
just in the constitution but in national legislation. There are
about 90 countries in the world who have the right to water in
the constitution—Kenya has it, India has it—but frankly
that means nothing at all. What South Africa has done is legislated
for it; it has quantified the right to water. We believe that
one starting point could be to say that as a right of citizenship
everyone should be entitled to 20 litres of water. One can then
look at the financing arrangements, the role of the private sector
in delivery and so on, but I think that starting point is absolutely
critical and once that is in place I think you then have a framework
for the regulatory institutions that can oversee whether it is
public sector or private sector for delivering on that right.
Mr Satterthwaite: I am going to
provide a different perspective. Let us ask who provides water
and sanitation for most of the world's population. It is not the
private sector and it is not national government. What you want
above all is a competent local organisation—I do not care
whether it is public, private, community, cooperative—that
is capable of delivering good water and good sanitation. At the
moment community organisations are much more important than national
governments and international agencies in most of Africa and in
most of low-income Asia. Households' own investment is also more
important than governments and international agencies. The small
scale private sector—water vendors, water kiosks—are
far more important for the people who have poor water and sanitation.
Local governments are usually far more important than national
government agencies. In the end what you want is private sector
and national government supporting local organisational capacity
to improve provision for water and sanitation. In a sense you
have to go down to each locality and ask who is providing what
and who is capable of improving provision. Then you can begin
to unpick the role of the private sector and national government.
I am sorry if that is a rather obscure answer.
Q3 Chairman: No, it is not actually
because it leads into the next question which is about you focusing
on communities, individuals and so forth. How can you replicate
that across hundreds of thousands or millions of people? Are there
any examples where a model developed at a local level has been
easily spread or replicated?
Mr Satterthwaite: Certainly. The
most dramatic is in Pakistan where a small NGO—Orangi Pilot
Project—demonstrated that you could deliver good quality
sewers to low-income households with costs recovery from these
households. They reduced unit costs to a fifth largely by community
organisation. Everyone dismissed them but they have been going
since 1980. In 1990 they reached 300,000 low-income households
with very good quality sewers and drains. They are now re-writing
Pakistan's national sanitation strategy.
Q4 Chairman: Would you be able to
give us a note on that?
Mr Satterthwaite: Yes.[4]
Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Mr Satterthwaite: In Thailand
the Thai Government has set up a national agency, the Community
Organizations Development Institute, that supports community organisations
working in partnership with local government. To me that is the
key, it is organisations formed by the urban poor working with
local government to evolve solutions. You bring in the private
sector, you bring in national funding as and when it is appropriate.
In Thailand what they have done in every city is created that
link between community and local government to address water,
sanitation, drainage and many other things.
Q5 Chairman: That is very helpful.
Mr Watkins, you mentioned Chile and South Africa; are there any
other examples?
Mr Watkins: I think there are
many positive examples. As David said some of these examples are
driven from below and I think the Total Sanitation Campaign in
Bangladesh has been an outstanding example of a desperately poor
country, it is not a particularly high growth country and you
have had communities that are coming together that have provided
a sort of environment where—
Q6 Chairman: The Committee wanted
to go to Bangladesh but unfortunately because of the election
window it was not deemed a good time to go.
Mr Watkins: It is a pity that
the Bangladesh electoral cycle and the Committee's cycle are out
of sync, but I do think that if you compare Bangladesh with India,
India for the past 10 to 15 years has been an exceptionally high
growth country—second highest growth in the world actually
over that period—and yet it has made very slow progress
in sanitation in particular. Bangladesh, on the other hand, with
a lot slower growth rate than India, a much poorer country than
India, has actually overtaken India on coverage. I think understanding
what has made Bangladesh successful is important. I think this
is consistent with what David was saying, that if you go back
in British history to Chadwick's report written in 1842 (which
I think would be a good starting point for the Committee) one
of the recommendations that came out of it was that everybody
in this country as a right of citizenship—he did not use
the word citizenship—should have a toilet in their home
and a tap in their home or in their yard. I think that is a very
good starting point. I would argue that national governments do
have ultimate responsibility for providing the enabling legislative
environment, the enabling financial environment through which
this becomes possible, and it is certainly the case as David says
that most of what happens at the moment in terms of provision
is privatised. I was in Kibera, the biggest slum in Africa, a
couple of weeks ago. Kibera has a totally privatised water market.
People are paying five to 10 times as much in Kibera as Arap Moi
pays on the other side of the northern perimeter ring road in
Kibera because Arap Moi is getting his water from the utility
which is providing low cost water; the people in Kibera are buying
it from private vendors at very high prices. This is a fundamental
inequality. Water and sanitation is really the orphaned sector
in many ways in the development of environment. It accounts for
less than 5% of development assistance and I think that cannot
be right because it is holding back progress in so many different
areas. We certainly believe that the British Government and the
international community can do far more and indeed that is why
we argue in the report for a global action plan on water and sanitation
to start closing these financing gaps and realising that vision
of access to a toilet and a tap for everybody.
Mr Day: Can I reiterate the support
for that notion that local capacity and engagement is fundamental.
The extraction of water, its treatment and delivery is not rocket
science. The technical aspects of that are do-able and manageable
and within environmental constraints that is not the issue; it
is the last 50 metres which of course is the challenge, particularly
when you are dealing with organised or disorganised poor communities.
It is frustrating for those of us wanting to see that situation
improve and, given the state of need, to see money apparently
not being the problem in the sense that there are Development
Banks and the World Bank and others with water and sanitation
money sitting there with an apparent inability to get it to where
it is needed. You have communities already paying often many times
more for poor quality water than they need to, they are prepared
and used to paying for water so there is an income stream if you
look at it in those terms. It remains a puzzle and it seems to
me the challenge has got to be making a connection between those
communities 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. I think that has to be the challenge. Of course it is good
to hear when DFID stresses its commitment to and recognition of
the importance of water; they are one of many donors who have
got that on their to-do list. It would be nice to think that money
could actually start to be applied in these rather more collaborative
models.
Q7 Mr Singh: In the Human Development
Report you state that the debate about privatisation has actually
taken our eye off the failings of water utilities in the developing
world and you are very critical about that. However, you point
to certain successes in that area such as Porto Alegre in Brazil.
Why are there successes alongside such huge failures? What are
the characteristics that make them a successful venture?
Mr Watkins: The reason we argue
that in a sense that debate has taken people's eye off the ball
is that if you look at the realities on the ground there has been
a raging debate recently about the commercialisation of water
utility in Accra with one group of people arguing that this is
going to price the poor out of the market because they are not
going to get access to cheap water any more and other people taking
a contrary stand. We have done a detailed breakdown of access
to water in Accra and other cities and our statistics for this
year's report. Poor people in Accra do not get cheap water; poor
people in Accra get water through private water vendors who are
linked to utilities. The world's poorest people are already operating
in a highly privatised market. Moreover it is a market which systematically
disadvantages the poor. Our concern is much more about how we
tackle that problem, how do we move the disadvantages and the
burdens that are facing poor people in these water markets which
clearly are not working? There are positive examples that we give
in the report and I think one of the most positive ones is Porto
Alegre, the one that you highlight. Certainly on most indicators
of efficiency Porto Alegre, which is a fully municipally owned
body, would out-perform most utilities in this country on losses
of water, efficiency of collection, efficiency of delivery, targeting
the poor and so on and there are many factors that have made that
a success story. One of them is financing; the system has received
far higher levels of public investment and public finance than
comparable cities elsewhere. It is very closely regulated with
very clear standards set for the municipal water provider. There
is an independent regulatory body. Citizens in Porto Alegre have
a very strong voice with the regulator which exercises some sort
of control over the water provider. These are not conditions that
we see in that many countries. Often you have the municipal water
providers that are really accountable to nobody. There is a tradition
of top-down planning. At the same time, there is chronic under-investment
because the bills are not collected. Water is pumped into predominantly
middle-income households, the revenue is not collected from those
households so there is then inadequate capital investment to extend
the grid into poor areas, to go the extra 50 metres that Will
is talking about. I think those principles of sustainable and
equitable financing at a utility level, proper regulatory oversight,
of which the Porto Alegre model is a very good one but one can
find examples in the private sector in Chile which I think would
meet those same criteria, they are the sort of ingredients for
success.
Q8 Mr Singh: Is the system in Porto
Alegre financed internally? Was it financed locally? Was it financed
by the government?
Mr Watkins: The story on financing
in water is enormously complex but to me it reduces itself to
two broad rules. The capital investment is the investment in the
capital stock, getting the pipes in the ground, the water filtration
system in place and so on. That has to be by and large financed
out of public budgets. That is what happened in most industrial
countries; it is what has happened in most successful developing
countries. The recurrent costs have to be financed out of the
revenue stream from the utility and it is that second rule which
most utilities have fallen down on; they do not have a revenue
stream so they are therefore unable to maintain the system or
to expand the grid. There is a specific problem of course, if
you are talking about expanding the grid to a population which
is living below the poverty line you cannot expect that population
to meet market prices for water. That is why, as we argue in the
report, there are a whole range of cross-subsidy mechanisms that
can be brought into play. There are a whole range of targeted
welfare strategies that can be brought into play to close that
financing gap and, in effect, monetise the demand of the poor.
Poor people need clean water but they often do not have the money
to go into markets and buy it. One final point: I think the big
barrier which faces many people in urban areas in terms of getting
access to utility water is the connection fee. It is not the recurrent
cost, it is the cost of actually connecting to the grid. Subsidies
targeted towards meeting that connection fee could really go a
long way towards overcoming some of the very big deficits that
we see.
Mr Satterthwaite: Porto Alegre
is a wealthy city, a very successful city; it is one of the most
wealthy cities in Brazil. Chile is a very successful country with
a very successful economy. You have strong democratic pressures,
return to democracies in both countries and elected mayors so
there is a whole string of the very best of local governance improvement.
In countries like those it does not really matter whether you
use private or public; you have the competence and the capacity
to set up the tendering system to manage private or you have the
competence and the capacity and the accountability to do it in
the public sector. What scares me is that people then take Porto
Alegre—which is a fantastic example—and assume you
can do it in low-income Africa and Asia. That is nonsense, sadly.
I wish it were possible; our lives would be much easier. To me
the key example of Chile and Brazil is how important good, competent,
accountable local government, mayors that are elected, systems
of accountability are. The glory of Porto Alegre is that every
citizen knows the entire public budget and how it is spent. They
have special committees in each area where they can hold government
agencies accountable. That is what has to drive provision for
water and sanitation, that local competence and capacity of local
government. Then you can decide how much you want to use private
sector knowledge, management and expertise.
Q9 John Battle: Could I first of
all pay you a compliment on the Human Development Report 2006;
it is an excellent backdrop of work for our Committee's work and
it is one of the best Human Development Reports that has come
out for some years. My heart only dips under pressure of my head
as it were when I read about another global action plan. Do you
envisage that it will be a Global Fund for water and sanitation?
Is there any evidence that global action plans actually work?
I am asking you to justify a global action plan.
Mr Watkins: We think it can work
which is why we recommend it. If you went back 10 years to the
earlier stages of the debate on HIV/AIDS, if somebody had hit
on the idea of the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS at that stage and
had actually implemented it and properly financed it and put in
place the mechanisms to build capacity in local health systems,
we would have an awful lot fewer victims of HIV/AIDS in the world
today. Of course there are all sorts of problems with the Global
Fund for HIV/AIDS. There is the question: are health priorities
being distorted in some countries and so on? But there is no question
that it has done two out of three critical things. First of all
it has put it on the international agenda. At every meeting of
the G8, at every spring meeting of the World Bank and IMF, at
every annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF all donors report
on what they are doing on HIV/AIDS. Secondly, it has actually
mobilised a lot of resources for HIV/AIDS. Of course there are
still financing gaps but I do not think that anybody could objectively
look at what the Global Fund has achieved and say that it has
not made a marked improvement on the situation as it would be
otherwise. I think thirdly it has brought this whole story under
public scrutiny; interest was not happening before. If you compare
that with water and sanitation, two million child deaths a year,
the only blip that registered on a G8 radar screen was at Evian.
The global action plan was not our idea; the global action plan
for water was adopted at Evian by the G8 over three years ago.
The main feature of that exercise is that there has been no action
and no planning. What we are actually arguing for is for the G8
to deliver what they said they were going to three years ago and
I do think if that mechanism is looked on not as a main thing
that has to happen but as a residual support for strong national
planning backing community level action I think it will work.
Chairman: We now have to vote which means
we will adjourn for 10 minutes.
The Committee suspended from 3.06pm to 3.15pm
for a division in the House.
Q10 Mr Davies: Mr Watkins, you and
your colleagues should be congratulated on bringing together this
magisterial document; I think it is going to be immensely useful
to us in our inquiry. I was a bit surprised that the Oxford Centre
for Water Research attacked you for being long on analysis but
short on policy conclusions. The phrase they used is: "The
issues and realities are made stark but the processes creating
or shaping change options are less clear" which I think in
ordinary language means that you have not come forward with many
concrete recommendations. I am not sure that that criticism holds
much force. I see in your report—although I must say I have
not read all of it—under "The Way Ahead" at the
end of various sections you do make what seem to me to be very
sensible, practical suggestions in many cases. How do you respond
to this criticism from a body which, I think, has considerable
professional reputation in this field?
Mr Watkins: There is a slight
case here of the pot calling the kettle black. This is a group
that does a lot of very good analytical work on water but as far
as I can tell you, whatever their many distinctions, setting up
practical policy agendas for the way forward is not an area where
they particularly distinguish themselves. We have set out an agenda
for reform. There are a lot of different elements in it. We have
reduced it to four or five key elements but within each of those
key elements—like financing and so on—we look at a
whole range of options at a national level. I guess what we were
trying to do in the report were two things: first of all to get
across the sheer scale of the problem which I do think is under-appreciated.
I think people do not understand the full extent to which the
twin deficit of water and sanitation is holding back social progress
across very many areas: gender equity, child mortality, education,
people working their way out of poverty. When I used the figure
before of this being a crisis that is cutting Africa's GDP by
5% annually it is important to remember that those losses are
taking place below the poverty line, so it is 5% of GDP predominantly
among people who are already living in poverty, people who do
not have access to water and sanitation. We were trying to get
across the scale of the crisis, trying to communicate to policy
communities that if they are serious about the Millennium Development
Goals they cannot continue on a business as usual model in water
and sanitation. Then we set out what we think is a practical and
attainable agenda for reform which is not a blue-print for individual
countries but is a broad framework which we do think is applicable
across countries. There is a financing element to that, there
is a regulatory element to that, there is the establishment of
water as a human right which we think is a critical part of the
story. These are things which, notwithstanding the important role
of community level initiatives and bottom-up approaches, governments
have to do. I think Adam Smith said that there are relatively
few things that governments need to do: they need to keep the
peace, they need to collect taxes and do a couple of other things.
In my view one of the central requirements of any government is
that it maintains the rights of its citizens in water and sanitation.
Q11 Mr Davies: What you have done
there is sort of distilled out from your researches some universal
principles that can be applied generally. You have said in this
report some nice things about people who have been doing it right
and you have mentioned one or two just this afternoon. Perhaps
you have been a bit reticent about pointing out cases of grievously
bad performance and people who have made the worst mistakes and
you could have been a bit more forthright about that. Would you
like to mention to the Committee this afternoon one or two examples
at the other end of the spectrum where things are extremely bad
and where there are important lessons—albeit negative—to
be drawn?
Mr Watkins: We spent some time
in the report looking at the case of Kenya. One of the reasons
we looked at Kenya is that like many other governments in the
world (including India, Indonesia, the Philippines) we argue that
the Kenyan Government and its statistic agencies systematically
understate the scale of the deficit in water and sanitation. That
happens for a whole number of reasons, but one of the reasons
is that people who live in a form of slums are often not covered
in censuses so they are non-people so far as the coverage rates
are concerned. We argue that many governments are understating
the scale of the problem. Even if you look at Nairobi as a sort
of microcosm of a wider urban issue related to water and sanitation
in the developing world what you have here, as I have already
mentioned, is the largest slum in Africa, Kibera—it is actually
the slum that appeared to rather colourful effect in the film
The Constant Gardener.
Mr Davies: A number of us have been there.
Mr Watkins: If you have been there
then you know the story. You have 800,000 living in this place
which is a virtually toilet-free zone. People are paying 10 times
as much for water as you pay on the other side of the northern
perimeter road. If you look at an aerial photograph of Kibera
you can see on the top left Arap Moi's Nairobi home with its swimming
pool and one of the greenest lawns in Africa. I think it speaks
volumes on misplaced public policy. Arap Moi is buying his water
at one-fifth of the unit price that people are paying in Kibera.
At a global level it is clearly wrong that people in Kibera are
paying more for their water than people in this city. This is
the outcome of public policy. This is a product of under-investment,
of inadequate regulation and the wrong types of policies. We highlight
Nairobi in the report but that could be one of any number of places.
Q12 Mr Davies: One conclusion that
I do draw from what I have seen of your report is that you say
that people should pay for water because otherwise they do not
recognise its scarcity and there is waste, but there is a case
for allowing people a certain amount of free water and then to
have a progressive scale of charging. Am I right in saying that
that is a general conclusion that you draw, that that principle
should be applied more or less everywhere?
Mr Watkins: That is right. It
is a very important point. Most utilities in the world, whether
they are public or private, apply a step tariff system, in other
words where prices escalate with the volume of water that is used.
In South Africa you have a lifeline tariff which is the first
25 litres per person per day which is free for everybody. The
25 litres applies to people who are connected to utilities and
each utility has targets for the number of people it has to expand
access to over a given period. Therefore it does not apply to
everybody in South Africa. The problem with that type of tariff
structure, if you think about it, for people living in slums who
are not connected to the utility is this, for those people to
be supplied with utility water they need an intermediary because
they do not have taps. The intermediary is typically a tanker
company or some other water provider who will buy in bulk at the
top of the tier, they are then transporting it and selling it
on.
Q13 Mr Davies: I see the problem
immediately; what is the solution?
Mr Watkins: The long-run solution
is that people need taps in their yards or their homes. The long-run
solution is the expansion of the grid through public finance.
The short-run solution I believe—there are differences about
this—is the proper regulation of private vendors in slum
areas, the licensing of vendors so that poor people in slums are
not paying more than people in high income suburbs.
Q14 Mr Davies: It is not just a matter
of regulating them but once they are regulated and licensed they
will be supplied with water at a tariff lower than that of the
tariff appropriate to the amount of water they are purchasing
because they are regarded as intermediaries rather than final
consumers.
Mr Watkins: I am not talking about
passing an edict where people have to buy water at a high price
and sell it at a low price; this is not a Bolshevik model that
applies to water. What we are talking about is a model in which
people who are providing water to slums would be buying water
at the lowest tier and licensed to buy it at the lowest tier in
bulk and to transfer it to slums and sell it at that price.
Q15 Joan Ruddock: The report refers
to water as a basic human right and I think when you were beginning
your answers today you talked about the fact that some countries
had got a basic human right to water in their constitutions but
I think you said that it actually meant nothing at all. DFID earlier
this month announced that the UK would now recognise the human
right to water and I wonder what is the significance of that.
Is it going to be worth anything at all? Will this have any effect
on government priorities to supply water?
Mr Watkins: We were delighted
that DFID chose to do that on the day we published the report,
which I am sure was entirely coincidental. I think it depends
on how its operation lies. There has been a certain debasement
of the currency of human rights in this field. Just calling something
"human rights", just putting it in the constitution
without any operational vehicle or financing mechanisms for the
realisation of that right does not really help anybody. As I see
it, there are essentially two requirements for making human right
legislation meaningful in this. You legislate for the right and
you quantify the right, so basically the human right to water
means that as an entitlement of citizenship you should have access
to 20 litres, or 25 litres in the South African case, a day. The
obligation of the water provider is to meet that right. The mechanisms
can be discussed, the financing strategies, the delivery vehicles,
those things can all be discussed but that is the first important
leg of a meaningful rights-based strategy. The second one is that
you have political structures through which people can claim their
entitlement against providers and against regulatory authorities.
When we launched our report on South Africa there was a lot of
nervousness on the part of the government. We were told from various
channels in government that this is a very explosive issue politically
in South Africa, there are huge debates going on, should the right
be 25 litres or 30 litres or 40 litres? That is an example of
the success of the policy. It has politicised water and in any
democracy these things ought to be debated, this ought to be a
hot political potato. In South Africa you have people taking utilities
to court, you have community groups taking utilities to court,
you have people challenging the regulator and I think that the
role of rights and empowering people is absolutely critical. That
is why it is imperative that the right is legislated for and not
just constitutionalised as it were.
Q16 Joan Ruddock: That of course
is the national government; we are talking in the case of DFID
of a donor government. You said it was very important that they
did it, so why do you think it is important that DFID did it?
Mr Watkins: I think DFID's influence
in this area stems in a sense from the weight of its intellectual
argument and its dialogue with governments and from what it chooses
to finance and how it chooses to support water and sanitation.
I think through the process of dialogue DFID can communicate very
strongly to governments. There is a general view that one of the
vehicles through which we can start closing this twin deficit
in water and sanitation is by making it a right, by putting in
place a legislative structure, judicial structures and so on.
I think DFID could make a difference. I think in all humility
one has to say that DFID is not the main player here, that ultimately
this comes down to national government. It is a responsibility
on the part of national governments but I think a signal from
DFID that we will support governments that are doing the right
thing in this area would be an important signal.
Q17 John Barrett: Moving onto the
increasing problem of urbanisation, we have heard from Mr Watkins
what is happening in Kibera. A number of the members of the Committee
have seen it first-hand, myself included. That is when I was introduced
to the concept of the flying toilet, the plastic bag catapulted
through the air and if it was heading in your direction you get
out of the way quickly. With rapid urbanisation is there a case
that there are also opportunities to reach 800,000—a captive
audience rather than 800 villages with a thousand people in each
of them—and to deliver both water and sanitation. I wonder
if you could comment on the problems of rapid urbanisation and
the possible opportunities that may arise from that. A lot of
money has been spent trying to deliver water and sanitation to
these slums but there are a rapidly growing number of people who
have neither water nor sanitation.
Mr Satterthwaite: You are quite
right, the more people are concentrated, the less pipe-length
per household needed for water and sewers and, of course, the
less the pipe-length, to some extent the less the cost of providing
water and sanitation. The difficulty is that it needs local competence
and capacity and it needs a relationship between the water and
sanitation provider and the inhabitants. Where you get that, where
you get local competence, local capacity and a good relationship
with the people living there you get very good water and sanitation.
Kibera is a great example of how difficult it is institutionally.
Most of Kibera is informally owned by wealthy Kenyan businessmen
who rent the houses and the shacks illegally and make a lot of
money out of it. It is so concentrated that actually clearing
the space for the pipes, the sewers and the drains is quite difficult.
There is no agreement as to who owns each plot. For every plot
in Kibera there are probably three or four people: there is the
sub-tenant, the tenant, the person that comes and collects the
rent and the businessman who actually claims ownership. In terms
of cost, in terms of delivering very good quality water and sanitation,
urban areas do have huge advantages but you have to have the competence
and the local capacity to be able to act on that. Also of course
in Kenya the Government of Nairobi and the Government of Kenya
want to evict everyone from Kibera which does not make for a great
relationship in terms of putting in water and sanitation.
Q18 John Barrett: The basic building
block does not appear in local plans for future development because
effectively, as you say, they may argue that if they put in water
and sanitation it will become permanent. It is a permanent city
just now.
Mr Satterthwaite: You can go to
cities like Karachi where 60% of Karachi's population live in
informal settlements; people invaded or occupied the land usually
with a small payment to local government, and built and developed
their settlement. Many of these informal settlements when you
go into them they look like quite nice middle-class areas now.
Over time they have invested in housing, the sewers have been
improved, water has come in. When you have very good relationships
between community organisations and local government this is possible;
this is how cities get built, this is how water and sanitation
get extended. But again you go back to the relationship between
the citizens and the local government. If it is antagonistic,
if local governments think that squatters are the problem you
do not have a chance. If local government recognises that squatters
are the people who actually build the city, maintain the city,
deliver the cheap labour, work in all the enterprises, then you
can develop that relationship and all the opportunities of concentrated
people can then be used.
Q19 Ann McKechin: David, you have
spoken obviously about the need for good community and local organisation
on the ground for systems to work. When we spoke last week to
David Hall from Greenwich University he highlighted the fact that
only 10% of the urban pipe network in developing countries is
currently private and he anticipates that that percentage will
actually decrease. Is this a sign of the times, that basically
the private sector being used for pipe-work in developing countries
is likely to decrease in terms of their involvement or is this
now much more of a trend to community groups or informal groups
or local and regional government taking the lead in expanding
networks?
Mr Satterthwaite: The last 15
years has demonstrated that the private sector will not put money
into water and sanitation to low-income groups. The great tragedy
was in 1990 in the sense that everyone assumed that private money
would come into water and sanitation and solve problems that public
money had not done in the 1970s and 1980s. On reflection that
was a false assumption, but if you look at any well-run water
and sanitation system the private sector has very important roles
as contractors, sometimes as the monitor, sometimes for the water
quality control. In a sense you always need a government framework
within which to contract work.
1 Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor. Back
2
Ev 162. Back
3
Human Development Report 2006-Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty
and the global water crisis, UNDP, November 2006. Back
4
Orangi Pilot Project: the expansion of work beyond Orangi
and the mapping of informal settlements and infrastructure,
Arif Hasan. Copy placed in the Library. Back
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