Examination of Witnesses (Questions 184
- 199)
TUESDAY 16 JANUARY 2007
MR JOHN
CHILTON, DR
DECLAN CONWAY
AND DR
DAVID TICKNER
Q184 Chairman: Good morning to you,
gentlemen, and thank you for coming to give evidence to us. Obviously
we do know who you are but for the record if you would like to
introduce yourselves briefly and say who you are, it will help
to personalise it rather than us take it from a blank sheet of
paper.
Dr Tickner: My name is Dr David
Tickner and I head up the Freshwater Team in WWF-UK.
Mr Chilton: My name is John Chilton
and I am a Principal Hydrogeologist in the British Geological
Survey.
Dr Conway: My name is Declan Conway
and I am a Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia and
I work on climate change and its interaction with water resources.
Q185 Chairman: Thank you very much.
You will appreciate that we have had a number of evidence sessions
on this inquiry and this is effectively the last one from expert
or specialist witnesses before we make our visit to Ethiopia in
a couple of weeks' time to try and look at some of the projects
on the ground, so if you have anything particular to say about
Ethiopia that will obviously be of some help and interest to us,
before we then take evidence from the Secretary of State. Both
in your submissions and others there have been some criticisms
of DFID, partly on the mismatch between rhetoric and actuality
and partly on the question about the practicality of what has
been done. I wonder if I can ask you all to start by indicating
who you think amongst the bilateral donors internationally are
most active and effective in dealing with water resources issues
and related climate change issues and how does DFID compare or
fit in in that context, if you are able to say that, and how good,
bad or indifferent do you think DFID's performance and role is
compared with other bilateral donors? If you are able to say the
best, the worst and where DFID fits in, that would be helpful.
We will ask you some detailed questions about climate change so
do not be too expansive but obviously one of the concerns is people
talk about climate change and that really ties down to other issues.
Dr Tickner: If you are talking
specifically about water resource management, call it water management,
I think part of the issue is that it is very much a kind of poor
relation of MDG7, the water and sanitation goal. I have often
heard it said that sanitation is under-emphasised compared to
water supply but compared to both of those water resource management
gets scant attention, and I think in their own submissions to
this inquiry DFID have acknowledged that. If we are trying to
find the leaders among the donor community the problem is that
there are not many. Within that context, I think DFID are not
bad. They support the Global Water Partnership for example, which
I think is valuable and they have certainly in the past, to my
knowledge, supported specific initiatives in specific countries.
In Tanzania for example, they supported some research that one
of Declan's colleagues was instrumental in doing on the Ruaha
River a few years ago looking at how to ensure sustainable management
of the whole catchment, which I think was very useful. As I say,
water resource management is really a bit of a poor relation at
the moment, so if we can do something that will help DFID take
a lead among the donor community I think that would be hugely
encouraging.
Q186 Chairman: That is helpful. Mr
Chilton?
Mr Chilton: Yes, I think several
of the witnesses have picked out that water resources has not
had the attention that it has deserved from the donor community
and, in a way, it is easy to see it. It can be hard for donors
to choose the most effective way of getting their value for money
in terms of support for water resources management compared to
water and sanitation. DFID has supported the Global Water Partnership
and I can say a little bit more about that in due course if you
wish, but I do not think the donors have given the support to
water resources management compared to water and sanitation that
they should have done and it is hard to pick out a real leader
certainly amongst the bilateral donors from our colleague Member
States in Europe.
Q187 Chairman: So we are all doing
pretty badly in your view?
Mr Chilton: We could all do a
lot better yes, that is for sure.
Dr Tickner: I have been told by
my colleagues that the donor agencies—CIDA in Canada and
DANIDA in Denmark—have themselves supported specific IWRM[1]
planning exercises in certain countries, so there are precedents
out there for donor agencies supporting initiatives, but it is
fairly hard to find really proactive donor agencies as John has
said.
Mr Chilton: Certainly my colleagues
in the European Geological Surveys also would say that their own
bilateral support agencies could do more in water resources. My
colleagues in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany would all say
the same sort of thing.
Dr Conway: I would support both
those responses and although it is not my precise area of expertise,
and I am a little bit less familiar with what is happening in
terms of donors and water, it is certainly true that no particular
donor agencies or institutions stand out as being strong promoters
of water resources management and that they are clearly doing
more than any of the other donors, and I think efforts have been
quite patchy and sporadic and perhaps unco-ordinated over the
years.
Q188 Chairman: I think we will come
back to some of those, there are a couple of areas where we have
specific questions; perhaps if I can pick up on agriculture. We
have had over a number of inquiries both officials and the Secretary
of State at DFID saying to us that they see agriculture as one
of the key development areas in terms of lifting low income countries
out of poverty. They say that repeatedly and yet they do not mention
water very much and yet we know that in climate change, desertification,
extremes of drought, et cetera, that water is an obvious
issue. Indeed, I can remember when we were in Malawi Joan Ruddock
in particular asking constantly, "What do you do when it
does rain to ensure that you have access to water when it does
not rain", and whether there was any small-scale irrigation
and not getting much of an answer, there were bits and pieces
but nothing comprehensive. The question really is how can you
talk about agriculture as a key way of lifting poor people out
of poverty and not relating it to water resources management?
Do you actually accept that? There seems to be a lacuna, shall
we say, in the policy as far as DFID is concerned.
Dr Tickner: Perhaps I could give
you an example. I was in Tanzania twice last year. WWF has a programme
on the Ruaha River basin very much following on from this earlier
DFID study. This project is funded by the EU Water Facility and
it is specifically a water resources management programme. One
of the activities that this EU money is supporting is the establishment
of farmer field schools. In this part of Tanzania there is an
awful lot of rice growing. In fact so much so that the river has
pretty much been drained, which presents all sorts of problems
because it feeds a couple of the main dams that generate about
half of Tanzania's electricity. Now because the river does not
have enough water in it Dar-es-Salaam is having a lot of black-outs.
It is a great case study of how rivers and water can be really
multi-functional but if you get it wrong then there are some fairly
dire consequences. I went to visit one of these farmer field schools
and it is run by the Tanzanian Government who managed to get some
assistance to go to Japan to find out how they grow rice very
efficiently and it is working just with poor rural farmers, often
subsistence farmers, to help them discover ways of growing rice
using a fraction of the water. The really interesting thing is
that they are using a fraction of the water. Instead of inundating
the rice to a 20 cm depth six months of the year they are using
perhaps, at most, 10 cm depth one month of the year and then dropping
it down to even lower levels for a lot of the time, but their
yields have increased. Poor rural farmers were telling me that
their yields were in some cases double what they were. I have
seen similar projects in Pakistan for example also supported by
the EU (although not the Water Facility) and there the issues
are again about water use. Pakistan is already using a vast amount
of its water resources and the forecasts are that in the next
25 years water demand will double and there simply is not enough
water in the country to do that. Most of that is related to agriculture
and a lot of it is for growing cotton. Cotton is a very pesticide-heavy
crop and that brings all sorts of health impacts. A colleague
of mine was talking to some of the women and they were telling
him they do not know what to do and there had been suicides among
mothers because they are giving their children water which they
know is polluted and they are seeing their children become ill.
Q189 Chairman: Can I just clarify,
are you saying that the problem is that simply there is not enough
water or that the way it is managed means that there is a conflict
between the agricultural needs and the human consumption needs
which properly managed could be addressed?
Dr Tickner: I am saying a little
bit of both. It is all about proper management. This Pakistan
project is again about putting in place what we call better management
practices—BMPs to use the jargon—which again show
people how to reduce pesticide use and to reduce water use which
means that there is more water for people to use for drinking
and for washing their clothes and so on and so forth. The point
I guess I am trying to make from those two very practical examples
is there are ways right down at the community level that you can
address water use which reduce poverty and which increase economic
development, but when I see some of the information that is coming
out of some of the major donor agencies, some of the multilateral
donor agencies, which absolutely talk about agricultural development
as being key, the emphasis tends to be on infrastructure, it tends
to be more on more irrigation rather than on more efficient water
use, and I find that a little bit worrying.
Chairman: Thank you for that.
Mr Chilton: I have two short points
to make. Firstly, if the provision of water supply is an essential
contribution to several of the MDGs—and we contend that
it is and there has been a lot of evidence before your Committee
that that is the case—we should expect improved provision
to lead to small-scale irrigation, gardens, brickmaking, and other
small economic activities. If that happens then there will be
an increase in water usage at community level and then we really
do need to put water resources management and water development
together. So that is one key area where we need to keep track
of water management in our water supply provision. The second
thing I would say is that DFID clearly should address water in
agriculture and the Africa Commission, which was strongly supported
by the UK Government, proposed a doubling of the proportion of
arable land under irrigation. I have looked back at this again
in recent days preparing for this, and even allowing for some
improvement in maintenance and rehabilitation and management,
and more efficient irrigation methods, this implies some new schemes
and some new storage dams and reservoirs, and we do need to bring
efforts to bear to improve storage and irrigation in Africa, and
I think DFID and the other donors could be doing more within their
own water resources work to look at the follow-up to the Africa
Commission. The UN Human Development Report makes this
point fairly strongly as well, so I think there is quite a lot
more that could be done in that area.
Dr Conway: I would say that there
is an absolutely very strong and clear relationship between activity
in agriculture and the use and availability of water so it is
vital to ensure that there is engagement and co-ordination between
the two sectors. In the past perhaps the engagement between the
two communities has not been as strong and as close as it could
be. There are obviously lots of development opportunities to reduce
poverty in terms of small-scale farming and agriculture and so
on which, as we have heard, will have implications for water use
and water supply. As those kinds of activities are scaled up,
if they are, and they become more and more frequent in river basins,
then there is a very strong need to co-ordinate activities and
to look at the implications of particular single site activities
for the wider river basin scale. I think there is a very clear
need and opportunity there for water resources management to come
in and to look at the connectiveness of water systems and of course
of agricultural systems.
Chairman: I think that leads neatly into
John Bercow's questions.
Q190 John Bercow: The Integrated
Water Resources Management target to ensure that all countries
had IWRM water efficiency management by 2005 was reached by only
one-fifth of countries, on top of which one has to consider that
there is a whole series of factors, including population growth,
economic growth, climate change, the need to drive food security,
which tends to increase competition for and conflict over access
to limited water resources, with half of the population of the
developing world being exposed to polluted water with the obvious
consequences of the increase in the incidence of disease. That
causes me to ask you experts what do you regard as the main barriers
to achieving that 2005 target? Is it a lack of funding, a lack
of political will, a lack of know-how or of inter-sectoral co-operation,
or a rather grisly combination of all four?
Mr Chilton: It is a good question.
The target by 2005 was extremely optimistic. What it has done
is raised awareness along the way and a lot more is happening
now. I have been thinking about this quite a lot, about how external
support agencies could get their most efficient return on support
of water resources management, and it seems to me that the first
thing is that we ought to do more to promote water resources management
and environmental sustainability issues in the national poverty
reduction strategies (PRSs). They do not figure very highly and
that needs local, persistent, dedicated champions from an independent
viewpoint to do that, and I think the DFID and the other donors
need to strengthen that local championing capacity. The second
thing is capacity building and you highlighted that. National
water professionals at national level, at provincial level and
at river basin level, at all levels—postgraduate, technician
level. We need more regional support networks for professionals
in these countries. There is a terrible decline in postgraduate
education for water professionals. I went back to Malawi in 2005
on a family holiday to a country that I had worked in for DFID
for many years and grown to love and it is not an exaggeration
to say that it was heartbreaking—it is a strong word to
use—to see the decline in national water resources capacity.
The third thing is that the donor agencies need to confront head-on
the issue of data and information, because there is nothing novel
or magical about the need for hydrological data and water sampling.
Managing any process needs data to evaluate the effectiveness
of management and also to tell stakeholders the impacts of doing
nothing. Would we manage a major illness in hospital without taking
some observations? For hydrological sites it is the same. Also
without data we cannot verify the increasing impact of climate
change and we really need to do more.
Dr Tickner: Perhaps I could add
to that. The question you have asked has been exercising WWF for
some time. In fact, last year we commissioned a report from a
couple of consultants, a kind of "think piece" around
this issue, which I would be very happy to pass on to the Committee
if it would be useful.[2]
John Bercow: Please.
Dr Tickner: I think there are
several reasons behind this. Perhaps generally the water resource
management issue, somehow or other, like perhaps the sanitation
target which was also added during the Johannesburg Summit of
2002, is not seen as integral to Target Ten, which is kind of
ironic given that Target Ten is the water and sanitation target
and actually fits underneath Millennium Development Goal Seven
which is about environmental sustainability so there is some disconnect
there in people's perceptions. I think there is a point as well
about the long-term nature of water resource management. It is
really an investment. It is a bit like investing in democracy.
Democracy is a good thing, this place that we are sitting in is
a good thing, but if you had to pinpoint exactly why it is a good
thing, it is quite complex to pin that down, and water resource
management is a bit like that. It is an on-going process because
people will always need water and there will always be conflicts
in places where water is a little bit scarce. So there is a long-term
nature of water resource management which somehow or other conflicts
with three to five-year political timescales and three to five-year
funding timescales. And of course donors in particular like to
see things achieved at the end of a three-year funding scheme
or a five-year funding scheme and water resources management does
not quite work like that. So I think people have not quite got
water resources management as a necessary investment which will
facilitate things like agricultural expansion and increased water
and sanitation supply. There are some very specific issues as
well. We did a little bit of analysis on Poverty Reduction Strategies
(PRSs) which looked at a sample of 10 from across Latin America,
Africa and Asia, and very few of them actually included anything
on water at all. Where they did it was occasionally something
specific on water supply and sanitation or specific on infrastructure.
Very few of them mentioned anything on water resources management.
And of course with the increasing emphasis within the donor community
on budget support as opposed to specific project support, if something
is not in the Poverty Reduction Strategy it is not going to be
supported, so perhaps there is a role there for DFID and other
donors to increase the emphasis on water resource management in
PRSs. I would like to say one other thing. I am just backing up
something John said. It is about communicating water resources
management. Somehow or other it is seen as a very complex thing,
full of technical jargon. I can remember sitting with John in
a meeting a couple of years ago and the Secretary of State for
International Development came in at the end of the meeting and
wanted to hear a report back and we started talking about integrated
water resource management and instantly his eyes rolled and you
could hear him sucking his teeth. Actually I think he has got
a good point. I do not think practitioners like us have been good
enough at communicating the simple lessons from water resource
management. It is about working with stakeholders to answer a
few basic questions—where is the water going to come from,
how can we make sure that the water will keep flowing, who needs
the water, how do we get the water to them, and then what happens
to the water after they have finished using it? If you can answer
those basic questions among a good range of stakeholders then
you are on your way and somehow or another, even with people like
the Global Water Partnership and even my own organisation putting
a lot of effort in, that simple essence has been lost amongst
a load of technical mumbo-jumbo perhaps, and I think that there
is a point there we need to address as much as DFID and other
donors do.
Dr Conway: I think there definitely
is a strong case for trying to raise the consideration given to
water resources in the PRSs and that perhaps is a clear role that
DFID could have in terms of trying to advocate that process. I
would like to come back to the point about capacity, and I am
sure that in your meetings and so on this is something which comes
up very often and it is not just a feature of the water sector,
it is a feature of health, education and so on. The capacity on
the ground in the institutions with a remit for water resources
management regulation and so on is very low and, with the best
will in the world and the best policies and legal acts and so
on, if there is no ability on the ground to enforce and regulate
those policies, then really they are not going to have very much
effect, so I am always wary of blueprint, new policies and those
kinds of activities. I think that there is quite a lot of action
and there has been over the years in terms of capacity building
particularly in African countries in ministries of water resources
and other departments with a water remit. Whether that has been
very effective and whether it has been pitched in the right way,
I think you could call into question. Many activities are unco-ordinated,
there are many training workshops and people in ministries and
departments have very busy jobs and they are taken away from doing
their day-to-day activities to go on short training courses and
so on. There is a lot of that taking place in some African countries
and perhaps we need to re-think the way we go about doing capacity
building. I am afraid I do not have any answer because this is
a perennial problem in many sectors and an on-going issue but
we do need to think very carefully about how we go about trying
to strengthen capacity.
Q191 John Bercow: The follow-up to
that really is as follows: I for one certainly do not sniff at
the appetite for constructive self-criticism by members of the
evidence panel, that is perfectly worthwhile and indeed welcome
that if you think you can communicate some of your thoughts and
concepts better, great. That said, we are talking about publicly
financed programmes and I was quite anxious in hearing both Mr
Chilton's and Dr Conway's answers that I have a sense that there
is a certain amount of digging holes and filling them in again
perhaps taking place in some developing countries, a feeling that
one has to tick a box, if I can put it that way, or even that
a secondary part of the work is a part of the work you are supposed
to do so you can say you have done it whereas what matters is
not the target but the outcome, not the input but the output.
We were told on 5 December that something like 20% of DFID's programmes
were on water resources management-type issues—a slightly
vague expression but there we are—and that is one of the
things that is being sustained over a long period. To put it bluntly,
do you think that there needs to be a greater assertiveness by
the DFID as to the primacy that such programmes should enjoy and
the need for their inclusion within Poverty Reduction Strategy
documents because otherwise I have a sense that although a certain
amount of work is being done and will probably go on being done,
there is not a great sense of urgency or even, dare I say it,
a political sexiness about this priority and if that is lacking
then clearly it is going to be a pretty slow runner in the race,
is it not? How is that in DFID terms going to change is what I
am saying?
Mr Chilton: That is a good question.
I would say again that it needs the local champion and the local
support, and the implication of that is that it needs a broad
range of aid support mechanisms to put people into key places.
I think you have heard that putting a qualified and experienced
person into the most appropriate position of supporting Uganda
had beneficial impacts on the water programme out of all proportion
to the cost, and I think you will see the same in Ethiopia, but
that is rare and it could be done more. We just need to be more
imaginative and more flexible about a broader range of large-scale
and small-scale support mechanisms to help countries to do that
because it is a slow process and it is bound to be a slow process
and therefore it needs commitment and support over quite a long
period of time.
Q192 John Bercow: Have you anything
else to add?
Dr Conway: I think that DFID can
respond and does respond quite quickly to the new political priorities
and concerns—and climate change is a good example of that
and we will come on to that no doubt—so they can change
their emphasis, and there are many opportunities in country offices,
in UK publications about development and development agendas and
priorities where we can re-emphasise or increase the emphasis
on the need for water and sanitation and co-ordinated management
of water resources. We have said in-country things like the Poverty
Reduction Strategies are there, and that, I guess, requires the
country offices to increase their awareness of those issues and
to be discussing and raising those issues with government offices
and with other NGOs in country to bring up the whole level of
discussion around water. That is quite a diffuse thing that involves
many different activities but probably needs some drive coming
from the top to raise the profile.
Dr Tickner: If I could just offer
a reasonably concise answer to your blunt question of should DFID
be more assertive in putting water resources management on the
agenda? Yes. In terms of the risk to taxpayers' money, if you
like, and some of DFID's water investments not being founded on
good sustainability principles, perhaps I could offer one reflection
on something I heard again the Secretary of State say at DFID's
own water stakeholders meeting last year. He talked passionately
about water and I think he has been a great champion for it and
that should be acknowledged. He gave an example I think it was
from Nigeria, I cannot quite remember exactly, of a local community
he had been to see which was dependent on a spring up in the mountainside
for its water and they used to have to walk for a couple of hours
and it was difficult and dangerous and DFID had supported them
to construct a pipe that would pump the water into a standpipe
in the village—all very good. When I asked him what were
DFID doing to make sure that that spring keeps flowing and stays
clean, because the people are still dependent on it, the response
was very much along the lines of "Well, that is not DFID's
job, that is for the local community to take care of." That
would be a little worrying if I was looking at how my taxes were
being paid and whether that standpipe was still in use in a few
years' time. Especially as climate change takes off, there is
a need to pay more attention and for DFID to be more assertive
on this.
Chairman: I will forebear to comment
on the Secretary of State's style.
Q193 Ann McKechin: Can I turn your
attention to the Global Water Partnership which you have all referred
to earlier this morning. As you will be aware, DFID is the largest
donor to that partnership but it has come in for some criticism
recently, particularly from the World Bank. I just wondered if
you would be able to say if there is a practical way the Partnership
has assisted in forming their water efficiency and resource management
plans, what else it needs to do and does it lack political momentum
or where do you think the failings may exist with the whole structure?
Dr Tickner: WWF itself is a member
of the Global Water Partnership and we do think it is a useful
organisation and we do think DFID's support to it is useful support.
I read that World Bank criticism and it is probably justified;
what the Global Water Partnership has done that is useful is produce
its toolkits for water resource management which are the closest
thing that there is to some sort of global standard. I guess where
I would like to see the Global Water Partnership perhaps do things
a little differently is I sometimes get the sense that those toolkits
are seen a little bit as one size fits all and I wonder if they
pay enough attention to local nuances and some more sophisticated
approaches. I think the World Bank report itself has said that
the Global Water Partnership does not really seem to have so much
of a foot on the ground, it does not seem to be able to provide
evidence of where those toolkits have really helped to improve
water resource management, and if DFID followed that through at
a country level and then could perhaps do a little bit of lesson-learning
from that, that would be very useful. Perhaps the most important
thing is the monitoring of integrated water resource planning.
The GWP did produce a report last year looking at 95 countries—Mr
Bercow referred to this report—where they said that only
21% of countries had actually hit their 2005 target, which was
not many, but of course that is only really looking at 95 countries—I
say "only looking", 95 countries actually looks a pretty
good spread—but there was not any real sense of okay, they
have produced a plan but how good is it? How good were the processes
which led to its development? How much were stakeholders involved
in it? What is happening next, is it that the plan is on a shelf
somewhere in a capital city, or has it really got a life that
is meaningful? That kind of qualitative monitoring and reporting
back and lesson-learning would be very useful, if the Global Water
Partnership were able to make a push on that.
Mr Chilton: I would also say that
the tools that have been produced by the Global Water Partnership
have been widely disseminated—maybe less widely used, and
that should be evaluated—and their documentation promotes
water management. They do have well-developed regional networks,
but I have looked in the last few days at the website and at national
level there are very mixed approaches from country to country.
In some countries the Global Water Partnership has been right
at the heart of the national dialogue on the preparation of water
resources management strategy up to 2005 and since then, but in
other countries their input has been smaller demonstration, advocacy
or educational projects. Their programme literature says that
this reflects their desire to fill in the gaps and do what they
should where they see a gap, but looking at the website it reflects
their local contacts and if the local Global Water Partnership
partner is an academic or an NGO then they may be less likely
to influence the national water resources management dialogue.
Q194 Ann McKechin: It needs to be
state-driven then to some extent?
Mr Chilton: Yes, that could be
the case. It is also possible—and this is an impression
rather than a strong factual point—that the Global Water
Partnership is most active in supporting water management in some
of the rapidly developing countries rather than the poorest countries.
That is valid because some of the biggest water resources management
problems are in the most rapidly developing countries, but the
corollary of that means that other donors and DFID have got to
provide that support in the countries that are focus countries
for those donors.
Q195 Ann McKechin: There are different
levels of effectiveness in each country?
Mr Chilton: Different levels of
support, yes.
Ann McKechin: Thank you for that.
Q196 Mr Singh: If I could just first
of all pick up on this whole issue of IWRM, it appears from some
of the answers you have given and from what we know—do you
agree with me—that IWRM is just too big, it is too vast
for it to actually work with the mechanism that we have in place
at the moment. Can we do more with the European Union Water Initiative
or the Global Water Partnership, or do we actually need new structures
in place to deliver IWRM?
Dr Tickner: Let me respond to
your first question first, is IWRM too big? In its entirety there
is some truth in that, but you can break water resource management
down into different components and into timelines. Again, we have
done a little bit of thinking on it and the report I mentioned
earlier has some ideas for how you can break components down and
design some indicators around that. If I just quickly refer to
that now, you can have different themes like sustainable water
allocation, good governance, looking at natural infrastructure
and protecting that where it is providing some environmental services,
and for each of those you can have indicators of success, you
can provide a rationale for why these things are important within
the local context. That kind of slightly more detailed analysis
underneath the very simple, basic questions about IWRM that I
mentioned earlier means that you can make it a less frightening
concept. I think there is probably some work to do to actually
apply that model in different places. Your second question was
about new structures: I am loath to suggest new structures because
there are an awful lot of institutions and organisations out there;
the UN alone has something like 20 to 25 different bodies that
somehow or other have some responsibility for water or some interest
in target 10, so I am not going to go down that route. There is
a role for looking at how existing structures might work better;
the EU Water Initiative you mentioned has been widely criticised
and Tearfund and Wateraid brought out a nice little critique of
it a while ago, and I know that DFID along with the German Government
are supporting the review of the EU Water Initiative at the moment.
The preference should be making existing structures work better
rather than having new structures. The EU Water Initiative in
principle should be a good thing, getting donors to work better
together along common aims, but somehow it does not seem to have
worked and I wonder whether that is lack of political leadership
in one or two really influential donor countries to drive it forward.
Mr Chilton: David has said most
of what needs to be said on that, but I would also not advocate
new structures or new organisations. In a way, one of the further
problems about water resources management is, if anything, that
the water resources are spread more thinly across the UN system,
even than water and sanitation. It just needs more focus from
the existing organisations.
Q197 Mr Singh: One of the things
I really want to ask is, you jogged my memory, Dr Tickner, very
early on in your submission when you said that water has a very
low priority in ministries and structures of developing countries
and that sanitation is even worse off, yet we know that diarrhoea
kills more people than malaria and tuberculosis combined, I believe.
Where does sanitation actually figure in your experience—I
know you are not experts on that—within the whole scheme
of things? Is it part of the EU Water Initiative, is it part of
IWRM, or is it so low down the agenda that it does not figure
anywhere at the moment?
Dr Tickner: There are other organisations
than mine which have more expertise in sanitation and I am sure
you have heard from some of those as well. Sanitation is clearly
very important and when you are looking at the health impacts
of water it is fundamental. It is a very good example of how the
water and sanitation Millennium Development Goal target should
cross-refer to other Millennium Development Goal targets, and
agriculture would be another one that would tie in. I get the
sense sometimes that these targets are kind of viewed in isolation
from each other and perhaps some sort of better system of cross-referencing
the targets would really help to stimulate more action on sanitation.
Within integrated water resources management, when I was breaking
it down into a few simple questions earlier one of the ones was
what happens to the water after people have finished using it?
Of course, a lot of that is sewage, waste water, which carries
with it all sorts of health risks, so within any integrated water
resource management planning process sanitation should figure
very highly, it is one of the things that can do the most to improve
people's lives and also can help to ensure environmental sustainability
as well.
Q198 Mr Singh: But does it?
Dr Tickner: In my experience probably
not, no.
Mr Chilton: There has been quite
a lot of discussion from some of your other expert witnesses about
the distinctiveness of water and sanitation in terms of their
institutional and social strategies and perspectives, but from
the perspective of the environment and water management we need
to think of the linkages very much because, for example, where
pit latrines and septic tanks are used and promoted for sanitation
there is a very important potential impact of those on the quality
of the underlying groundwater, and where water-borne sanitation
is used and collected from urban and peri-urban areas and large
volumes of waste water are generated, there is a potential impact
on water quality for surface water and groundwater. But it is
also a resource and collected waste water is increasingly and
correctly being seen as a vital component of the water resources
cycle and needs managing. It needs treating and looking after
from its health point of view, but it needs to be managed as well
from its resource point of view, so there does need to be more
linkage between the goals.
Chairman: The next group of questions
is more specifically aimed at Mr Chilton and Dr Tickner and there
are then some questions for Dr Conway, but do not feel you cannot
answer.
Q199 James Duddridge: In looking
at the written evidence there seemed to be a consistency of people
saying that there was a major gap in the hydrometric data collection.
What specific measures can DFID take to encourage the in-country
collection of that data and analysis of that data?
Mr Chilton: Certainly, going back
to what I said before, increasing the capacity of professionals
in water ministries to appreciate the need for monitoring data
is the first hurdle, and it is a hurdle for us in the UK; you
cannot get funding to collect monitoring data and take care of
monitoring data unless you can convince water resources managers
and their funders that you need the data to show that things are
going wrong or that your measures are being improved, so capacity-building
at the top is required. It goes back also to this decline in postgraduate
training and awareness of people in developing countries from
the experience that they gain. You could do specific things in
terms of expecting a small proportion of a budget that was going
to be used on developing water to be set aside for monitoring
and management. I do not know whether that is a very effective
approach, but that certainly could be tried.
Dr Tickner: From my perspective—and
John has already talked about this—some sort of recognition
that having enough data is fundamental to good management of water
resources. That does not necessarily mean you have to monitor
everything all the time, you can get away with actually quite
targeted monitoring. On the Ruaha River in Tanzania, which I mentioned
earlier, within a couple of hundred kilometres there are maybe
half a dozen hydrometric gauging stations, and whilst they could
do with a bit more that is more or less enough for them to find
out where the pinch points are, where the water is really being
over-used and to put in place some policy measures and actions
on the back of that. One of the interesting angles on hydrometric
monitoring is that it is one of the easiest things for neighbouring
countries to collaborate on, and given that many of the major
rivers in the developing world are trans-boundary that could be
an interesting discussion for DFID to reflect on. If I can give
you an example from Eastern Europe where I used to work, the Danube
River Basin; there are about 14 countries involved in the Danube
River Basin, many of whom have fairly recently been at war with
each other and, up until slightly less recently, were part of
the old Communist Bloc. It was in 1994 that the Convention was
first signed for the protection of the Danube River, and the first
priority that people looked at for collaboration from those countries
was monitoring. They set up a trans-national monitoring network
using standardised approaches and so on and so forth, and it has
been reasonably successful, it is one of the things that the countries
seem to be happy to talk to each other about, whereas other issues
such as specific dam proposals and things like that can cause
a little bit more conflict. Some sort of recognition, therefore,
that monitoring can help promote dialogue between countries that
otherwise do not necessarily get on well with each other could
be a useful thought to put into the process.
James Duddridge: Whenever experts come
before a select committee there is always a bid for more money
for their area, but we have an unrelenting push towards identifying
problems of climate change—adapting, mitigating and in some
cases aspirations to reversing these changes. How important is
hydrometric data collection and monitoring to monitoring the progress
we are making on climate change and, given that this is the number
one priority—politicians always seem to have lots of number
one priorities, but given that we are told that this is the number
one priority at the moment, why are you not getting a fair crack
of the whip and getting the cash?
1 Integrated Water Resources Management. Back
2
Tim Jones, Peter Newborne & Bill Phillips, 2006, Applying
the principles of integrated water resource and river basin management:
an introduction-a report to WWF-UK: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/applying_the_principles_of_
integrated_water_resource_and_river_basin_management_ aug_06_ver.pdf. Back
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