Documents considered by the Committee on 7 November - European Scrutiny Committee Contents


4 EU development assistance in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

(34335)

14028/12

SWD(12) 277

Commission Staff Working Document: Meeting the challenge of rapidly increasing humanitarian needs in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

Legal base
Document originated18 September 2012
Deposited in Parliament19 October 2012
DepartmentInternational Development
Basis of considerationEM of 1 November 2012
Previous Committee ReportNone
Discussion in CouncilTo be determined
Committee's assessmentPolitically important
Committee's decisionFor debate in European Committee B, along with (34296)—: Court of Auditors' Special Report on EU Development Assistance for Drinking-Water Supply and Basic Sanitation in Sub-Saharan Countries[7]

Background

4.1 The Commission says WASH stands for water, sanitation, hygiene, and is one of the three main sectors of humanitarian operations (the others being food and health). It sees climate change as having a growing and significant impact on WASH among vulnerable people; and says that humanitarian aid alone will not be able to continue to address the rapidly growing needs. Improving resilience and Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD), the Commission says, "vital to helping meet these needs before they become humanitarian emergencies."[8]

The Commission Staff Working Document

4.2 The Commission notes that over the past decade humanitarian WASH funding has increased thirtyfold. In recent years, the Commission says, there have been 1.7 million deaths annually due to inadequate WASH conditions and services. Water is also the key medium through which the impact of climate change will be manifested. Population growth and rapidly growing urban areas are increasing pressure on local water resources. Consequently, needs are increasing even more rapidly than the available funding. UNOCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) predicts that by 2025 the number of people without access to safe water will rise from just over one billion to two billion.

4.3 The Commission also notes that the EU is already the biggest donor to humanitarian WASH, now allocating around €200 million each year from the EU budget. The Commission has, it says, a number of comparative advantages in responding to the changing frequency, scale and nature of humanitarian WASH needs:

"First, for the essential life-saving first phase following a disaster, the Commission has invested heavily in improving the speed of response with its partners, the surge capacity in the global WASH Cluster, and global logistics support. This facilitates better needs assessments, more timely and appropriate responses, better coordination, and overall it uses humanitarian budgets more efficiently and effectively to help those in need. In time of budgetary constraints, getting the best value for our money is even more important.

"Second, the Commission, through its Humanitarian Aid department (DG ECHO), co-ordinates an increasing number of deployments through funding for humanitarian partners, and support and facilitation for the deployment and coordination of Member States civil protection assistance in response to major emergencies inside and outside the EU. The complementary roles of humanitarian and civil protection are strong in the WASH sector: the growing urban humanitarian WASH needs often require a technically sophisticated response beyond the capacity of many humanitarian agencies, which can be provided through civil protection actors.

"Third, with an extensive network of NGO, UN and Red Cross partners, together with a network of 140 field experts, the Commission reviews and promotes quality and best practice in the face of changing humanitarian WASH demands. Both through funding, and extensive partnerships, the Commission works to improve the enabling environment for humanitarian WASH responses. This includes work with the global WASH Cluster as the focus of the global humanitarian WASH community to deliver quality aid through an inclusive and effective preparation and coordination."

4.4 To complement humanitarian responses, the Commission says that the work of development actors in the area of early recovery is vital. For the €712 million allocated to date through its Development "Water Facility" for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, project selection is done jointly with the Commission's humanitarian experts. Last but not least, based on its expertise, the Commission has a substantial role to play in terms of advocacy for water issues in general and WASH in particular.

4.5 The Commission sets out the ways in which it programmes, implements and co-ordinates its humanitarian WASH delivery, which it says in particular build upon the Commission's comparative advantages as a humanitarian actor. At the global level, the Commission says that it is actively and constructively engaged with the "Transformative Agenda" to strengthen the global humanitarian response system, including the functioning of the Global WASH Cluster.[9] Within this "global enabling environment", the Commission says that:

—   it is ensuring the application of best practice to improve the quality of humanitarian WASH assistance, and the resilience of the vulnerable populations assisted;

—  Commission humanitarian WASH assistance applies in anticipation of, during, and in the aftermath of humanitarian crises.

4.6 The Commission says that this is achieved through the principal objective:

"To save and preserve life and alleviate the suffering of populations facing severe environmental health risks and/or water insecurity in the context of anticipated, on-going and recent humanitarian crises."

and with the following specific objectives (the Commission's emphasis):

"(1) To ensure timely and dignified access to sufficient and safe WASH services for populations threatened by on-going, imminent or future humanitarian crises, and to increase their resilience to withstand water stress and shocks.

"(2) To implement measures to prevent the spread of WASH related diseases in populations threatened by on-going, imminent or future humanitarian crises.

"(3) To enhance the impact, relevance, efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of WASH assistance by strengthening the capacities of the humanitarian aid system, including its coordination mechanism."

4.7 On 25 September, the EU High Representative (HR; Baroness Ashton) at the High Level Roundtable Discussion on Water, Peace and Security, in New York, in thanking the US and UN for joining the EU in "this important initiative" recalled that EU has spent about €2 billion in 60 countries since 2008 on issues to do with water and sanitation; has longstanding cooperation with many of the partners represented there; and is determined to remain engaged and committed. She noted that when EU foreign ministers met in Cyprus she was:

"trying to make sure that within the European Union we seriously thought about how this issue, and every aspect of it, was covered in the foreign policy work we do, and in my work as Vice President of the Commission, what we do across the Union. And I have to say it is very obvious from our discussions with foreign ministers that this is a real key preoccupation as we think about the challenges in different regions of the world and the potential for conflict or for other forms of difficulty created."[10]

4.8 That meeting took place on 8 September, after which the HR said that this particular meeting had chosen to focus discussion on two topics:

"The first was water, where as many of you know, so many parts of the world face real challenges either because of climate change which results in flood or drought, or because of the quality of water available for people which is insufficient quality for their needs, or because of the challenges of many countries sharing water resources and the impact of changes that might take place in how people use water. So we had a broad discussion on this from which it was very clear that all the Ministers were united in the view that the EU should do as much as it possibly can to support the provision of water and to look at these issues from that broader horizontal perspective. "It's also important that in the post-Lisbon world we work with our colleagues in the Commission, in my role as Vice President, across the different areas in order to ensure that we are responding to these important challenges which include of course the potential for conflict because of the lack of water, of the needs of water."[11]

The Government's view

4.9 In her Explanatory Memorandum of 1 November 2012, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for International Development (Ms Lynne Featherstone) that there are "no policy implications contained in this document as this paper is a narrative of the Commission's work on humanitarian WASH."

4.10 She nonetheless welcomes the Commission Staff Working Paper on this issue, and says that she will "continue to encourage" the Commission "to ensure that any humanitarian financed WASH interventions are designed to ensure that the financing and institutional arrangements for ownership and maintenance are sufficient for schemes to remain functioning in the long-term."

4.11 She also says that:

"In certain contexts, in-kind contributions of specialised WASH equipment may be provided through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism,[12] while in others 'standby arrangements' between the Commission implementing partners and private foundations (such as international water utilities) may be used to mobilize specialised WASH expertise and equipment to disaster areas. This may be of interest to UK utilities and WASH product providers."

Conclusion

4.12 At the outset, the Commission notes that humanitarian aid alone will not be able to continue to address rapidly growing needs; and that improving resilience and Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD) is "vital to helping meet these needs before they become humanitarian emergencies".

4.13 Elsewhere in this Report we consider a related document, this time from the Court of Auditors, on "European Union Development Assistance for Drinking-Water Supply and Basic Sanitation in Sub-Saharan Countries". That report found that EU support had increased access to drinking water and basic sanitation, but that fewer than half the projects delivered results fully meeting the beneficiaries' needs; and that, whilst Commission project management procedures and processes do address sustainability, implementation in Commission funded projects had been highly variable and in many cases had failed to ensure sustainability of services provided.

4.14 Nothing can do more to improve resilience in this (or any other such area) than projects that work over the medium and long term. However, it is plain from this Court of Auditors' Report that the Commission still has much to do. We are thus puzzled by the brevity of the Minister's remarks about this related Commission Staff Working Document, given that, at the same time, the Court of Auditors has (as she herself notes) demonstrated that:

—  despite having good processes and procedures in place, the Commission's proper use and implementation of them is variable;

—  results show numerous examples where Commission projects are not sustainable, or where they have failed to meet beneficiaries' expectations;

—  the Commission's response is that they have put in place further processes, rather than outlining their commitment to use their existing systems more effectively;

—   the Commission has not focused on the delivery of results, which represents a lack of accountability and transparency.

4.15 We have recommended that the Court of Auditors' report be debated in European Committee B. We also recommend that this document be debated along with it, so that the Minister can outline her approach more fully and interested Members can satisfy themselves that the Government will be able to improve the Commission's future management of water and sanitation projects.

4.16 We are also drawing this chapter of our Report to the attention of the International Development Committee.





7   See chapter 3 of this Report. Back

8   For full background on the European Union and Water Security, see

http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_12623_en.htm. Back

9   According to its website, "[t]he Global WASH Cluster provides an open and formal platform for humanitarian WASH actors to work together to address key weaknesses in the WASH sector as a whole.

"Based on formal analyses of the gaps and bottlenecks affecting WASH responses, work-plans and clear working arrangements amongst GWC partners have been established to address identified gaps and to ensure that the necessary standards, systems, and capacities for co-ordinated WASH humanitarian responses are in place at a global level." For full information, see http://www.washcluster.info/. Back

10   See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/132584.pdf for the full text of the HR's remarks. Back

11   Taken from remarks made by the HR following the 8 September 2012 Informal Meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers (Gymnich) in Nicosia. The full text is available at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/132289.pdf. Back

12   The European Civil Protection Mechanism was established in 2001 to support the mobilisation of emergency assistance from Participating States in the event of major emergencies. Primary responsibility for dealing with the immediate effects of a disaster lies with the country where it has occurred. Nevertheless, when the scale of the emergency overwhelms national response capacities, a disaster-stricken country can benefit from civil protection assets or teams available in European countries. The 32 Participating States of the Mechanism are all EU Member States, the European Economic Area countries (Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland), Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in their capacity as a candidate country. See http://ec.europa.eu/echo/civil_protection/civil/prote/pdfdocs/Training%20brochure.pdf for full information on the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. Back


 
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Prepared 16 November 2012