International Development CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by WaterAid

1. Summary

1.1 WaterAid is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in 27 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region. We work to improve communities’ quality of life by making lasting improvements to water, sanitation and hygiene promotion (WASH) using local skills and practical, sustainable technologies. We believe that WASH is an essential prerequisite for progress towards other development areas, including health, education, gender, and the economic and environmental sectors.

1.2 This note focuses on the WASH sector. In particular it looks at the effectiveness of the current Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for water and sanitation (to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation) and the post-2015 agenda for the sector.

1.3 The MDG for water was met in 2010, with over two billion people gaining access to improved water sources between 1990 and 2010. However, huge disparities in access exist and over 780 million people remain unserved.1 If current trends continue 605 million people will be without an improved water source in 2015.2

1.4 The MDG for sanitation remains hugely off-track, despite 1.8 billion people gaining access to improved sanitation facilities between 1990 and 2010. At current rates of progress the MDG for sanitation may not be reached until 20263 and in 2015 the numbers are expected to remain unacceptably high, with 2.4 billion still lacking access to improved sanitation facilities.4

1.5 Aid flows are currently insufficient to address the regional inequalities in access to water and sanitation and achieve the MDG for sanitation target. The World Health Organisation estimates that $190 billion of investment is needed each year until 2015 in order to achieve and maintain the water and sanitation targets in all regions.5 This compares with $7.8 billion of global aid flows in 2010. Although aid is one of several financing sources for the sector, it amounts to just 4% of annual investment needs.6

2. How effective has the MDG process for WASH been to date?

2.1 A key strength of the MDG framework is that it provides a coherent, comprehensible, measurable, time-bound and far-reaching agenda that has established norms and standards for international development cooperation.

2.2 Although the drinking water MDG has been met, it only calls for halving the proportion of people without safe drinking water. More than one tenth of the global population still relied on unimproved drinking water sources in 20107 and sub-Saharan Africa’s progress towards the target remains off-track.8

2.3 Despite progress on the MDG for water, the world is still unlikely to meet the goal for sanitation.9

2.4 Average MDG figures hide huge disparities in access between countries. Almost half of the two billion people who have gained access to drinking water since 1990 live in China or India.10

2.5 Average figures have also masked growing inequalities between groups. For example, over 90% of the richest quintile in urban areas use improved sanitation and water sources, and over 60% have household piped water. However, in the poorest rural quintile, piped water is non-existent, and open defecation is practiced by over 60% of households.11 Of the 780 million people globally without an improved water supply source in 2010, 653 million were rural dwellers.12

2.6 WASH is an essential prerequisite for progress towards other MDGs including health, education, gender, economic and environmental sectors. The existing MDG framework is constrained by the vertical nature of the goals and a lack of horizontal integration between target outcomes and indicators of progress. Diarrhoea related to inadequate WASH is the second leading cause of child deaths,13 yet there are no effective links between targets and performance indicators relating to WASH and those related to health. This has discouraged the collaboration across sectors which is required to secure inter-related development outcomes, such as child and maternal health.

3. What should the process for developing a post 2015 goal framework be?

3.1 Input from developing countries into the MDG framework was limited. It is arguable that the omission of early inputs from developing countries delayed and weakened the pro-poor opportunities that the MDG agenda offered. The post-2015 goals, targets and indicators must adequately reflect the needs and priorities of target populations, in particular, poor and marginalised groups. It is therefore essential that the political and technical processes for developing the new framework builds consensus and ownership among government and non-government stakeholders in both developed and developing countries.

3.2 The post-2015 goal framework development and consultation process must ensure that the post-2015 High Level Panel includes strong representation from developing country governments and civil society organisations. Particular care should be taken to ensure that the genuine representatives of the most marginalised and vulnerable groups are given an influential role.

4. What should the structure of the post-2015 goal framework and the positioning of WASH look like?

4.1 WASH should be framed differently than in the existing MDG framework, where it was positioned in the context of environmental sustainability. The post-2015 goals must better reflect the central importance of WASH to human health, education, welfare and economic productivity.

4.2 The post-2015 goal framework should:

4.2.1establish clear outcome-based global goals and supporting targets with an ambitious deadline for their achievement;

4.2.2have an explicit and prioritised focus on reducing inequalities and targeting the poorest and most marginalised groups and neglected areas of development;

4.2.3reflect the integrated nature of factors affecting human and economic development and create incentives for coordinated action across sectors.

4.2.4reflect the growing reality that the poorest people may live in middle-income countries, and that targets are relevant and meaningful for all countries, not only Least Developed Countries;

4.2.5recognise and reflect key principles and obligations derived from existing treaties relating to human rights14 including the strengthening of mechanisms for civil society participation;

4.2.6reinforce existing systems for monitoring and reporting progress and promote increased transparency and accountability for results; and

4.2.7put in place concrete mechanisms to mobilise the resources required to deliver the goals, identify structural bottlenecks, and propose remedial policies.

5. What should the content of the post-2015 WASH goals, targets and indicators be?

5.1 The development of goals, targets and indicators for global monitoring of WASH beyond 2015 should take into account the forthcoming technical recommendations of the expert working groups established by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation and feedback from subsequent regional and country level consultations with government and non-government stakeholders. For further information on this process see http://www.wssinfo.org/post-2015-monitoring/overview/.

5.2 A post-2015 goal framework could improve upon the current MDG goal framework by:

5.2.1reflecting the critical cross-issue links between WASH and health, education, gender, economic and environment, to strengthen the efficiency of interventions and for producing sustainable human development outcomes;

5.2.2including a goal of universal access (100%) to basic water and sanitation service as a fundamental human right;

5.2.3setting an ambitious target date for achieving universal access to basic water and sanitation services. 2030 is ambitious but feasible;

5.2.4adding explicit targets and indicators relating to improvements in hygiene, particularly hand-washing and menstrual hygiene management;

5.2.5ensuring WASH targets and indicators address access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene not only at household level but also in schools, health facilities and workplaces;

5.2.6ensuring WASH targets and indicators focus explicitly on reducing inequalities by targeting poor and disadvantaged groups as a first priority;

5.2.7ensuring WASH targets and indicators focus in particular on reducing the time spent, usually by women and girls, on collecting water and finding somewhere safe to defecate;

5.2.8ensuring WASH targets and indicators explicitly address the major barriers to access and forms of discrimination faced by poor people, women and girls, older people, and disabled people; and

5.2.9ensuring WASH targets and indicators explicitly address the sustainability of water, sanitation and hygiene services in order to ensure lasting benefits over time.

6. A global architecture to address post-2015 structural weaknesses

6.1 Lastly, the post-2015 architecture must develop the mechanism(s) capable of monitoring progress and identifying the sectors that are lagging. For instance, the serious lag in the progress of the sanitation MDG target was neglected by the official international development community with serious ongoing implications for development outcomes and child health in particular. The integrated nature of development requires a more holistic approach to monitoring and sectors that skew the gains made in human development should be redressed.

6.2 The international architecture requires a process or mechanism to identify and address systemic weaknesses or failure. Such a body needs to be composed of decision-makers with the seniority necessary for bringing about the required focus, investment decisions and policy changes to redress structural weaknesses and bottlenecks.

October 2012