Water and Sanitation: Answers to key questions
20 March 2007
Below are 15 key questions and answers about DFID and water and sanitation. They include information about our Global Call to Action, our progress towards the MDGs, our work with the private sector and international organisations, our research programmes and our local and national activities.
1. What is DFID's Global Call to Action actually calling for?
At the international level we are calling for two things: one annual
global report
to monitor progress towards achieving the MDG water and sanitation targets. This
should set out for each country: levels of access to safe water and adequate sanitation;
how much governments are allocating to water and sanitation; what external
support they receive; the capacity to meet the challenge of achieving the
targets; and
highlight where progress is lagging behind.
And we want one high-level global annual meeting to review
what’s being done, highlight progress and agree on action. We want action. We
don’t want this report on the bookshelves.
Within each country there should be:
- One national water and sanitation plan - setting out current levels of access and identifying the investment and human resources needed to meet needs.
- One water and sanitation co-ordinating group – this should bring together government, civil society and donors to identify the blockages and agree who’s going to do what.
- One lead UN body for water and sanitation at national level – ensuring its programme was part of the overall programme co-ordinated by the United Nations Development Programme. We would put our money where our policy is. This would be the only UN agency through which the UK channelled its money for water and sanitation in that country – and we’d encourage others to do the same.
2. How will DFID achieve its commitment to spend £200 million on water and sanitation in Africa by 2010/11?
The UK has agreed that half of our direct aid to poor countries should be
spent on essential public services, including water, and we will increase our
support to water and sanitation in Africa to £95 million a year by 2008, and
double it to £200 million a year by 2011.
Our latest estimate indicates that we are on track to reach our White Paper 3 target
of £95 million by 2007/08.
3. Are we on track to reach the Millennium Development Goal Targets for water and sanitation?
The world is just off track for reaching the MDG drinking water target, and the trend appears to be deteriorating. On current figures, the world will miss the sanitation targets by more than half a billion people. But Sub-Saharan Africa is off-target for both.
4. What can we do to get the most out of the EU Water Initiative and the EU Water Facility?
Following criticism of the EU Water Initiative (EUWI), the UK and Germany
funded a review of its activities. Its report suggested how the EUWI can be more
accountable to stakeholders, through the setting of clear and measurable targets
and by being accountable against these at the EU Council.
The first two tranches (around 500 million euro) of the African, Caribbean and Pacific EU Water Facility, funded from the
ninth European Development Fund, have now been
allocated, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Facility was oversubscribed by five
times. This will help provide water to 20 million people and sanitation to 9
million.
DFID will support the EU Water Facility to act as an incentive for country
planning in water and sanitation in a way that helps accelerate progress towards
the MDG targets.
5. Lack of access to water and sanitation primarily affects women and girls. How is DFID’s work addressing this?
Women and girls certainly bear the main burden from poor service. This is because
women and girls spend much of their time fetching and carrying water, and
therefore miss out on other vital activities – like going to school or earning
an income. Girls drop out of school when there are inadequate sanitation
facilities; missing school means they are more likely to earn less, have less
healthy children, and are more likely - in Sub- Saharan Africa - to be HIV
positive. A high price to pay for not having safe water to hand.
DFID’s Girls Education Strategy (2005) commits us to supporting clean water and
sanitation facilities in schools, and DFID funds effective work in this area in
Bangladesh and Northern Nigeria; DFID funds the Water Supply and Sanitation
Collaborative Council to support women's leaders in Africa to advocate for better
sanitation.
6. What’s DFID’s approach to working with the private sector in water and sanitation?
The public sector continues to play the leading role in providing water and
sanitation throughout the world. Most of DFID’s aid (about 95% of our
bilateral country programme expenditure on water and sanitation) supports the
delivery of water and sanitation through governments, and not-for-profit or
humanitarian agencies.
DFID’s policy is that - where we can - we respond to requests from developing
country governments for assistance to help improve the efficiency of their water
utilities. Usually this involves DFID providing support to public bodies. In
some cases, where the developing country government has a policy to explore
whether participation of the private sector might improve service delivery, DFID
may be asked to advise on how this might best be done.
Back to top
7. How does DFID build capacity in the sector?
Capacity is a core development problem in all countries, across all sectors,
especially health and education. Developing country governments need to lead the
way by developing and financing a range of plans to address the problem. DFID
provides support both for broad improvements in governance (e.g. better public
financial management, stronger civil society) and for improved capacity in the
sector (see below).
We can also help by co-ordinating our work with others so that we do not waste
government officials’ time and undermine existing capacity. Some of the ways in
which DFID is helping to build capacity in the water sector are:
In Ethiopia,
DFID is proposing to follow the World Bank’s capacity building approach, which
involves Woreda (district) Support Groups providing support in planning,
financial management, implementation training and reporting.
By funding international NGOs to support their local partners to deliver
services directly and advocate for the sector, including WaterAid, whose
£15.75 million sanitation and hygiene education programme in Bangladesh works
through local NGOs to reach millions of the country’s poorest people.
Through international organisations such as the Water and Sanitation
Collaborative Council and the Global Water Partnership which help build capacity
through national networks in the water sector. DFID’s resource centres for water
and sanitation have supported a number of national academic organisations in
Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and India. We are discussing, with
our new resource centre, how we can build on this work and give more support to
developing country research and advisory capacity.
DFID funds RiPPLE (Research-inspired Policy and Practice Learning in Ethiopia
and the Nile Region) to strengthen research networks in Ethiopia, including
initiatives to improve researchers’ access to knowledge. The RiPPLE programme
in Ethiopia will help to develop the capacity of researchers and practitioners
to deliver water and sanitation.
DFID has seconded professional staff to key positions in government Ministries (e.g.
a water and sanitation expert in the Ministry of Water Resources in Ethiopia)
and to UN organisations such as UNICEF Nigeria. DFID supports professional
development awards and partnership programmes, e.g. an institutional capacity grant
to the University of Malawi in water management.
DFID supports the Private Sector Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF)
that helps governments to get the full potential from public private partnerships
in infrastructure. For example, in Ghana, PPIAF supported regulatory and legal reform to
improve small town water services. Communities themselves were involved in the
selection of the water providers.
Back to top
8. What is DFID’s approach to encouraging south-south learning among public water utilities in the developing world?
Public water utilities provide much of the piped water people receive in
developing countries and they can help reach the poorest people without
connections by providing water to intermediaries.
In March 2006, the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and
Sanitation’s action plan included a call to promote Water Operators
Partnerships. We funded workshops in April 2007 in Asia and Africa to look at
whether people want partnerships at a regional level and what support we might
provide. This has helped public water utility managers get together and share experience
about what works. And we want to ensure this process is really led by them.
DFID will also fund work to learn lessons about where reform of public
provision of water and sanitation has worked and where partnerships between
utilities have been useful. This should help utilities and partnerships to
replicate successes elsewhere.
Back to top
9. What is DFID doing to accelerate progress on sanitation?
Sanitation is one of the most off-track of the MDGs. It requires a doubling
of current efforts if it is to be met.
DFID’s Rural Hygiene Sanitation and Water Supply Programme in Bangladesh reached
7.7 million people in the first five years and will reach a further 30 million people and 7,500
schools. It’s implemented by UNICEF, working through NGOs delivering directly to
poor people.
In India, DFID funds the UNICEF Child Environment Programme, which aims to reach
213 million rural people in 14 states. UNICEF will work with local government to
implement state programmes.
DFID supports WaterAid Community Led Total Sanitation. This programme has proved
so successful that we’re supporting research through the Institute of
Development Studies to look at the potential to scale-up, move from a rural
to an urban focus, and replicate the work in Asia and Africa.
DFID supports the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council as the lead on
advocacy for sanitation and hygiene promotion. It will use the 2008 Year of
Sanitation as a means of taking forward a strong agenda on sanitation.
Back to top
10. How does DFID integrate its work on water and sanitation with its strategies on health and education?
DFID promotes inter-disciplinary working in our country programmes and on
policy but we recognise that we need to do more to promote an integrated
approach to tackling the sanitation MDG target in particular. The recent call
for a high-level annual global meeting on water and sanitation has raised
awareness of the central role of the sector.
In taking forward our commitments in the recent White Paper, DFID is now working together to strengthen our support for the essential public services of water, sanitation, health, education and social protection. With the increasing evidence of the likely effect of climate change on water access, our water resource management advisers are working more closely with climate change experts and vice versa.
One example of cross sector working is a new public services group which brings together advisers focussing on health, education, water and sanitation, and social protection.
DFID’s Girls' Education Strategy (2005) commits us to supporting clean water supply and sanitation facilities in schools. We are doing this already in a number of countries, including Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan. In Bangladesh, we support (through WaterAid) research to ensure that poor women benefit from improved hygiene practice.
DFID recently published its updated health strategy. The strategy
acknowledges the critical importance of water and sanitation for health and is
clear that DFID and others need to do more to exploit links across sectors,
within countries and within donor agencies, to deliver better health outcomes
for poor people.
In India, DFID has piloted participatory Village Hygiene and Sanitation Plans in
Madhya Pradesh (MP), to feed actual needs into district health plans and
centrally sponsored schemes for water and sanitation. This has increased the
engagement of health officials with water and sanitation needs and is likely to
be extended through the proposed MP health sector support programme.
Back to top
11. With rising populations in an urbanising world, is it right that the majority of DFID-supported water and sanitation programmes focus on rural areas?
Of 1.1 billion people who lack access to safe water, 900 million of them live
in the countryside; similarly, of the 2.6 billion that lack access to basic
sanitation, 2 billion are rural. So that’s why our focus is as it is.
But we recognise the massive development challenge of an urbanising world and we
fund a number of programmes with an urban focus. In India, DFID’s Urban Services
for the Poor programme works in Andhra Pradesh (in 42 towns with populations over
100,000), in West Bengal (in 85 Municipalities) and in Madhya Pradesh (targeting
500,000 slum dwellers and benefiting 5.5 million people in four major cities).
In Bangladesh, DFID supports WaterAid to bring sanitation and hygiene education
to
slum dwellers. The programme works through NGOs and builds local know-how – it
also reaches out to millions of people among some of Bangladesh’s poorest
communities.
DFID supports the Water and Sanitation Programme (a multi donor Trust Fund housed in
the World Bank), Cities Alliance, UNDP, UN-Habitat, Slum Upgrading Facility
hosted by UN-Habitat, the Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor programme, and
the Community Led Infrastructure Financing Facility that has enabled 2 million
urban poor people to gain access to sanitation facilities.
Back to top
12. What is DFID doing to help developing countries manage their water resources better? And what is DFID doing to encourage greater regional collaboration between countries sharing the same water resources?
Our White Paper makes specific commitments to increase support to help
countries manage their water resources fairly and sustainably, as part of our
approach to climate change adaptation and sustainable growth – and water
management is central to our work on climate change adaptation.
Managing water resources effectively is a crucial development challenge made
more difficult by urbanisation and rising populations. This means achieving
efficient trade-offs between the different demands for water, especially from
agriculture - which accounts for 75% of the world’s water consumption -
and from industry.
More people will need more food - and this will consume more water. Economic
growth means people with more money to spend will want different types of food
and drink, changing their diets from cereals to meat and vegetables, which
require more water to produce. Climate change increases the challenge.
Temperature rises of even 2 °C will result in between 1 to
4 billion people experiencing problems with accessing sufficient water.
Water resources management is critical to coping with climate change - both
in terms of adaptation and mitigation. The management of water resources offers
a means of reducing conflict, the evidence pointing to water being a focal point
for co-operation rather than conflict in most cases where waters are shared. Ignoring water resources management or poor water resources management will help
fuel conflicts, and has been a contributing factor in Darfur.
Much of water resources management is a 'beyond aid' issue. Most infrastructure
is so costly that funds will have to be generated from capital markets rather
than grants. For DFID this means focusing on sharing expertise, knowledge and information
collection systems, laws, helping countries to define policies, and building
capacity.
Nationally and internationally, water resources can only really be worked on a basin or regional level, which
requires new ways of working and engaging with different stakeholders than are
involved with much
of the country-led and country-based development. At the local level watersheds
provide the relevant context for managing and allocating water.
Our work on water resources represents about 20% of our bilateral
spending on water. Our priorities in water resources management are:
1. Better government planning in developing countries, striking the right balance between the demands of economic growth, livelihoods and sustainability.
2. Improved regional governance and building regional capacity for water management of waters, shared between countries, e.g. the Nile Basin Initiative, which supports countries bordering on the River Nile to work together to better manage their water resources.
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Plans
The Global Water Partnership’s study of 95 countries in 2006 showed that 20%
of countries had IWRM plans in place. Significantly more were in the process of
developing plans.
The IWRM target (all countries are to have IWRM plans by 2005) has been useful for
starting the process of getting different stakeholders together to talk to each
other about the management of water for different uses.
Strictly, the UK does not have an IWRM plan because it does not have a national
development plan. However, it meets the spirit of having a plan because:
- We have a legislative framework which agrees priorities for water use; and
- Through the EU Framework Directive we’re implementing IWRM principles such as stakeholder involvement in water management planning; and water management decisions are made at basin level in line with national priorities.
Two-thirds of people will live in water-stressed countries by 2025.
Back to top
13. Does DFID have the capacity to deliver its ambitious programme?
DFID retains a high level of capacity to respond to water issues, especially
through its use of infrastructure, livelihoods and environment advisers,
employed both in country offices and at HQ, and through strategic secondments of
staff in developing country government departments or international
organisations.
DFID has specific water expertise in 10 countries in Africa and six
countries in Asia. Centrally, there are five professional advisers that work on
water in Policy and Research Division, and a further two in Pan-Africa Strategy,
one in South Asia Division and two in Europe, Middle East, the Americas and East
Asia Division.
There are currently 38 accredited infrastructure advisers with
relevant water experience – of these, 10 have a formal qualification from the
Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, and 22 have
Institution of Civil Engineering qualifications which are equally
relevant. Other advisers (usually livelihoods or environment) also lead on
water, although they do so alongside other priorities.
But it’s not only infrastructure, livelihoods and environmental advisers who
work on water in DFID, nor should it be. Tanzania provides a good example of how
work in the water sector can be promoted by a non-infrastructure adviser. DFID
supported a sector review process and then used its influence as a major budget
support donor to scale up sector contributions by other donors. The African
Development Bank and the World Bank have now provided major additional
investment in the sector ($230 million over five years), the key to which is
government commitment and a robust framework for sector planning, financing and monitoring. The social sector adviser in Tanzania commits about 30% of his time
to water.
DFID has been particularly successful at placing advisers in important positions
in partner government Ministries or international organisations, such as the
Ministry of Water Resources in
Ethiopia. Previous placements include Nigeria
(UNICEF), the Government of Bangladesh to help address the arsenic crisis, and
the Ministry of Finance in Uganda to help develop water sector investment plans
and joint donor collaboration. In addition, DFID has a water specialist Detached
National Expert working in the EC DG Development in Brussels.
Focusing on numbers of staff is only part of the story. DFID capacity in water
and sanitation is more about prioritising the sector, establishing a lead
presence where we need to (including by making the most of relevant
contributions from other disciplines), and making more of donor sector
harmonisation.
We keep ourselves up-to-date on the latest thinking and ideas by annual
retreats, guidance documents, training programmes and practical experience in
the field. We also have the support and experience of our resources centres to
back us up.
14. What research does DFID fund?
A scoping study in 2005 identified key challenges in water and sanitation.
Our
information 4 research data base contains information on the past
10 years
of DFID’s research programmes.
DFID’s new £18 million water and sanitation research programme is now getting
underway and includes:
- Water Governance. RiPPLE (Research-inspired Policy and Practice Learning in Ethiopia and and the Nile Region) aims to advance evidence-based learning on water supply and sanitation.
- Water Resources and Climate Change Linkages. The phased establishment of research into these two areas has highlighted knowledge gaps within both and the links between them. This research will produce policy guidelines and better understanding of the links between environmental change research areas, e.g. water resources, ecosystems, energy and climate change.
- Harmonised EU programmes and knowledge. The European Research Network (ERANET) aims to harmonise research across multilateral donors and EU states. DFID will manage the water and sanitation component of this on behalf of the European Union.
- DFID also funds research through others, e.g. the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research Network.
15. Give us some examples of DFID-funded national and local activities that support the public sector
In Ethiopia, DFID has just launched its Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH
project). With funding of £5million over five years, the programme works in
partnership with the World Bank to support the Ethiopian Government's own
water and sanitation programme. Half of Ethiopia's people lack access to basic
sanitation and clean water. Thanks to Ethiopia's federal system of government,
key decisions about water and sanitation are taken at community level - by
specially convened community committees. And the programme works hand-in-hand
with local communities to provide clean water, basic sanitation and hygiene
education. It also provides technical support to train graduates as the
technicians and health extension workers who will be central to the project's
success. DFID Ethiopia has also seconded an infrastructure adviser to Ethiopia's
Ministry of Water Resources.
The statistics for Ethiopia's access to water and sanitation are some of the lowest in the world and, in 2007, almost half of all Ethiopians lacked a reliable and safe water supply and even basic sanitation. Click on the documents below to find out how DFID is working with government ministries, other donors and local people to help connect an extra 3.2 million people to water and sanitation.
- Ten things you really need to know about water in Ethiopia
(159 kb)
- Water supply and sanitation in Ethiopia - Frequently asked questions
- Making water, sanitation and hygiene work in Ethiopia (opens as a fold-up leaflet)
In Iraq, DFID supports the restoration of the administrative and political links
of the South with Baghdad so that the area benefits from national development
efforts. The Iraq Infrastructure Services Programme is a £40 million programme
that aims to rehabilitate infrastructure for power and water services in
southern Iraq. It has funded the construction of a newly-opened training
facility at the main water treatment works in Al Basrah, to increase the skills
of water directorate engineers, particularly in water treatment and leakage
repair.
In Bangladesh, DFID is contributing £15.5 million to the Advancing Sustainable
Environmental Health Programme (ASEH) which is a programme of WaterAid
Bangladesh aimed at scaling-up the Community Total Led Sanitation approach, with
strategic advocacy and capacity building to help government adopt and replicate
an approach which puts local people at the heart of decision-making..
In Kyrgyzstan, the DFID funded Rural Hygiene and Sanitation project has
concentrated on the participatory training of communities in 200 villages,
focussing on disease transmission routes and how to block them. Early results
indicate that the relative risk of school and pre-school children contracting Giardia (a parasitic disease and one of the main causes of diarrhoea), has
fallen up to 60% in areas where the training has been carried out.
In India, DFID is funding £20 million towards UNICEF’s Child Environment
Programme. This $63 million programme is working with 14 States to support the
improvement in rural access to safe water and sanitation and is closely aligned
with the Government of India’s centrally sponsored schemes.
Back to top
