The World Water Week in Stockholm this year focused on one of the increasing challenges for sanitation and water service delivery - urbanization. The global population is now more than half urban and cities are growing at a tremendous rate, especially in the developing world and in the small and medium-sized towns. This rapid urbanization process poses many challenges for those trying to provide services. First and quite simply, the increasing human density corresponds to increasing quantities of waste. This of course leads to environmental degradation, water pollution and a multitude of related health and livelihood impacts. Urbanization exacerbates the need for improved sanitation. Secondly, cities are often experiencing population growth that far exceeds their absorptive capacity in terms of shelter, water, sanitation infrastructure, public health services, employment, education, food supplies and environmental protection - a striking new challenge that has arisen within the span of a lifetime. The service backlog thus gives rise to an increasing number of slums and informal areas lacking adequate sanitation services.

There are a number of recent initiatives moving the focus of urban sanitation to the spotlight. For example, the City Sanitation Strategies in Indonesia that have developed over the last 5 years focusing on city-wide operational which transformed the sector. Increasingly investors such as the World Bank, Gates Foundation, African Water Facilities and European Union are financing urban solutions. The urban environment is challenging, but also leading to innovations in service delivery and financing, like the private entrepreneurs supported through Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WUSP).

In our attempts to come to grips with the scale of the urban challenges there is increasing recognition that the term "urban" hides a complex mix of heterogeneous contexts. There is amazing diversity in the level of service provision within cities, from high income-high water consumption areas connected to sewerage systems, to proper toilets without proper waste management, to nothing at all. Although statistics usually show urban areas as having greater access to sanitation services, this can be misleading. In the case of urban slum dwellers, proximity doesn’t mean access to improved services. At the World Water Week, sector professionals were increasing recognizing that this spatial diversity needs to be taken into account when planning, designing and monitoring for urban sanitation.

In many ways meeting the urban challenge requires a paradigm shift in how we view the urban context and how we design urban sanitation services. The heterogeneous nature of the problem means that the solutions will also have to be heterogeneous. Instead of rolling out a single standard of city-wide services, meeting the needs of ALL city dwellers will mean adapting technology, management and financing structures that are matched to the urban context in which they are living. Matching services to specific contexts and social demographics will mean looking at a multitude of solutions and integrating them along the entire chain of environmental service delivery (including solid waste and drainage). Future city-wide planning may need to allow different standards and options at different levels of the city. One way of doing this is to start looking at the functions that services provide instead of focusing on specific technologies. This will open the door for innovation and critical linkages to complementary services. We need to start thinking out of the box, adapting solutions to specific urban contexts (http://susana.org/lang-en/library?view=ccbktypeitem&type=2&id=1019), and taking action at a variety of levels within the urban context. The urban challenge is also an exciting opportunity for a paradigm shift within the sanitation sector - as long as we remember that this transition requires advocacy and our active engagement at both local and global levels (see my news stream entry from 16th July).

The relation between water users and service providers has received too little attention and is underdeveloped: The rights and obligations of both users and providers of water services are poorly defined and the mutual understanding between the parties is often lacking. Further, many urban water users get their water through intermediate suppliers, also lacking agreements with customers as well as bulk suppliers.

The service relationships are often pictured as a triangle, with the state on the top, where politicians/policy makers institute utility regulation or develop contracts or compacts with service providers. This relationship has received long and persistent attention in the privatisation debate and the ensuing call for improved regulation of public as well as private service providers. On the other side, the state has a relationship with the citizens, expressing their voice through elections or other ways of contacting or influencing the various levels of government and state authorities. This relationship has received heightened attention in the definition of water (services) as a human right.

At the bottom of the triangle, then, is the more or less direct relationship between water users and the providers that physically make water available for human consumption. The 2004 World Development Report focussing on ‘Making Services Available for Poor People’ labelled this relationship, or exchange of services and ‘client power’ as ‘the short route of accountability.’ In contrast, ‘the long route of accountability’ went via the state machinery. The point made here was the influence the customers could have over the supplier through their commercial relationship.

Still, this potential commercial power of the client has been more conducive to generate informal and most often inadequate service provision, and has not been sufficient to bring sustainable services to urban dwellers, and certainly not to the poorer slum dwellers. The missing link for sustainable and equitable services is the lack of arrangements that are sufficiently awarding for providers, yet affordable and accessible for the communities.

In Albania, the Water Regulatory Authority and the MDG-F-sponsored programme for Economic Governance, Regulatory Reform, Public Participation and Pro-Poor Development have taken note of the wide disparity and the often poor conditions offered to households by the water system operators. This situation impelled them to develop a ‘model contract’ in consultation with all stakeholders, including consumer rights organisations and associations of water system operators. Opting for a long and detailed contract, it serves also as an educational tool for water services users and providers to learn about their rights as well as obligations towards one another. This ‘model contract’ is being implemented progressively by water operators throughout Albania.

In the Philippines, the National Water Resources Board and the MDG-F-sponsored programme for Enhancing Access to and Provision of Water Services with the Active Participation of the Poor found that many of the smaller water supply schemes were unsustainable as those in charge of operations and maintenance were often lacking the necessary capacity. It was found that when the customers were involved in determining the appropriate level of service as well as the appropriate tariff. Developing realistic levels of services and tariffs, water service providers were able to operate successfully. This mutual agreement and understanding of each others rights and obligations to one another were formalised and signed by representatives of the customers and the service providers, and witnessed by local leaders and other customers.

This work on the mutual understanding of rights and obligations of both water consumers and water service providers is being presented at a Side Event at the World Water Week (Interests of Water Users and Service Providers: Mutual Understanding of Rights and Obligations - Sunday, 2011-08-21 at 17:45 to 18:45 in Room K24). It is proposed as a practical way of working towards the realisation of the human right to water, and it addresses the too poorly developed – too often even missing – link in the urban water supply chain.