As we move towards the year of 2015 - the day of reckoning for the Millennium Declaration - there is indeed a lot of focus on the MDG indicators. After all, they provide our main mechanism to empirically test the sincerity of our commitment to poverty eradication, and quantify our ability to deal with challenges of global magnitude. No doubt, the current MDG indicators on water and sanitation (target 7c) have their shortcomings. The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) of WHO and UNICEF relies primarily on national data - and at least in low-income countries - often of a dubious quality. There has also been much debate over definitions such as “access to safe water”, “improved water source” and “improved sanitation”, as well as their different interpretations in urban and rural contexts. Especially in the urban low-income areas some of these definitions carry little relevance as they don’t fit nicely into the unique contexts of informality. Moreover, with the current aggregated global MDG targets, we are kept in the dark about what consumer groups actually get the services.  The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to water and sanitation, Ms Catharina de Albuquerque, has particularly expressed a concern that “interventions in water and sanitation tend to improve access only or primarily for those who are relatively easy to reach, and risk reinforcing existing inequalities” (read more).

According to the most recent estimates by JMP, the world has already met the overall target on water, but will miss the sanitation target. Looking at the regional picture, we also know that sub-Saharan Africa will most likely miss both. If we unpack data further at national level, it becomes obvious that meeting the MDGs on water and sanitation does not necessarily mean that the hoped-for improvements benefit the most disadvantaged groups. Even in top performing countries like Uganda, investments seem to have mostly benefitted the middle class in the cities. Jenny Fredby (currently at Water Aid) and I recently concluded in a paper in the Journal of East African Studies that the water utility in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, is still grappling with technological and institutional solutions to serve the large number of urban poor in informal areas, while rolling out services to the middle class has been much easier through a policy on subsidised connections. Even in countries that are on track towards the MDGs, such an ‘equality gap’ can persist. However, there is today global consensus – articulated within the United Nations framework – that safe water and adequate sanitation are human rights. Against this backdrop it is indeed problematic if MDG indicators do not capture and measure the ability and ambitions of governments to progressively realise these rights and close the equality gap.

So how can new indicators help? First and foremost by highlighting the outcomes for different user groups within countries. If access to services is reported for different income groups, it will be easier to track how the governments (and donors) live up to the obligation to progressively realise the rights to water and sanitation for all. In a new consultative draft circulated by JMP, all WASH-related indicators are supposed to be “disaggregated by rural and urban, by wealth, by slums and formal urban settlements, and by other disadvantage identified through participatory national processes taking into account prohibited grounds of discrimination.” Furthermore, the new targets encompass a “service ladder” in which rights can be progressively fulfilled as service provision gradually moves from basic to more advanced services. Hopefully, this can incentivise national and local service providers to close the ‘equality gap’, by offering “some for all” before moving on to higher level of services.


Source: WHO / UNICEF 2012. Public Consultation on Consolidated drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) targets, indicators and definitions. 5th November, 2012.

Probably, the practical realities will catch up with the proposed monitoring framework. It is already a challenge to acquire reliable data on today’s relatively straight-forward indicators, and dealing with these more sophisticated and disaggregated data will not be easier. More and better data will also have cost implications, and capacity will have to be built in national monitoring systems. WASH monitoring in the post-2015 period will have to strike a balance between the optimal and the doable. In this search, UNICEF and WHO now invite comments until November 23 from sector actors all over the world at www.wssinfo.org/post-2015-monitoring/working-groups/. We should all strive to contribute to this process now; the world will live with these indicators for some 25 years. Hopefully, we will ultimately not just measure the right things, but also get it right!
 

At a breakfast meeting last Tuesday Mr. Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP, shared his thoughts on the role of water in the green economy with the Swedish Water House network.

The concept of "green economy" is not always clear to everyone. Mr. Steiner however urged us not to get stuck on a definition, but underlined that the green economy is more a set of principles for how economies should develop in order to sustain a sustainable development. This can be done through many different avenues, fiscal and policy reform to stimulate renewable energy are just a few, as is payment for ecosystem services. It entails a range of delicate challenges, such as how to achieve a policy change in parliaments, or achieving economic development in countries where people don’t even have basics rights in place. The idea that a country must develop first and only then worry about the environment is a fallacy. Mr. Steiner emphasized the importance of moving beyond the North and South opposition, and bringing the green economy discussion to the core of sustainable development.
 
Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP. Photo: Ann-Mari Karlsson

Water has many roles in the economy. The way that natural resources are used always affects people very differently and so equity issues are central to water management. At the Rio+20 conference in June, Mr. Steiner hopes that sectors will stop looking at how to capture and manage "their" particular resource against the interests of others, and instead start linking different users of water and to look at the entire hydrological flow to discuss how these flows should be managed.

Policymakers now need ripe advice on how to move forward with economies in light of the environmental state of the world. Mr. Steiner pointed out that it is difficult for decision makers to navigate in the cacophony of voices on biodiversity issues today. Rio will, among other things, discuss the Millennium Development Goals and whether they should be followed up with a set of Sustainable Development Goals to be reinstated for every country. But how to formulate these goals, should we define each domain according to water, forests, mountains, e.t.c or should we take a systemic approach based on the interconnected nature of these domains? While Mr. Steiner warned against too much fragmentation, parts of the audience pointed out that water as a prerequisite for the functioning of all other domains should have its own role in the sustainability goals.

by Ann-Mari Karlsson, Swedish Water House

On March 6th of this year the Joint Monitoring program of UNICEF and the World Health Organization announced that the world has met the MDG target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. Yet, the same report highlights that the world is still far from meeting the sanitation target and is unlikely to do so by 2015. According to the report, only 63% of the world has access to improved sanitation, well below the target goal of 75%. Without a significant change in the rate that sanitation in delivered, it will take until 2026 until the sanitation target is met.

So the pressure is on to find solutions and new approaches. In fact, that is the theme of the World Water Forum held in Marseille. The conference organizers have started a webpage where people can post their solutions and even gather votes and feedback (http://www.solutionsforwater.org/. The solutions for sanitation include, increasing the capacity of system operators, backing the human right to sanitation, planted wetlands for biomass production, public education and awareness-raising, empowering young people as change leaders, strengthening women’s roles, decentralized treatment options, and pro-poor financing schemes. Nearly 150 sanitation solutions have been submitted. What is striking about the list is how few of the solutions are technology-based. The majority have to do with providing an “enabling environment” for positive behavior change, pro-active politics and increased affordability. Where there are technical solutions, they tend to focus on the potential for reuse of water and nutrients or gaining energy through biogas or biofuel.

To me the message in this is quite strong - sanitation does not stand alone. The solutions to reaching global sanitation coverage must be integrated into the web of society and its use of resources. Sanitation is not a “thing” that can be packaged and sold like the latest cell phone or pills to cure malaria. It is essentially about hygiene habits and attitudes towards cleanliness. It is a state of being that is created through education and behavior change. Yet, it is also about the management of physical waste streams; waste that is increasingly recognized as a potential resource. The solution to global sanitation thus lies in fostering the values of sanitation and linking it directly to economic gains.

There are of course huge challenges remaining in how to do this on a global scale. But like many changes, it can also start small - with individual changes. It starts with the education of our children; teaching them to appreciate a clean restroom, to pick up trash, to use the toilet properly. It starts with consumers using biogas from wastewater treatment and demanding produce fertilized with recycled nutrients. It starts with citizens pushing their representatives for more closed-loop options that increase resource efficiency in waste management, and supporting the export of these ideas to the areas that need them most. It starts with a global movement and dialogue about the value of sanitation.