2014 WASH Sustainability Forum: water track summary day 1

Supporting water sanitationand hygiene services for life

1st of July 2014

Summary water track sessions day 1

Stef Smits and José Gesti Canuto

2014 WASH Sustainability Forum

Introduction

• 4 groups of tools, differentiated between dimensions of sustainability, institutional levels of application and degree of zooming in / out

• Dilemmas around them:

– Comprehensiveness vs keeping it simple

– Big picture (assessments) vs zoomed in (identifying of actions)

– Complexity commensurate with institutional capacity to use them

• Guiding questions:

– What are the underlying design principles of the tools?

– What is needed to make the tools work?

Session 1: sector analysis tools

• WASH Bottleneck Analysis Tool:

– Assessing bottlenecks to sustainable and equitable service delivery

– Part of a broader process of defining sustainability compacts and checks in multi-stakeholder process

– General finding: main bottleneck at the middle level

• Issues arising:

– Can you talk about bottlenecks or rather missing bottles? Identifying priorities among very many factors, or rather highlighting need for overall sector change

– Communicating results: bottle half full or bottle half empty

– Need for clear indicators: defined by stakeholders or common ones

– Data availability – start from some commonly agreed data, but carry out targeted data collection depending on the result

Session 2: tools for financial sustainability• AtWhatCost: analyse life-cycle costs for water supply systems as basis for

dialogue on tariff setting and capital replacement costs

• CUPPS: financial module for asset management

• Issues arising:

– Use of the tools by different stakeholders: regulator or operator

– Because of different incentives to use the tool, with the right information, and accountability over them- need for (financial) regulatory environment

– Tools are publicly available, but can the results be made available?

– Insight into the tariff needs raises need to rethink the “saving-for-replacement” paradigm:

Avoid risk of inflation and money sitting idle

Possibilities of cross-subsidies between and within systems

Session 3: sustainability of service delivery• Sustainability metric at health care facilities: likelihood of

sustainable water access at such facilities. Main outcome: concrete recommendations for operators

• SIASAR: comprehensive sustainability assessment through coverage, system performance and service provider performance, targeted at technical assistance providers

• Issues arising:

– Without an institutional framework for follow-up, a tool cannot be effective

– Institutionalisation of the tool in government

– Costs of tools – mainly in time of staff to collect and analyse data; who pays?

Discussion

• Groups of 5-6 persons

• Discuss for about 25 minutes at your table

• Question 1: what are the design principles of these tools – and others you may know – for sustainability?

• Question 2: what are characteristics of the processes in which the tools are used, to make their use effective?