WATER SUPPLY & SANITATION COLLABORATIVE COUNCIL

Water Supply Sanitation

THE WSSCC SECRETARIAT IN GENEVA HOSTED BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO)

The main tasks of the WSSCC secretariat are:

• To act as the organizational and knowledge hub for Council activities;
• To raise necessary funds for implementation of the IAP and to maintain accountability and transparent management procedures;
• To develop and provide tools for advocacy, fund raising and programme development at the regional and national levels;
• To organise strategic meetings internationally, regionally and nationally for promotion, advocacy and knowledge dissemination in the sector;
• To participate at different global, regional and national meetings/conferences, or arrange for strategic partners or members to attend such gatherings to spread the message of the Council.
• To communicate the outcomes from these meetings to the wider membership of the Council.
• To be active in various UN forums to influence the outcome of such meetings in relation to the priorities and goals of the sector;
• To facilitate, advise and guide the members on the strategic opportunities for promotion of VISION 21 and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) issues.

THE WSSCC STEERING COMMITTEE

The Steering Committee of WSSCC has been elected in September 2004 through a general election among the Council`s members. The Steering Committee fulfils the following roles:

• To decide the policies and strategies of the Collaborative Council
• To ensure the financial viability of the Collaborative Council
• To monitor the performance of the Collaborative Council
• To appoint the Chair and to appoint and oversee the Executive Director
• To manage the governance process
• To represent the interests of the Collaborative Council`s stakeholders
• To be accountable for all the Collaborative Council`s work
• To set rules for its own meetings

THE REGIONAL & NATIONAL COORDINATORS

National and regional co-ordinators will serve as a bridge between WSSCC and its members in a particular region and/or country and as a means for extending the Council`s contacts with people. Amongst other activities, they will lead and coordinate the Council member`s work in both advocacy and monitoring, and facilitate information exchange between members, coordinators and the Global Secretariat.

• Implementing the Council`s goals: roles and responsibilities of coordinators and Secretariat
• Overall objectives for WSSCC at global level in next 12 months
• Links between Vision 21 – Iguaçu Action Programme – WASH campaign
• Defining Advocacy within the WASH campaign
• Synthesis of national coordinators, regional coordinators action plan activities

Water and Sanitation Programmes

Aims, Objectives, Methodology and Activities behind the Campaign

At the dawn of the 21st century, some 1.1 billion people on Earth are still without access to a safe water supply and over 2.4 billion are without adequate sanitation. Rapid population growth during the 1990s, particularly in the world`s mega cities has meant that, by 2000, an estimated 620 million more people gained access to water supply and some 435 million more people had access to sanitation facilities. Despite laudable achievements by the sector during the International Decade for Water Supply and Sanitation (1981-1990) to meet these basic needs, there remains a tremendous backlog in terms of the billions of unserved people, mostly the poor and marginalized citizens living in squalid, unhealthy environments in the developing world.

The WASH campaign is a political and social imperative because:

• At any given moment almost half the developing world`s people are sick from unsafe water and sanitation.
• Lack of water supply and sanitation robs millions of dignity, energy, and time.
• Frequent disease is the main cause of poor growth and early death.
• For a third of the world the real environmental crisis is squalor, smells and disease on the doorstep.
• Half of the developing world`s hospital beds are occupied by victims of unsafe water and poor sanitation.
• Economies suffer as hygiene-related illness costs developing countries five billion working days a year.
• Sustainable development starts with people`s health and dignity.

The WASH campaign is based on the fundamental principles of Vision 21. In turn the Iguacu Action Programme (IAP) helped to translate Vision 21 into an action agenda. A substantive part of the Iguacu Action Programme emphasizes advocacy and communications, and WASH is the means by which this focus is maintained.

Saving Lives through Sanitation and Hygiene

Women and Children Suffer the Most. Despite the advances of the 20th century, there are still 2.4 billion people around the globe without access to adequate sanitation facilities. The consequences are devastating. Where there are no latrines girls commonly avoid school; without latrines women and girls must wait until dark to defecate, exposing themselves to harassment and sexual assault. Diarrhoea resulting from poor sanitation and hygiene is responsible for the death of more than two million impoverished children each year.

Sanitation is Not a Dirty Word. Many politicians and decision makers do not realise that providing access to sanitation facilities, though relatively inexpensive, will halve the death toll on those who do not currently enjoy this fundamental human right. Or that water, hygiene and sanitation are entry points for poverty alleviation. Because the neediest among us have the least political power, leaders have little incentive to focus on this issue.

It`s Time for a Change. To remedy this inexcusable condition, concerned individuals and organisations have formed the WASH Campaign, a global alliance for making safe water, sanitation and hygiene a reality for all. Launched at the International Conference on Freshwater in December, 2001, WASH is a global effort of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. The aim is to raise consciousness about sanitation and hygiene, gain the commitment of political, social and opinion leaders around the world and, ultimately, bring about the structural and behavioural changes that will provide a permanent solution to this preventable international crisis.

Major challenges and next steps:

Speak up: The first need is for effective and sustained advocacy of water, sanitation and hygiene at all levels. Politicians, professional bodies, press and public need to be convinced that the greatest public health breakthrough of the last thousand years must now be put at the disposal of all.

Be informed: Discuss the basic principles of the approach – and the lessons of past experience – with all those who become involved. It should be widely known, for example, that clean water alone will achieve little and that without a sense of community ownership and participation most projects will fail.

Monitor progress: Seek to establish clear goals and agreed indicators for monitoring progress towards those goals.

Reach out: Build alliances and collaborate with others – the media, schools and universities, scientists and technologists, medical and public health professionals, religious organizations, the business community, the entertainment industry, women`s groups, community, organizations – to advocate and work towards water and sanitation goals.

Research and identify: With the help of such allies, seek out and promote acceptable and affordable technologies upon which people and communities can draw.

Promote hygiene: The key hygiene messages are few. But they need to be identified and communicated for each culture and society, so that knowledge of hygiene and its importance is part of the information environment in which communities live and in which children grow up.

Mobilise resources: Identify all possible sources of funds and campaign for the resources needed. This includes making estimates of initial and ongoing costs – and planning for the financial sustainability of water and sanitation programmes.

Document and disseminate: Publicise success, analyse failure, and share with all those involved the evolving principles and practical strategies that will advance water and sanitation goals.

Scale up: Demonstration projects have their uses. But the real challenge today is to `go to scale` by building the institutional capacity that will put known solutions into action on the same scale as the known problems

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Hygiene Promotion

There are dozens of important subjects related to water supply and sanitation, and hundreds of organisations working on them. However, the Collaborative Council believes that we must concentrate our energy and attention on a small number of priority issues; the four most important such subjects are described below.

PRIORITIES IN WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION (IAP)

One obviously important aim is to maintain progress in extending water supply to people currently unserved, and that aim underlies and complements these four priority issues. We acknowledge that other subjects may be important in particular places or to particular organisations, but we believe that the four priorities listed here are of global importance to everybody working in water supply and sanitation.

Hygiene Promotion

The hygiene component of the water supply and sanitation sector remains barely visible, although evidence shows that it can have a huge impact on health. Consequently, at national and international level, we must allocate institutional responsibility for hygiene promotion, provide vision, leadership and policy and raise its prestige. There are many individual experiences of good practice, and now we need to systematically capture, review and disseminate information for scaling up successful approaches. Our advocacy for hygiene promotion must highlight favorable progress in hygiene promotion and its impact.

• Review national policies on hygiene promotion
• Review courses and training materials on hygiene promotion, with close involvement of Southern universities / training institutions
• Create and deploy a specialist hygiene promotion cadre
• Replicate successful initiatives in school sanitation/hygiene promotion and document the results
• Start global and local initiatives on hygiene promotion in partnership with private sector (e.g the soap industry)
• Analyse the costs and benefits of hygiene promotion programmes
• Establish monitoring systems for hygiene behaviours
• Campaign for better balanced resource allocations between water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion.
• Develop a global scholarship fund for professionals

Environmental Sanitation

This topic is closely linked with hygiene promotion, but the Collaborative Council feels strongly that both subjects are priorities and should not just be put together into one. Increasing access to safe sanitation is one of the core points of Vision 21. It is singled out for special focus in the IAP partly because of the pioneering work undertaken by the Collaborative Council`s Environmental Sanitation Working Group. That work has shown that we need to change our basic thinking and perceptions about sanitation and waste, engage all stakeholders in the development of poverty-focused environmentally sound approaches, and concentrate especially on the problems of urban sanitation. We also need to work harder to set national policies and strategies for environmental sanitation and hygiene, and to disseminate existing information.

• Adopt and implement the Household-Centred Environmental Sanitation (HCES) approach (as described in the “Bellagio Principles”, agreed at the Collaborative Council`s Workshop on Environmental Sanitation in the 21st Century, Bellagio, February 2000)
• Develop guidelines for application of the HCES approach
• Review existing technologies, and prepare case studies and demonstration projects in the context of the HCES approach
• Make special efforts in urban sanitation
• Analyse and document experiences with national sanitation policies that enable scaling up of sanitation and draw out lessons for dissemination
• Replicate the philosophy developed in Gujarat, India, for implementing VISION 21, which focuses strongly on hygiene and sanitation
• Further develop the concept of waste as a resource.

Institutional and Management Reform

In many instances, particularly in the urban sector, existing institutional frameworks and management arrangements for water supply and sanitation are not appropriate for realisation of our goals. Powerful vested interests may oppose change. Even where supportive policies are in place, execution is hindered by a lack of effective legal frameworks, implementing strategies and resources. We must reform these arrangements, building on the work of the Collaborative Council`s Working Group on Institutional and Management Options and others.

• Reform institutional arrangements to improve water supply and sanitation services to poor and unserved people
• Pay special attention to the institutional arrangements in urban areas
• Acknowledge and encourage the involvement of all types of stakeholders, including the private sector
• Specifically promote new institutional arrangements to improve sanitation services
• Promote effective legal frameworks to govern the new arrangements
• Develop guidelines to ensure that poor people actually benefit from the new arrangements
• Promote and adopt the Code of Ethics
• Promote the rights of the consumers in developing water supply and sanitation services.

Community-Based Approaches

At the heart of Vision 21 and the IAP is a commitment to building on people`s energy and creativity. This implies the development of community-based approaches to water supply and sanitation in both urban and rural areas, in which householders and communities take the important decisions and actions. A variety of social-marketing and participatory approaches have been developed, both within the water supply and sanitation sector and more broadly in the health and other development sectors. We now need to incorporate them into work programmes and implement them on a larger scale.

• Recognise the rights, responsibilities and roles of the people themselves to plan, implement and maintain their water supply and sanitation services
• Encourage and support the people to be active proponents of change rather than passive recipients of aid
• Adopt social marketing methods, which are especially relevant to hygiene promotion and sanitation
• Incorporate participatory concepts and approaches into all our work programmes
• Promote community-based approaches in urban areas
• Identify and document good examples of community-based approaches.

Collaborative Council

Main Activities of the Collaborative Council

The Collaborative Council`s work, at national, regional and global levels, is part of the IAP. It is described in detail in a separate document entitled " The Collaborative Council`s Long-Term Plan and Budget”, and summarised here.

Advocacy and Mobilisation

Advocacy is now the main component of the Collaborative Council`s work. It will occupy the most time and energy both of its members and its Secretariat. This is a fundamental change from the Collaborative Council`s previous work programmes, which concentrated mainly on applied research. The Collaborative Council will therefore start by developing an advocacy and communication strategy, working with market-leading communication professionals.

The central aims are to advocate adoption of the principles contained in Vision 21 and to mobilise organisations to achieve its targets. The Collaborative Council is well placed to take a global lead in sector advocacy, building on the high media coverage of the launch of Vision 21 in The Hague in March 2000 and of the Fifth Global Forum, and on its growing track record in electronic networking and information dissemination. The Collaborative Council`s members and their agencies have wide knowledge about different aspects of water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion. We will now pool our resources and jointly push hard to mobilise other organisations to meet the water supply, sanitation and hygiene needs of the poor.

Advocacy topics will vary from country to country and organisation to organisation. However, for impact and consistency, the Collaborative Council will emphasise four major subjects for its advocacy work at all levels. They are:

• Hygiene promotion
• Environmental sanitation
• Institutional and management reform in water supply and sanitation
• Community-based approaches to water supply and sanitation

Monitoring

Monitoring the progress and impact of Vision 21 will be an important activity for the Collaborative Council, because its independent and impartial status within the water supply and sanitation sector gives it legitimacy to monitor that sector. It does this, not by duplicating the data-collection work of other agencies, but by analysing and publicising the data that other agencies produce. This analysis can provide feedback for review of action programmes, and important material for advocacy work.

Monitoring is therefore a core activity for the Collaborative Council While the goal of improved coverage of safe water supply remains a key objective and will be one of the most important indicators for monitoring, the Collaborative Council sees safe water as an entry point for sanitation and hygiene in order to create maximum impact on health, education and sustainable development for the poor. For example, safe water close to schools, with improved sanitation, will also help boost the attendance of children, especially girls.

The Collaborative Council`s main action points on monitoring are:

• Define, test and validate a core set of indicators for measuring Vision 21 implementation
• Build consensus on methodologies for data collection which can ensure that analysis and reporting reflects the core points of Vision 21
• Encourage the analysis, use and accessibility of generated information, using both electronic and printed dissemination
• Feed monitoring and assessment results regularly into advocacy campaigns, ensuring consistency in statistics and forecasts.

Networking

The ultimate success of the IAP to achieve Vision 21 will depend on the work of people and agencies in the countries in which the unserved people live. It will require individual Collaborative Council members to adopt Vision 21 as their creed and to promote its aim and core points in all their work. But those individual actions will be more productive when coordinated and supported through national, regional and thematic networks. The Collaborative Council will actively manage and support such networks, as it has done in the past.

National and Regional Networks

The regional sessions during the Fifth Global Forum produced draft plans for the work of the Collaborative Council`s existing and new national and regional networks. Those plans form an integral part of the Collaborative Council`s Long-Term Plan and are listed in detail in that separate document.

The Collaborative Council`s Secretariat will support those national and regional networks by:

• helping its members to focus the work of those networks on the four priority subjects of hygiene promotion, environmental sanitation, institutional and management reform, and community-based approaches
• encouraging collaboration with other agencies active at the national and regional levels
• paying special attention to regions where Collaborative Council representation has not yet become well established
• Reporting periodically on innovative ideas that may be replicated elsewhere.

Thematic Networks

The thematic discussion sessions at the Fifth Global Forum indicated the usefulness of many networks on particular subjects. Some of these thematic networks (e.g. the Collaborative Council`s Working Group on Institutional and Management Options, the Sanitation Connection, the Gender and Water Alliance, the network on Services to the Urban Poor, and the Streams of Knowledge network of resource centers) already exist, others were proposed. The Collaborative Council welcomes these and similar ideas and will support these thematic networks by:

• concentrating its own human and financial resources on a small number of networks related to the four priority subjects of hygiene promotion, environmental sanitation, institutional and management reform, and community-based approaches
• Helping to disseminate the results of the thematic networks` activities.

Global Crisis

VISION 21 TO END GLOBAL CRISIS

VISION 21 is an initiative to put an end to a global crisis. Despite enormous achievement over the past two decades, an estimated one billion of the earth`s citizens still lack safe drinking water while almost three billion have no adequate sanitation. More than two million children die each year from water-related diseases. These factors compound the suffering of more than a quarter of the developing world`s people who are denied a healthy environment for living. VISION 21, brought out by partners in the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council, offers a practical picture of a future in which this shameful scandal is brought to an end.

VISION 21 is directed to achieving a world by 2025 in which each person knows the importance of hygiene, and enjoys safe and adequate water and sanitation. The futuristic scenario describing a better world explains how this can be achieved. “Following the turn of the 20th century, governments and civil societies accepted access to water and sanitation as basic human rights, and linked water, sanitation and hygiene needs with broader development goals and poverty reduction, using them as an entry point for development work. The real breakthrough came when all agencies recognized that the most effective action came from the energy of people themselves. Quality leadership and democratic governance provided the environment within which 20th century visions become 21st century realities”.

The essence of VISION 21 is to put people`s initiative and capacity for self-reliance at the centre of planning and action. The foundation is recognition of water and sanitation as basic human rights, and of hygiene as a prerequisite. Together they form a major component in poverty reduction. Such recognition can lead to systems that encourage genuine participation by men and women, resulting in the acceptance and practice of hygiene, coupled with safe water and sanitation at the household level. These factors can improve living conditions for all, and most particularly for children and women. They can contribute significantly to sustainable and self-reliant patterns of human development and wellbeing.

Attractive, Inspirational, and Eminently Achievable

“The year is 2025. Almost every man, woman and child on the planet knows the importance of hygiene and enjoys safe and adequate water and sanitation. People work closely with local governments and non-governmental organisations to manage water and sanitation systems so as to meet basic needs while protecting the environment. People contribute to these services according to the level of service they want and are willing to pay for. Everywhere in the world, people live in clean and healthy environments. Communities and governments benefit from the resulting improved health and the related economic development.”

The enticing picture of the future painted by VISION 21 is more than a dream. Already, the thousands of people who contributed inputs to its development have become powerful advocates for its realisation. What began as an exercise to gather views from affected people on their ambitions and hopes for the future, rapidly demonstrated that this empowering process is also the key to bringing those hopes to reality. In more than 20 countries, VISION 21 continues as a movement. With only small inputs in terms of seed money (the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council has contributed an average of $5,000 per country in the consultation process so far), highly focused and cost-effective plans are being produced. Invariably these plans are less costly, more equitable and significantly more sustainable than the centrally produced master plans. In many cases, the central agencies have recognised this reality and in several countries, the VISION 21 consultative process is now being institutionalised as a part of the planning process for community water, sanitation and hygiene improvements.

For VISION 21 to succeed that is exactly what needs to happen. The concepts and principles outlined in VISION 21 are sound common sense. They can be readily accepted by anyone who has worked closely with communities in developing countries. The difference in VISION 21 is that when the package is put together and its implementation guided by the people themselves, there is a new energy commitment and ownership. The momentum of the process in the participating countries has even taken the promoters by surprise. There is now a pent-up demand for follow-up, and indeed in many cases activities are already underway to convert the visions into action.

The VISION 21 process began with a local consultation (one of more than 100 held around the world) in the Indian State of Gujarat. Guided by a VISION 21 facilitator, participants from local NGOs and community groups met to visualise how they would like to see their water, sanitation and hygiene situation change in the next generation. The process was extended via meetings and visits to communities and individual households, and the ideas were combined into a recommended action programme for the whole state (with a population of 44 million, Gujarat is bigger than many countries). The result is a comprehensive set of targets and goals accompanied by means of implementation. Among the highlights: a plan to reduce per capita spending from 2,000–2,500 rupees per capita to 1,000–1,500 over the next ten years, by using lower cost technologies and mobilising community resources; an immediate priority to install separate latrines for boys and girls in every school in the State by 2010; and natural resource management groups, managed by women, established in every village (with the State remaining an active partner).

Regional, National and Thematic Activities

Since 1997, WSSCC has operated with a decentralised approach. First, this took shape in developing a presence in various world regions. More recently, it has meant catalysing action at the country level. WSSCC`s national and regional representatives play an important role in taking forward the global agenda and translating it into operational activities on the ground, through programmes of action that prioritise advocacy and awareness raising, networking and alliance building, developing a knowledge base, and monitoring progress. Part of this is the establishment of national and regional WASH campaigns.

WSSCC encourages the launch of regional and national WASH campaigns (backed by annual programmes) in as many developing countries and regions as possible. WSSCC now has regional representatives and national coordinators in place in 7 regions and 33 countries spread over the developing world. They are involved in a range of regional and national activities, mostly but not exclusively, linked to the development of regional and national WASH campaigns. The links hereunder describe the activities carried out and progress made in most countries and regions over the year 2003, with a division between Action Plans that received catalytic funding from WSSCC, and those that did not receive catalytic funding to date.

Thematic Programme Activities

Since its beginning in the early nineteen nineties, WSSCC has always had a varying number of thematic working groups in place. Following the Fifth Global Forum, in November 2000, the number of thematic working groups was rationalised to ensure a clearer focus and concentration of efforts. Furthermore, the shift in priorities that led the Council to focus primarily on advocacy and communications since 2000 has had implications for its thematic activities. Still an integral part of WSSCC operations, the activities of thematic working groups and networks have been re-oriented to supply the evidence base that underpins advocacy. Moreover, the groups are instrumental in producing those tools required to ensure the appropriate `response to advocacy`.

Benefits of Joining WSSCC

Becoming part of a global, national and local community through WSSCC will bring you several tangible benefits, including amongst others:

• Network contacts to other members working in your field of interest
• A range of advocacy and communication materials for local adaptation and application
• Contact with organizations and institutions working in your country, or region, or    internationally
• A regular news service (SOURCE weekly) in English, French and (shortly) Spanish, free of charge
• Tailor made briefings on topics of your chosen WSSCC interest group, delivered directly to your email account
• Notification of WSSCC events, globally and locally
• Access to full text or hard copy publications that WSSCC has helped to produce