Sustainable WASH Systems – Water Currents, April 15, 2020

Sustainable WASH Systems – Water Currents, April 15, 2020

This issue of Water Currents focuses on the work of the many local governments, communities, and sector partners, as well as investments by USAID in programs like the Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS) that are exploring new approaches to strengthening local systems to achieve greater service sustainability.

In addition to SWS, we would also like to thank Agenda for Change, Millennium Water Alliance, and the Institute for Sustainable Futures for contributing to this issue.

Learning Documents
Strengthening Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Systems: Concepts, Examples, and Experiences. Agenda for Change, February 2020. This paper describes the concepts, frameworks, and tools that Agenda for Change members use for analyzing systems; provides practical examples of systems strengthening efforts; and outlines the journeys that members have gone through in progressively embracing systems strengthening approaches.

System Approaches to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene: A Systematic Literature Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, January 2020. Based on this review, the authors propose four recommendations for improving the evidence base on evaluating interconnections among factors within WASH systems.

Sustaining Rural Water: A Comparative Study of Maintenance Models for Community-Managed Schemes. SWS, July 2019. This study considers different variations of maintenance approaches. It provides a typology for characterizing maintenance service provision models, a framework for analyzing them, and an in-depth study of seven maintenance models that represent different cases from the typology of approaches.

Application of the District-Wide Approach in 5 Pilot Districts of Rwanda: Lessons Learned. Agenda for Change, February 2020. The district-wide approach is a relevant and effective approach for articulating WASH plans and to get buy-in from various stakeholders for attaining universal access and the stakeholders’ roles therein. As both a process and an output to investment planning, the district-wide approach has been effective.

Understanding Rural Water Services as a Complex System: An Assessment of Key Factors as Potential Leverage Points for Improved Service Sustainability. Sustainability, February 2020. Researchers conducted four participatory factor mapping workshops with local stakeholders across multiple rural water contexts to identify the factors and interactions that support service sustainability.

Read the complete issue.

Promoting Latrine Sales in CLTS Interventions through Integrated Sanitation Marketing – USAID ACCES

LEARNING BRIEF: Promoting Latrine Sales in CLTS Interventions through Integrated Sanitation Marketing. USAID ACCES, January 2020.

USAID/ACCES has found that hygiene and sanitation marketing is effective in generating demand for latrines and contributes to sanitation market development in both rural and peri-urban communities.

Key ACCES success factors include high levels of community engagement, active community leaders through the VMC model, and innovative financing mechanisms.

Below are recommendations derived from USAID/ACCES’ experience:

• Establish fundamental success criteria to use in CLTS site selection.
• Develop sanitation product models in advance through participatory approaches to ensure products are well adapted to CLTS sites.
• Ensure a thorough mapping exercise to prevent targeting villages with active subsidized latrine projects.
• Ensure sufficient locally-based human resources, in both quantity and quality, ideally: two community-level agents for each group of 5 – 6 villages, one to manage the CLTS/SBCC activities and the other to manage the income-generating activities (IGA)/financing activities.
• Integrate existing community members and networks into the latrine marketing process (e.g. community leaders, women’s groups, community-based organizations, local entrepreneurs and service providers
• Broker lending via microfinance institutions to pre-finance latrine purchases.
• Train local networks to promote latrine sales to groups.
• Include IGA training activities in the project to better support women’s groups in CLTS communities to generate income, which can be used to purchase latrines.
• Encourage women’s groups in CLTS communities to promote Sagal latrines, to provide financing, and to participate in IGA training.
• Establish a relationship between local health workers and community-based agents so that patients who do not have adequate hygiene and sanitation facilities at their homes can be referred by the health workers to the project actors.

Let’s Connect Sanitation to the Rest of Development

Let’s Connect Sanitation to the Rest of Development. WASHfunders, March 2020.

To many of us in the WASH world, sanitation is the center of the universe. Without access to sanitation, communities face many other challenges when trying to improve their public health, equity, education, economic development, and climate change resilience.

On the other hand, robust sanitation access can yield synergistic benefits to other causes like women’s education and economic development, which see boosted sustainability.

Unfortunately, the current funding environment for WASH has stunted progress for sanitation. Firstly, as many of us are painfully aware, the funding is far too low; only 3.8% of all aid funding goes to WASH-related programs, and less than half of it goes to sanitation.

Sanitation projects have drawn very few funders in part because it is considered unglamorous compared to other causes like HIV/AIDS or girl’s education. Secondly, current funding streams don’t reward risk, which is vital for the sector’s ability to experiment with new approaches to tackle sanitation sustainability woes.

Read the complete article.

Bruce Gordon and Oliver Subasinghe on the 2019 Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) Report

In the latest USAID Global Waters Radio podcast, hear the World Health Organization’s Bruce Gordon, one of the creators of the 2019 Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) Report, share key takeaways from this year’s data, collected from more than 100 countries.

As we move closer to 2030, how are countries doing in their pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals for water and sanitation?

Click below to give a listen to this important progress report, and feel free to share with interested colleagues.

Link to the podcast.

 

Global Waters Stories – November 2019: Celebrate World Toilet Day

Global Waters Stories – November 2019: Celebrate World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day 2019: These Countries are Making Sanitation Gains with USAID’s Help
As we celebrate the transformative public health impacts of improved sanitation this November 19, USAID takes you from Ethiopia to Indonesia in this photo essay to showcase how innovative thinking, government action, and private sector participation have helped generate some of the greatest recent sanitation success stories around the world.

Strengthening Urban Indonesia’s Water and Sanitation Systems – USAID is working with Indonesia’s government and private sector to tackle the challenge of untreated waste through the regulation of sludge removal and provision of financing for septic tank construction.

Podcast: 2019 Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water Report – Global Waters Radio presents the WHO’s Bruce Gordon and USAID’s Oliver Subasinghe discussing this report’s key takeaways and how its data help inform the Agency’s approach to WASH investments

Read the complete issue.

What Makes Ghanaians More Likely to Stop Open Defecation and Build Latrines?

What Makes Ghanaians More Likely to Stop Open Defecation and Build Latrines? Global Comunities, November 2019.

This brief focuses on the findings from studies in Ghana. This knowledge product is developed by Global Communities in order to make the findings and recommendations of the full report more accessible and actionable by the Government of Ghana Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) as well as by other development partners working in rural sanitation in Ghana.

The Government of Ghana MSWR has basic sanitation guidelines to achieve 100% open defecation-free (ODF) status and equitable and adequate access to sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, with special emphasis on the poor and vulnerable.

This knowledge product is part of the USAID-funded WASH for Health program to provide sustainable access to dignified, safe, and improved water supply and sanitation, and to educate people on the knowledge and behaviors necessary to live a healthy lifestyle. In particular, the WASH for Health program targets rural communities where these services are needed the most and helps achieve the goals of the MSWR in Ghana.

Key Findings

• Factors that determine the success of CLTS interventions are attendance rate of participants during the triggering event, the number of community leaders participating in the triggering event, whether participants believed they would receive rewards like installation of water wells and materials for toilets, and the number of follow-up visits provided by facilitators weeks after triggering.
• Households that socially identify strongly with their communities are more likely to construct latrines after CLTS interventions.
• Combining CLTS with other behavior change models did not significantly increase intervention effects.

Moving Towards ODF Status in Cambodia: iDE Shares Findings in New Tactic Reports

Since the beginning of iDE Cambodia’s sanitation marketing initiative in 2009, we have facilitated the sale of over 325,000 latrines, while sanitation coverage has increased from 23% to over 70% in the provinces where we work. Our latest tactic reports provide new insight into how this expansion of sanitation coverage was achieved:

Reaching Open Defecation Free Status with Grassroots Partnerships

iDE is supporting the further development of a sustainable sanitation ecosystem, to and beyond Open Defecation Free status. Our Cambodia team’s Public Private Partnership Department is facilitating deeper connections between the private sector and government, while generating, sharing, and applying market data to help communities bridge the gap to ODF. 

Reaching the Poorest with Sanitation Through Targeted Subsidies

A recent World Bank report describes several common pitfalls of the delivery of WASH subsidies worldwide, including being pervasive and poorly targeted, non-transparent, expensive for implementers, and distortionary for markets. iDE developed its targeted subsidy model to address each of these issues and help poor household sustainably participate in the Cambodian sanitation market.

Addressing Fecal Sludge Management in Rural Locations

iDE is scaling supply and sales of a new type of Alternating Dual Pit product. Equipped with lime treatment service and a device to indicate when the new pit is filling, this technology allows customers to alternate pits back and forth and empty safely composted waste indefinitely. Guiding businesses deeper into the sanitation market has been a challenge, and in order to more smoothly facilitate this process iDE has increased support for businesses on ways to retain staff, provide adequate protection and equipment, and follow a cleaner, safer installation protocol.

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iDE pioneered the market-based approach in sanitation, incorporating private businesses, NGOs, and government stakeholders. In 2003, iDE launched the world’s first market-based sanitation program in Vietnam, and, since then, the model has been successfully replicated across iDE’s global portfolio and by other organizations.

Celebrating the Sanitation Learning Hub’s new lease of life

Celebrating the Sanitation Learning Hub’s new lease of life. CLTS Knowledge Hub, November 2019.

Over the past few years, the Sanitation Learning Hub has responded to this challenge by broadening its focus to include an array of community-focused approaches, as an innovator within the sector.

The Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach still plays an important part but is no longer the sole focus of the Hub, and a new, more encompassing name, the Sanitation Learning Hub, promotes and reflects this change in focus.

Going forward, the thrust of the Hub’s work will be to promote timely, rapid and adaptive learning and sharing, alongside honest reflections of what works and what doesn’t.

The Hub will also be playing an important role in tackling essential emerging questions and issues within the sector such as:

• How to achieve safely managed sanitation for all
• The complex and different challenges of urban, peri-urban and rural settings
• How to ‘Leave No One Behind’ in programming
• The value of gender transformative approaches
• How to strengthen supply chains in order to climb the sanitation ladder
• Better understanding of the links between sanitation, hygiene and other endemic issues such as undernutrition
• The need to prioritise hygiene practices, especially handwashing
• How to tackle ‘slippage’ back to open defecation.

Read the complete article.

Why are support mechanisms in rural sanitation programming important?

Why are support mechanisms in rural sanitation programming important? CLTS Knowledge Hub, November 2019.

In this blog I give recommendations for introducing additional support mechanisms into rural sanitation programming. It includes some great case studies from Vietnam, Zambia and Tanzania where support mechanisms have been successfully combined with community-led processes to support the most disadvantaged people gain access to sanitation facilities.

This newsletter is largely inspired by the recent edition of Frontiers: Support Mechanisms to strengthen equality and non-discrimination in rural sanitation (part 2 of 2).

Support mechanisms: what are we talking about?

Support mechanisms encompass both ‘hardware’ mechanisms (for example, financial and physical subsidies) and ‘software’ approaches (for example, inclusive sanitation training, research or policies), as well as various combinations of the two.

Read the complete article.

3 ways India can tackle its human-waste problem

3 ways India can tackle its human-waste problem. World Economic Forum, October 2019.

On 2 October, the government of India declared the country open defecation-free (ODF). This is a significant milestone, which has addressed mindset, behavioural change and infrastructure gaps “Before the Flush”. But what happens “After the Flush”?

It is estimated that poor sanitation costs India 5.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) annually. While much is being done to create access to toilets, the fact remains more than 57% of human waste globally is not contained, transported, or treated in a way that safely contains harmful pathogens.

A staggering 78% of sewage generated in India remains untreated and is unsafely disposed of in rivers, groundwater or lakes, contaminating 90% of all surface water.

India must find ways to manage its faecal sludge to secure clean water sources to meet the needs of its burgeoning population of 1.37 billion, and facilitate their healthy, productive participation in the economy.

Read the complete article.