State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy

State of the world 2008 : innovations for a sustainable economy
Worldwatch Institute
January 2008
ISBN 13: 978-0-393-33031-1
288 pages

Chapter 8. Water in a Sustainable Economy

Ger Bergkamp, IUCN, and Claudia Sadoff, IUCN and International Water Management Institute.
Water may be the critical resource challenge of this century, with farmers, cities, and the natural environment all claiming shares of a shrinking pool. But market mechanisms and enlightened regulations can supply water to all claimants, even as they reduce waste and protect aquatic ecosystems.
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The advocacy sourcebook

O’Connell, M. , Burrows, G. and Plumb, L. (eds) (2007). The advocacy sourcebook. London, UK, WaterAid. 118 p.
Download PDF file

The primary aim of The Advocacy Sourcebook is to assist WaterAid staff and partner organisations in drawing up advocacy action plans that aim to improve the water supply and sanitation situation of the poorest people in the countries where they work.

However, The Advocacy Sourcebook is written and structured so as to be useful to any individual, group or organisation seeking to carry out advocacy work on their own issues in any country in the world.

Contents:

• Section 1 – looks into spaces for civil society participation and how to link local, national and international advocacy
• Section 2 – discusses about role of WaterAid to improve Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) in the context of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• Section 3 – Building community capacity for rooted advocacy
• Section 4 – Outlines the planning process for effective
  advocacy such as how to identify issues, what tools to use, clarifying the message etc.
• Section 5 – Resources to be used for advocacy
• Section 6 – Advocacy actions such as lobbying, campaigns, media etc.
• Section 7 – Monitoring and evaluation of advocacy
• Section 8 – Further information resources

MSF Field Research [web site]

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – Doctors without Borders – has announced the launch of a new website (www.fieldresearch.msf.org) where the organization makes freely available published research that is based on its medical work in the field. The aim is to make the findings of this research readily accessible, especially to health workers in developing countries.

[...]

The new website is a result of an extensive work by MSF, which has archived all its peer-reviewed research and commentary articles. Initially, there will be over 350 articles in this open repository, on subjects that include HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis [as well as diarrhoea, cholera] in addition to many other diseases. All content on the new website will be available under an open-access policy – similar to that adopted by journals such as PLoS Medicine.

However, most of the articles presently on MSF Field Research have already been published in restricted-access journals – such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene – which usually require subscriptions or make individual articles available only on payment of a fee. But all of these journals have responded positively to the organization’s requests that they make the MSF articles available free of charge.

Source: Joao Souza, TropIKA, 24 May 2008

South Asian Sanitation edition of Waterlines

There are more people in south Asia without adequate sanitation than anywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, this is a region where great progress is being made, where there is much to learn about approaches that work, and where the optimism is tangible.

The July 2008 edition of Waterlines, which includes papers from IRC/WaterAid’s South Asian Sanitation conference in January 2008, features some of the most promising approaches. How has the replication of the Orangi small-bore sewerage project to other Pakistani cities worked out? Should total sanitation campaigns always be free of hardware subsidy? Learn about using teachers to run village sanitation campaigns. What are the health impacts in open-defecation free villages, one year after the campaign? These and other questions are discussed in this edition.

Single hardcopies of the July edition (cost £12.50) can be ordered from Practical Action, publishinginfo@practicalaction.org.uk

Non-subscribers can download articles (US$ 9 each) here

Waterlines – VOLUME 27 NUMBER 3 JULY 2008 – Contents

• Crossfire: ‘Community-led total sanitation is the best method of achieving sustainable sanitation for all in rural areas’ – ARUMUGAM KALIMUTHU and YAKUB HOSSAIN
• Sanitation and hygiene in South Asia: Progress and challenges – CHRISTINE SIJBESMA
• Subsidy and sustainability in urban sanitation: The case of Quetta Katchi Abadis Environment Management Programme – SYED AYUB QUTUB, NASEEMA SALAM, KHALID SHAH and DAANISH ANJUM
• School-led sanitation promotion: Helping achieve total sanitation outcomes in Azad Jammu and Kashmir – FAROOQ KHAN, RABIA T. SYED, MOHAMMED RIAZ, DEIRDRE CASELLA and VICTOR KINYANJUI
• Cross-sectional health indicator study of open defecation-free villages in Madhya Pradesh, India – TAPAS CHAKMA, SAM GODFREY, J. BHATT, P.V. RAO, P. MESHRAM and S.B. SINGH

RiPPLE blog

An initiative of the 5-year RiPPLE programe (Research-inspired Policy and Practice Learning in Ethiopia and the Nile Region). The RiPPLE blog aims to “initiate debate, invite comment, stimulate creative thinking and push forward [water and sanitation] sector learning in Ethiopia and Nile region countries.

Discussions focus on the following main topics:

• Ethiopia Water Sector Progress
• Learning and Practice Alliances
• Mapping for equity
• Supporting Nile-region learning
• Sustainable sanitation delivery
• Understanding water and growth

Water democracy : reclaiming public water in Asia

Manahan, M.A., Yamamoto, N and Hoedeman, O. (2007). Water democracy : reclaiming public water in Asia : workable alternatives to privatisation of water sector. Bangkok, Thailand, Focus on the Global South and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Transnational Institute. 65 p.

Download here

This collection of 19 essays by civil society activists, trade unionists and other water practitioners, presents examples of both struggles against water privatisation and people-centred public water management from across Asia.

The papers show that

* the ideology-driven privatization wave has now also reached Asian countries where public water delivery has been very successful.
* in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, where public utilities have largely achieved water for all, the governments are planning to boost the role of the private sector.
* in Malaysia, the process of widespread privatisation has already led to predictable problems such as increased tariff
* in India, Cambodia, Indonesia and many other Asian countries where large parts of the population have for far too long remained without adequate access to water and sanitation, concrete, workable alternatives to water privatisation do exist.
* public water solutions are being developed and implemented in numerous Asian countries, i.e. progressive public water management models, often involving new forms of local cooperation between public water operators, communities, trade unions and other key groups.
* experiences in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala show that empowerment of communities and the democratisation of governance are strong positive tools for improving public water supply
* an important new trend is the emergence of public-public partnerships (PUPs), in which a well performing water operator assists a utility in need of support. Examples include PUPs in Indonesia and Cambodia

The overall conclusion is that although numerous public water utilities in large parts of Asia fail to supply safe water for all, privatisation is not the answer. The papers here show that there is no lack of workable public service reform approaches that could dramatically improve access to water supply and sanitation for people across the continent, if the political will is there.

India Environment Portal launched

The India Environment Portal was launched on 11 August 2008. It is set up and managed by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and promoted by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), Government of India.

The portal aims to be a “one-stop shop” on environment and development issues. It is built on an open-source platform and includes proprietary information held by CSE and other selected (government) documents.

All information in the portal is manually tagged with a comprehensive thesaurus of environmental terms, Users can search by environmental subjects, geographical location and names of the agents involved (government institutions, NGOs, industries, individuals).

Topics covered include climate change, mining, forests, water management, sanitation and environmental impact assessments.

The portal currently includes the entire archive (some 40,000 articles) of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth and 300,000 newspaper articles, features, magazine articles, books and documents. Each day over 400 new items are entered.

The India Environment Portal has been developed by the India IT consulting company Srijan, using Drupal, an open source content management system, and the Apache Solr search platform.

Wikipedia: Water supply and sanitation in Pakistan

“Water supply and sanitation in Pakistan” is the latest country page to be added to the Wikipedia Category “Water supply and sanitation by country“, an initiative of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP). There are currently 50 country overviews in this category, mostly from developing countries.

The Pakistan page provides an overview of the water and sanitation sector covering access, service quality, history and recent developments, sector institutions, efficiency, financing, and external cooperation. It also has a list over 60 references.

Financing water and sanitation at local levels

Huck, L. (2008). Think local, act local : effective financing of local governments to provide water and sanitation services. London, UK, WaterAid. 39 p.
Download here

Mehta, M. and Mehta, D. (2008). Financing water and sanitation at local levels : synthesis paper. London, UK, WaterAid. 83 p.
Download here

WaterAid carried out analyses in 12 developing countries in Africa and Asia (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia) to identify some of the key blockages and systemic weaknesses that stand in the way of development finance reaching the local authorities who are responsible for delivering water and sanitation services. The research showed that in spite of policy commitments to decentralisation, local governments are consistently by-passed by those financing development, resulting in a high risk of duplication and inequitable coverage. In the countries studied, on average nearly two-thirds of capital expenditure for the water and sanitation sectors is outside of the local government budget and their direct control. This undermines governance and accountability at the local level. Local government’s own expenditure on water and sanitation barely gets above US$ 6 per capita per annum. And yet, even the simplest hand-dug wells cost US$ 30 per capita. National governments and donors in particular need to step back and allow local governments to make decisions (and mistakes) in response to local pressures. Recommendations are provided for the different stakeholders – national governments, donors, NGOs and local government – to improve financing and governance at the local level.

Listed above are the synthesis paper (Hucks) and the full research report (Meera and Meera).

Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook

World Bank, FAO and IFAD (2008). Gender in agriculture sourcebook. (Agriculture and rural development series). Washington, DC, USA, World Bank. xxiv, 766 p. : 177 boxes, 20 fig., 57 tab. Includes index (p. 729-764).
ISBN 978-0-8213-7587-7 – ISBN 978-0-8213-7588-4 (electronic)
DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-7587-7

Download here (full text or by individual module + additional case studies)

Executive summary available in English, French, Arabic and Spanish

“The sourcebook provides an up-to-date understanding of gender issues and a rich compilation of compelling evidence of good practices and lessons learned. The sourcebook is aimed at the practitioner both in international and regional development agencies and national governments. More specifically, it speaks to the needs of operational staff who design and implement lending projects and technical officers who design thematic programs and technical assistance packages. It is intended to provide guidance on how to integrate gender into agricultural projects and programs, and captures and expands upon the gender equity and women’s empowerment principles of the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development”.

Module 9 on “Gender in Rural Infrastructure for Agricultural Livelihoods” includes a Thematic Note on “Sanitation, Hygiene, and Potable Water”. The related Innovative Activity Profile 3 on “India: Gender in Community-managed Sanitation Program in Kerala“, prepared by Christine Sijbesma of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre is included on the web site a separate file and not in the full text PDF.

Sourcebook Modules
1 Gender and Food Security
2 Gender and Agriculture Livelihoods: Strengthening Governance
3 Gender and Rural Finance
4 Gender Issues in Land Policy and Administration
5 Gender and Agricultural Markets
6 Gender Mainstreaming in Agricultural Water Management
7 Gender in Agricultural Innovation and Education
8 Gender Issues in Agricultural Labor
9 Gender in Rural Infrastructure for Agricultural Livelihoods
10 Gender and Natural Resource Management
11 Gender and Crises: Implications for Agriculture
12 Gender and Crop Agriculture
13 Gender in Fisheries and Aquaculture
14 Gender and Livestock
15 Gender and Forestry
16 Gender Issues in Monitoring and Evaluation