TheArabWaterChannel

TheArabWaterChannel – www.thearabwaterchannel.tv – is a new theme site presenting videos (ten at present) on water issues in the 22 countries that make up the Arab World.

It was set up by the Arab Water Council in partnership with TheWaterChannel, which hosts the site, and with the support of From the Source, an interactive multimedia platform for water issues in the Middle East.

Making decentralisation work for development: methodology of the local government performance measurement (LGPM) framework

Ludwig-Maaroof, J. … [et al.] (2008). Making decentralisation work for development: methodology of the local government performance measurement (LGPM) framework. Jakarta, Indonesia, Decentralization Support Facility and World Bank. vi, 33 p.
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Indonesia has been transformed from a highly centralised country into one of the most decentralised countries. Since 2001, local governments (LGs) have become the main drivers of public service delivery, and have had to dramatically expand their capabilities. This paper discusses the local government performance management (LGPM) tool used to measure and track the performance of LGs. The purpose is to provide both central and local policy-makers, development partners, and citizens with a simple and transparent tool for gauging LG performance across districts and within different domains of LG activity, as well as a set of best practices that can be replicated. The LGPM tool also measures the performance of LGs against targets that are known to be achievable within a relatively short timeframe and within the Indonesian context.

The LGPM tool seeks to capture the four key dimensions of LG performance: public financial management; fiscal performance; service delivery; and the investment climate. It includes more than one hundred indicators, providing a snapshot of overall performance and giving insight into the specific domains that drive overall performance. It highlights areas requiring further scrutiny, together with other more targeted survey instruments.

The LGPM tool is a simple tree, in which individual performance indicators can be grouped into functional areas within four broad thematic pillars. Each pillar is subdivided into a number of functional areas that correspond to the different dimensions of LGs’ ability to affect outcomes. For example, in the service delivery pillar, each of the sub-areas (education, health, infrastructure, and cross-sectoral) is further divided into three functional dimensions, namely planning and monitoring, implementation, and pro-poor programs.

Only three of of the of the 131 indicators are directly related to water and sanitation:

• Average perceived quality of five types of infrastructure (district roads, street lighting, water from the local water authority (PDAM), electricity, telephone)
• Share of population with access to clean water
• Share of population with access to proper sanitation

In order to capture overall ‘performance’, the LGPM tool aggregates the four thematic ‘pillars’ covering LG performance, that is, public financial management, fiscal performance, service delivery, and the investment climate, into one simple indicator of overall performance.

The LGPM tool was piloted in three locations and results indicated that most indicators were relevant in capturing LG performance.

This publication is a product of the Indonesian Decentralization Support Facility (DSF), a government-led multi-donor trust fund. The institutional membership of DSF comprises the National Development Planning Agency (BAPPENAS), the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Home Affairs and nine donors: ADB, AusAID, CIDA, DfID, Government of Germany, Government of the Netherlands, UNDP, USAID, and the World Bank. The principal financial donor to DSF is DfID, with AusAID and CIDA also having made financial contributions.

At present, the DSF work program consists primarily, first, of project financing, procurement and management; and second, a limited form of knowledge management. Project support, which is at various stages of implementation and procurement, falls into four categories: Public Service Delivery, Intergovernmental and Sub-National Finance, Legislative and Executive Capacity Building, and Development Planning and Local Economic Development.

Analysing and addressing governance in sector operations

European Centre for Development Policy Management and Boesen, N. (2008). Analysing and addressing governance in sector operations. (Tools and methods series. Reference document ; no. 4). Luxemburg, Luxemburg, European Commission. 60 p. ISBN 978-92-79-11376-5
DOI: 10.2783/33642

Ensuring sustainable results with sector aid and sector programmes (in areas such as health, water and sanitation, education, and transport) can be a challenge as a result of governance constraints within the sector. The importance of addressing governance weaknesses at sector level is increasingly recognized as a precondition for attaining results and achieving sustainable development. This document offers guidance to EC sector specilialists on how to analyse and address overnance in sector operations in a more systemic and comprehensive way, without being a compulsory blueprint.

This document’s aims:

• to strengthen understanding of governance issues at sector level
• to increase the capacity of E.C staff at head quarters and in delegations to analyze and address governance in E.C support to various sectors

It is divided into four chapters which provide:

• a broad definition of governance and overall EC policy on governance
• the essence of the EC’s experience in dealing with governance at sector level and the various reasons for strengthening efforts
• a focus on an overall approach in addressing sector governance
• a methodology that can guide the process of analyzing governance at sector level and suggests a set of practical steps to carry out such analysis.

Sustainable and safe school sanitation brochure

Deegener, S. … [et al.] (2009). Sustainable and safe school sanitation : how to provide hygienic and affordable sanitation in areas without a functioning wastewater system : examples from Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. Utrecht, The Netherlands, WECF, Women in Europe for a Common Future. 26 p.
Download PDF file [4.40 MB]

WECF and local partners have built more than 20 Urine Diverting Dry Toilet (UDDT) Buildings for schools, as demonstration projects in different countries of the Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) region. Through these projects, WECF has shown that improved sanitation facilities can be provided at less cost than flush-toilets which need to be connected to central water supply and sewerage systems.

The UDDT systems were widely accepted by pupils and teachers. Local residents showed an interest in the (re-)use of urine and faeces as fertilizers, although acceptance was influenced by local cultural practices.

Key success factors in the use of UDDT systems were:

• good education of pupils, teachers, care takers and cleaning staff
• regular cleaning and maintenance of the UDDT
• early involvement of all stakeholders (director, pupils, teachers, cleaning-staff and caretaker, different levels of administration, farmers)

This brochure is intended for school-directors and teachers, administration-employees, engineers, architects and construction workers from the field and NGOs. It includes design and maintenance guidelines for UDDT systems in schools, and photographs of the systems used in the project countries.

The brochure was realized with financial support of Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fondation Ensemble (France) and the European Commission DG Environment.

WaterSanitationHygiene.org: technical resources and forum

WaterSanitationHygiene.org hosts technical resources – 873 at the moment – on water supply and sanitation ranging from well construction, school hygiene promotion, water treatment, water quality testing, emergency sanitation, water saving toilets, hand pumps, to centrifugal pumps. The database links to the publicly available documents from sector organisations like WSP, WEDC and WaterAid, on the originating website.

The web site also hosts a forum on topics as diverse as climate change, diarrhoeal disease transmission, reverse osmosis, ecosan, rainwater harvesting and geophysics. Vacancies and events are posted as well. Nearly 300 members have registered so far.

The site does not mentioned who is running it and how it is being maintained.

Aguanomics: Dr. David Zetland’s blog on the economics of water (and some other stuff)

David Zetland has a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Davis, USA (2008) and is now a S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in Natural Resource Economics and Political Economy at UC Berkeley. He has been blogging daily on water, economics and politics at aguanomics.com since 2007.

While most posts deal with water issues in the USA, Zetland also maintains an interest in water issues in developing countries. This is probably a result of his travels to about 70 countries.

Water Wars – Pullitzer Gateway

This multimedia web site is an initiative of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting that allows students and teachers to interact directly with Pulitzer Center reporters — and with each other — to learn about and discuss the importance of water around the world. The public is also invited to explore the reporting, post their own story about water, and participate in special features, such as the “Ask the expert” section.

The Pullitzer Center launched the site in 2008 with a series of stories from East Africa, focussing on Ethiopia and Kenya, “two countries at the forefront of the world’s coming water crisis”. The Center partnered with the Choices Program at Brown University’s Watson Institute to develop a two-day lesson plan based on water challenges faced by people living in East Africa.

Since then more stories have been added about Desertification in China and South Asia’s Troubled Waters (covering India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal).

Users can access the stories with related videos, short video interviews with water and sanitation experts recorded during the World Water Forum in Istanbul, and videos posted by users, through a 3D-Viewer.

See below a report on the Water Wars portal that was highlighted in a special edition of Foreign Exchange devoted entirely to global water issues. Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Pulitzer Center journalist Alex Stonehill and draws on the portal to share video reports and student perspectives.

USAID Water Finance Site

The USAID Water Finance Website is a resource aimed at development professionals who seek to incorporate sustainable pro-poor financing into Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WSH) programmes at country level. A set of structured questions and resource materials guides users through the planning process.

The website is structured as three interlinked work areas; A) Financing Interventions; B) Assessment Toolkit; and, C) Developing a Programmatic Approach.

After (free) registration, users first land on the “My Work” page, where they can access information they enter into the site. From the My Work page, users can enter any of the three interlinked work areas.

The Financing Interventions area of the website allows users to investigate one of four particular types of financing: 1) Micro Finance; 2) Bank financing; 3) Capital Market financing; or 4) Government financing. Each financing type is linked to specific section of the Assessment Toolkit that users will want to investigate before proceeding to Developing a Program Approach. Assessments can be carried for several options: A) WSH service providers, or B) poor households; C) Water, D) Sanitation, or E) Hygiene.

The site itself does not provide specific country-level information on donors, local actors and policies. It recommends that users contact regional or country office representatives of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) for such country-specific information.

The Developing a Program Approach work area is designed to help users analyze what they have learned about the country context and develop an assistance strategy. It leads users through a process of vetting constraints and opportunities in terms of the views of other donors, the degree of interest evinced by institutions in the country, and the identification of potential “champions” for change.

The diagram below provides an simplified overview of the website and its main components:

Sanitation for kids: Australian web resource for schools

Sanitation is one the issues featured on AusAID’s Global Education Website. The objective of the Global Education Website is to increase the amount and quality of teaching of global education in Australian primary and secondary schools. The site supports the AusAID Global Education Program which aims to raise awareness and understanding among Australian school students of international issues, development and poverty, and to prepare them to live in an increasingly globalised world and to be active citizens shaping better futures.

The Sanitation global issue page provides the following case studies and teaching activities on:

• community-led total sanitation
• improving toilets
• spreading disease
• urban poor getting connected in Bangalore

There are also two project pages on Sanitation and Disease, one for lower and upper secondary years (LS-U/Sec) and one for upper primary years (UP)