WASHfunders.org

This portal was launched in October 2011 by the US Foundation Center as a collaborative platform for philanthropic foundations that fund water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects around the world.

The centre piece is an interactive map showing which foundation funds what where.  Currently projects from hundreds of foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation and Skoll Foundation, are included. There are country profiles listing foundation grants, WASH indicators and historical OECD bilateral and multilateral grant data.

Besides the interactive map, the portal provides news and resources for grantmakers such as case studies, recommended reading and overview of key organisations and monitoring tools.

Website: washfunders.org

IFRC WatSan Mission Assistant

This site has a wealth of resources for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practitioners collected by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Although the focus is on WASH resources for emergencies, many of the field tools and resources are also applicable in non-emergency situations. Of special interest are the WASH information, education materials (IEC) materials, which are made accessible by topic and regions.

Website: watsanmissionassistant.wikispaces.com

UN Documentation Centre on Water and Sanitation (UNDCWS)

This virtual library provides access to recent water and sanitation related publications produced by the United Nations system.

It is available in English www.unwaterlibrary.org and in Spanish www.bibliotecaonuagua.org but publications are accessible in different languages when available (including the 6 official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).

You can search by theme, region/country, basin, publisher, main purpose, target audience and publication type. You can combine these search criteria using the advanced search function, which also includes a language filter.

UNDCWS is an initiative of the United Nations Office to support the International Decade ‘Water for Life’ 2005-2015/UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication (UNW-DPAC) . It was developed with the support of the Municipality of Zaragoza in Spain and launched on the occasion of UN Day and the World Development Information Day on 24 October 2012.

Managing climate extremes and disasters in the water sector

This thematic brief summarises the key findings of the SREX report relevant to water resources and water management. The Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) was commissioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The brief includes material directly taken from the SREX report but it also presents synthesis messages that are the views of the authors of this brief and do not necessarily those of the IPCC.

Aimed primarily at water sector policy-makers and planners, the brief discusses three main questions:

1. Why are extreme events a critical issue for water management?
2. How is the water sector affected by the risk and impact of extreme events?
3. What actions can be taken to manage these risks?

Back, E., Cameron, C., Norrington-Davies, G. and Mitchell, T., 2012. Managing climate extremes and disasters in the water sector : lessons from the IPCC SREX Report. [online] London, UK: The Climate and Development Knowledge Network, CDKN. 30 p.; ill.; tab.; fig.
Available at: <cdkn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/SREX-Summary-WATER_web.pdf>

Getting it right : improving maternal health through water, sanitation & hygiene

This study reviews published literature describing the impact of water, sanitation and hygiene on maternal health and mortality.

Two studies showed significant correlations between increased access to water and sanitation and reductions in maternal mortality. Specific evidence was found relating to the impact of water carrying and water and sanitation-related infections on pregnant women, and to the impact of hygiene during and after delivery.

However, relatively few high quality studies were found on the basis of which generalisations can be made about the specific linkages between water, sanitation and hygiene on the one hand and maternal health on the other.

There was much more literature on the impact of hygienic practices during delivery on neonatal mortality. Clean delivery procedures are key to preventing neonatal deaths. Unhygienic practices during delivery that cause death of the newborn baby are also likely to have an impact on the health of the mother.

Even though it is clear how important is for mothers to have access to safe water, sanitation and clean birthing, they often have little influence on expenditures and decisions that would improve these services.

The study suggests that the educational/promotional aspects relating to WASH and (maternal and newborn) health should be improved and addressed from pregnancy up to child care.  Similarly, health centres and hospitals should have running water, clean toilets, safe refuse disposal, clean beds and areas for deliveries. Consistent hygiene in clinics and hospitals should be ensured. More high-quality research is needed on the linkages between WASH and maternal health in the context of low-income countries.

Shordt, K., Smet, E. and Herschderfer, K. 2012. Getting it right : improving maternal health through water, sanitation & hygiene. Haarlem, The Netherlands: Simavi. ii, 31 p. : 3 fig., photogr. 98 ref. Available at: <www.simavi.nl/assets/Uploads/Simavi-Publicatie_Getting-It-Right.pdf>

SanMark Community of Practice

The Sanitation Marketing (SanMark) Community of Practice  is a WASH Reference Group initiative supported by the AusAID Innovations Fund and managed by WaterAid Australia.

The WASH Reference Group is an Australian-based Community of Practice comprising 25 organisations working on water, sanitation and hygiene promotion in developing countries, including NGOs, research organisations and the Australian water industry.

The website provides information on SanMark webinars and in-country training events. Visitors to the website can submit a question (Ask an Expert), contribute a case study, story, experience or photographs to the SanMark blog, and apply online for a SanMark practitioner training. There is also section on resources (links and tools) and news.

Website: www.sanitationmarketing.com

Water security framework

Casey, V., Carter, R. and Yeo, D., 2012. Water security framework. London, UK: WaterAid. 64 p. : 17 fig., 2 tab. Includes appendix with definitions, a glossary and 83 references
Available at: <http://washurl.net/c4jxeo> [Accessed 25 July 2012]

WaterAid have published a water security framework which links sustainable WASH services to livelihood, environmental and food security water uses. It is to be used together with WaterAid’s previously published Sustainability Framework.

The document sets out fundamental priorities for improving the water security of poor and marginalised people as part of a community based approach to water resource management. It describes the nature of the global water crisis as it affects those who do not have access to improved services and calls for Water Resource Management plans and policies to reflect realities on the ground. It puts forward minimum commitments that WaterAid will implement as part of its service delivery work ensuring that it meets with high quality standards.

The framework document has five parts.

Part 1 introduces WaterAid’s definition of water security and how it can be measured.

Part 2 elaborates on the multiple threats to communities’ water security. Besides climate change, these include serious near-term challenges such as population growth, weak political will, low institutional capacities, environmental degradation, intense seasonality, inadequate management of water resources, inadequate disaster risk reduction planning, and poor siting, design and construction of water sources.

Part 3 discussed the four main dimensions of water security: reliable access, quantity, quality and risk of water-related disasters.

Part 4 presents community-based water resource management (CBWRM) approaches to improve water security, based on the ABCDE framework, which stands for Assessment, Bargaining, Codification, Delegation and Engineering.

Part 5 lists WaterAid’s minimum commitments to ensuring water security. They are divided into overriding minimum commitments that apply to all interventions, plus specific additional commitments for drilled water wells, hand-dug wells, spring/river-fed gravity schemes, water treatment and for drought-prone areas.

Policy review of the Dutch contribution to drinking water and sanitation – 1990-2011

Tesselaar, R. et al., 2012. From infrastructure to sustainable impact : policy review of the Dutch contribution to drinking water and sanitation (1990-2011). (IOB evaluation ; no. 366). The Hague, The Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. 132 p. : 9 fig., 12 tab. 54 ref.
Available at: <http://washurl.net/d6qgwq> [PDF 4.6 MB]

This policy review examines Dutch aid during 1990 to 2011 to improve drinking water and sanitation services in developing countries. The main focus is on the period from 2004 when aid was directed at supporting the Millennium Development Goal of halving the world’s population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

The review is primarily based on:

• a study of Dutch policy and its execution;
• impact evaluation studies of drinking water and sanitation programmes in Benin, Egypt, Yemen, Mozambique and Tanzania.

Following an introduction, chapter 2 covers the problem analysis and international context. Chapter 3 describes the Dutch policy that lies at the basis of the targets for drinking water and sanitation, the responsibilities, instruments and policy execution, the budgets, monitoring and evaluation and the available information about the realisation of the contribution to the MDG target for drinking water and sanitation. Chapter 4 analyses the impact of the Netherlands-supported programmes and sustainability of results. The final chapter discusses findings that concern policy efficiency.

The main findings were:

• Dutch aid helped millions of people gain access to improved drinking water supply and sanitation
• the substantial increase in the use of improved water sources did not a guarantee the safety of the drinking water or the necessary water consumption
• effects of training and education on the building of toilets and their use and on hygiene was often limited and sanitary facilities were often too expensive for the poor
• improved access to drinking water supply significantly reduced women’s burden and increased their participation in programmes, and gave girls more time for school, but had a limited impact on income
• positive health impacts were generally modest or non-existent
• water supplies benefitted many poor communities but to a lesser extent the poorest segment while sanitation increased mainly in better off villages and households
• capacity of local communities, governments and NGOs for the maintenance of the facilities remained insufficient, there was limited involvement of the private sector, and partial subsidies remain necessary
• costs of communal water supplies and of privately owned toilets made with local materials were low, but benefits were often limited
• internal policy processes still fell short

mWASH: mobile phone applications for the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector

This report reviews the potential of mobile phones to improve governance in the development sector – a field termed “mobile phone for development” or M4D – with a special emphasis on the water, sanitation, and hygiene or WASH sector.

In particular, it focuses on “information interventions”: mobile phone usage for real-time, broad-based data collection and dissemination among and by multiple agents of change. Such information interventions are used not only to resolve immediate, short-term issues, but to facilitate the flow of information necessary for long term planning, monitoring, policy-making, and governance.

The report reviews the aspects of mobile phone solution design that impact the effectiveness of an information intervention.

It reviews ten selected organisations and their mobile phone projects in depth to determine whether there are broad-based lessons to be drawn from their experiences of system development and implementation.

Finally, the report summarises lessons that can be used by implementers of general M4D projects, as well as mWASH projects (author abstract).

Read a Pacific Institute press release about the report.

The report’s publishers, the Pacific Institute and Nexleaf Analytics, are using the findings for their project to build the open-source WASH SMS System. This system, which they are piloting in Indonesia, uses mobile phones and email to develop crowd-sourced map data to improve water and sanitation services for the urban poor.

Hutchings, M.T. et al., 2012. mWASH: mobile phone applications for the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector. Oakland, CA, USA: Pacific Institute and Los Angeles, CA, USA: Nexleaf Analytics. 114 p. : 12 fig., 4 tab. 95 ref. Available at: <http://www.pacinst.org/reports/mwash/full_report.pdf> [Accessed 18 May 2012]

Meeting the water reform challenge

Despite progress on many fronts, governments around the world are still confronted with the need to reform their existing water policies in order to meet current objectives and future challenges identified by the OECD Environment Outlook to 2050. Population growth, urbanisation, and changing lifestyles as a result of economic growth are key drivers of these challenges, while increasing spatial and temporal water variability resulting from climate change will exacerbate these pressures.

Building on these water challenges, this report examines three fundamental areas that need to be addressed whatever reform agendas are pursued by governments: financing of the water sector; the governance and institutional arrangements that are in place; and coherence between water policies and policies in place in other sectors of the economy. The report provides governments in both OECD and non-OECD countries with practical advice and policy tools to pursue urgent reform in their water sectors.

After framing the water reform challenge, the book examines the policy challenges surrounding the financing of water supply and sanitation and presents a policy toolkit that can underpin policy dialogues to stimulate much needed reform. The chapter also addresses the growing problem of financing the broader water resources management functions of government.

The next chapter highlights the key governance challenges confronting water policy reform, focusing on the issues arising from the multi-level governance structure that generally characterises water resources management.

The final chapter examines the coherence issues raised by the linkages between water, energy and agriculture and presents a number of steps that governments need to take to address the water coherence challenge.

OECD (2012). Meeting the water reform challenge. (OECD studies on water). Paris, France: OECD Publishing. 172 p.: 17 boxes, 25 fig., 16 tab. ISBN: 9789264169999. Available at: <doi: 10.1787/9789264170001-en> [Accessed 18 May 2012]

Watch a video on the global water challenge and OECD’s response.