Water supply and sanitation activities by BSF.JP

Basic sanitation, good hygiene practices and a reliable supply of drinking water are fundamental for a healthy, productive and dignified life. The imperatives for water supply and sanitation (WSS) provision in rural development projects could not be clearer: health, because water- and excreta-related diseases are not only debilitating and de-motivating but are also a cause and a result of malnutrition; economic development because when poor people are restricted in their ability to work and study through illness or burdensome tasks such as fetching water, economic inequalities are augmented on a local, national and global scale;  human rights because, since 2002, the United Nations has officially recognized adequate access to sufficient water for drinking and domestic use as a human right; and gender equality because poor access to WSS reinforces gender inequalities: the lack of a water supply means that women have to spend hours fetching water rather than using their time more effectively, while poor sanitation facilities mean that girls must miss days from school when struggling to cope with menstruation with cleanliness and dignity.

Despite these compelling reasons, many of the world’s poor continue to lack access to an “improved” water supply and “improved” sanitation facilities.¹ The situation is particularly dire in rural sub-Saharan Africa where progress has been slow: approximately 272 million (54 per cent) and 383 million (76 per cent) of the region’s rural population lack access to improved water supplies and sanitation facilities, respectively.²

The majority of BSF.JP grants finance WSS activities in response to the demands of the rural poor, in harmonization with the interventions of other actors in the sector and with national strategies for poverty reduction.

At the beginning of 2009, 13 out of 15 ongoing projects included WSS activities for communities, health clinics and schools. Recipient countries of WSS interventions and their rates of access to improved water and to sanitation services in rural areas are as follows: Burundi (70 per cent, 41 per cent), Chad (40 per cent, 4 per cent), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (29 per cent, 25 per cent), Eritrea (57 per cent, 3 per cent), Kenya (49 per cent, 48 per cent), Mali (48 per cent, 39 per cent), Mozambique (26 per cent, 19 per cent), Niger (32 per cent, 3 per cent), Somalia (10 per cent, 7 per cent) and the United Republic of Tanzania (46 per cent, 34 per cent).2

A precursor to economic investment, WSS initiatives are implemented at the outset of an IFAD project by local NGOs. Water in particular can provide an invaluable entry point to community participation and development and to gender mainstreaming, both of which are vital to establishing an effective social platform for IFAD’s economic investments in improving household income and food security.

WSS activities include the provision of drinking water supplies through a combination of pumps, wells, boreholes, small reticulated systems, rainwater-harvesting structures and household storage containers/tanks. The technology options are context-specific, affordable, accessible, locally available and sustainable. BSF.JP projects codesigned with IFAD have promoted and financed multiple water use systems that cater for both domestic and productive water needs, thereby enhancing rural livelihoods in a variety of ways (for instance in the Central Kenya Dry Area Smallholder and Community Services Development Project).

Ever more emphasis, however, is being placed on much needed capacity-building in the WSS sector across the board: in the public and private sector and at the local, district, regional and national levels. At the community level, water management committees are being formed from existing social structures. A balanced gender ratio is promoted as much as possible to give women and men an equal voice. The committees are trained to operate, maintain and manage communal water systems. To ensure the continued development of the water management committees in the long term, additional capacity-building will be needed for local authorities, NGOs and self-help associations and also in the private sector.

The promotion of sanitation and hygiene is essential in bringing about sustained improved behavioural change particularly in areas where indiscriminate defecation is prevalent. Hygiene education for all must precede other activities. One effective way to motivate behavioural change is to explain the linkages between actions and disease by using the Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation (PHAST) approach, as in the Gash Barka Livestock and Agricultural Development Project in Eritrea and the Transitional Programme of Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi. In these operations, a demand-responsive and stepwise approach has been followed, which supported the introduction of simple latrines followed by the promotion of ventilated improved pit latrines.

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Improved water supply refers to a household connection, standpipe, borehole, protected dug well, protected spring and rainwater. Improved sanitation facilities refer to a simple latrine, ventilated improved pit latrine, pour-flush latrine, and connection to a septic system or a public sewer.

From data collected under the WHO/United Nations Children’s Fund Joint Monitoring Programme for Water and Sanitation, See  Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation. Data are from 2006.