A thoughtful piece from Harold Lockwood, working with IRC on the Triple S project
By Harold Lockwood
Recently I have been on a continent-hopping tour through a different range of meetings and events, from which I have seen a pattern emerging, or at least a series of questions in my own mind, as I carry out my work in the WASH sector at an international level.
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Congratulations to Improve International for being such a passionate advocate for better monitoring and evaluation in the WASH sector
in case you missed it from a couple of weeks ago, when the RWSN editor was out of the country…
This story is fictional. Any resemblance to real situations or persons is pure coincidence.
When Alice stepped through the mirroring water surface into waterland, the first creature she came across was a rabbit, wearing a UN-blue jacket, looking frantically at its watch.
“It is nearly time. Only three more years to go till 2015. So little time left. We won’t make it. We must hurry up.”, it mumbled to itself.
“Hey Mr. Rabbit”, said Alice, “what is all the hurry about? What must be done before 2015?”.
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I was lucky enough to attend this year’s Water & Health Conference at the University of North Carolina. I was even luckier to make it as the skirts of Hurricane Sandy swept up the Atlantic coast before crashing into the American North East.
It was a great opportunity to meet, face-to-face, many RWSN members who have been communicating with online and meet a whole bunch of new people. It was really inspiring to hear their stories and find out more about their organisations and research. Here are just some of my highlights from the event:
Continue reading “Sustainable water services take ‘Water & Health’ Conference by storm”
A great report from Stef on the RWSN Management & Support workshop two weeks ago
Two weeks ago, the “management and support” working group of the RWSN had its first meeting. This meeting focused specifically on management models and support arrangements for piped water supply in small towns. As rural settlements become bigger, a shift is made from point sources – like boreholes with handpumps – to piped systems. This trend has happened in Latin America and parts of Asia, and is now about to start in Africa and South Asia as well, as argued in the background paper by Marieke Adank. And as there is a shift to piped systems, users may actually want to shift towards higher levels of service. The question is whether that is not a bad idea?
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by Johan Gély, Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC)
The UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-water (GLAAS) monitors the inputs, and processes and their outputs (e.g. policies, investments, human resources) that influence the provision and sustainability of drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) systems and services. Following publication of a proof-of-concept report in 2008, GLAAS published two full reports in 2010 and 2012 – the latter covering 74 countries and 24 external support agencies. GLAAS is generally acknowledged as having gained itself a specific niche within the global WASH monitoring landscape.
It is an important tool for the SDC Global program Water initiatives as it is part of an important and logical sequence of work/partnership which combine the global water and sanitation data acquisition (Joint Monitoring Program – JMP), the data analyze/assessment (GLAAS) and the sector global advocacy (Sanitation and Water for All – SWA).
1) It is a low cost and high quality global monitoring product and process.
2) It allows us to unify forces to lobby for a water goal in the Post 2015 goals.
3) Water Quality should be included in the future water goals and reported by JMP and GLAAS.
4) We should strengthen alignment with national monitoring systems.
5) We need to improve link with others global, regional and national monitoring systems.
6) The presence of new actors (from emerging states) should be reinforced in the future.
UN-Water GLAAS 2012 report – Approach and Main findings
UN-Water GLAAS – A brief history and rationale
For further information on GLAAS, please contact Bruce Gordon or Johan Gély.
Next week more than 200 practitioners and policy makers from government, civil society, private sector and donors will come together for the annual Joint Water and Environment Sector Review in Uganda to review progress and set-backs during the past year and discuss and decide on priorities for the coming year. For rural water Uganda is facing a situation where the expansion of coverage of rural water services is stagnating, functionality levels are not increasing and overall sector financing remains at its best stable.
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Rural Water Supply Network - blog 