RWSN member, Muthi Nhlema, has challenged the government of Malawi over how groundwater is used for rural water supplies: 30% of water points are not working across the country and he points to declining groundwater levels being a major factor. Mr Nhlema therefore challenged the wisdom of further drilling and groundwater development, if the use of the water resource is unsustainable.
Read the full article: The Nation, 1 October 2017
Dr Kerstin Danert, Skat Foundation, who is a member of the UPGro Knowledge Broker team and Chairs UPGro’s Programme Coordination Group (PCG) has been given the “Distinguished Associate Award, 2017” by the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) for her outstanding contribution improving the use of groundwater worldwide.
Kerstin has been a driving force behind the Rural Water Supply Network, and in particular the promotion of drilling professionalisation and documentation of manual drilling practices. In addition to working on UPGro, she is currently leading an RWSN collaboration between UNICEF and Skat Foundation on professionalising water well drilling in Africa, which includes capacity development activities in Angola, Burkina Faso and Zambia.
UPGro Ambassador gives 2017 Ineson Lecture at the Geological Society of London and makes the case for the economic importance of Africa’s aquifers
via “Groundwater is the key to Unlocking Green Growth in Africa” — UPGro
Webinar recordings and presentations now available below for download!
Were you at the #RWSN7 Forum in Abidjan? Watch out for the Forum report showcasing all the work presented and lessons learnt, now available in English and French:
Thanks to all the delegates, sponsors and organisers who contributed to making this RWSN Forum a success!
How do we raise capacity for borehole drilling and its management globally? If everyone is to have access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, detailed attention is required for the siting, drilling and installation of boreholes in every single project in every country. Alas, this is not always the case. The result is that many boreholes fail within a very short time.
RWSN members are telling us that they want more in-country training. The article linked below provides some suggestions. Do you have ideas or incentives for government and private enterprises invest in skill development in the groundwater sector, and in the rural water sector at large?
To find out more:
http://www.geodrillinginternational.com/geodrilling/issue/1179329/getting-groundwater-ground
Save the date: Tuesday 17 October 2017
What has happened so far?
The issue of community management of rural water supplies has attracted some interesting debate recently. An RWSN blog post by Ellie Chowns, at that time a researcher at the University of Birmingham, prompted a lively discussion in the RWSN online Sustainable Services and Equality, Non-Discrimination & Inclusion communities.
In parallel to this The Water Institute at UNC, in consultation with RWSN, chose a recent paper by Ellie Chowns as the publication to review for the most recent WaSH Policy Research Digest. This was accompanied by a short literature review written by Harold Lockwood of Aguaconsult, based on work he was doing for the World Bank on a multi-country review of rural water service sustainability.
How you can get involved
The Water & Health Conference at the University of North Carolina is an excellent opportunity to continue this conversation and bring it to an even larger audience. UNC and RWSN will host a one-hour panel discussion and will live stream this as a webcast so that a number of people not attending the conference can take part. Short moderated interventions from panelists will be followed by questions from the audience received both in person and online. The panel discussion will be designed to bring out diverse points of view (for instance, community management has not worked and should be abandoned vs. that it is still a viable model) but also to explore the nuances of the circumstances under which well-supported community management can be successful.
The panel discussion will also be recorded and made available on the RWSN and The Water Institute at UNC websites.
You can start right away by posting questions to the Sustainable Services community – just send them in an email to ManagementSupport_rwsn@dgroups.org
Unfortunately, the webcast will only be available in English, but questions in other languages can be accepted, if submitted beforehand for translation. Be aware that there will be limited time and a lot of interest so it unlikely that everything can be covered.
Format
Panel:
Moderator: Clarissa Brocklehurst, Adjunct Professor, Water Institute, UNC
Online host: David Fuente, Assistant Professor, School of Earth, Ocean & Environment, University of South Carolina
US: +16465588656,,204142462# or +16699006833,,204142462#
Dial (for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 669 900 6833
Webinar ID: 204 142 462
International numbers available: https://uncsph.zoom.us/zoomconference?m=87U9Ga7fnXMIha5ZeJDhjyNMar78REQd
Download the study here: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/27988
Abstract: With 2.1 billion people – mostly in rural areas – lacking safely managed drinking water and reported low rural water supply functionality rates, the Sustainable Development Goals pose a triple challenge: to reach unserved mostly rural population groups, to raise service levels, and to sustain existing and future services. This assessment uses a multi-country case study approach to identify good practices and challenges toward building sector capacity and strengthening sustainable service delivery models for rural areas. Recognizing the limitations of the Demand Responsive Approach, the emergence of various management models, the identified need for ongoing support to rural service providers, and the critical role of enabling institutions and policies beyond the community-level, the added value of this assessment lies in: i)the development of a comprehensive analytical framework that can be used to analyze and operationalize a more sustainable service delivery approach for rural water supply; ii) the rich set of cases and good practices from the 16 countries informing the global body of “knowledge in implementation,” and iii) the formulation of recommendations and policy directions to improve the sustainability of services depending on sector development stage. Policy recommendations are centered around five areas: institutional capacity, financing, asset management, water resources management, and monitoring and regulatory oversight.
by Léo Heller, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
Re-posted from: https://medium.com/@SRWatSan/regulation-of-water-and-sanitation-services-bef44401caf4
Report A/HRC/36/45, submitted by the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council in September 2017, focuses on the role regulatory frameworks play in the implementation of the human rights to water and sanitation at national level.
Regulatory frameworks comprise the rules or standards defining how services should be provided to individuals in a given context, and the institutions responsible for monitoring service providers’ compliance with these norms and standards.
The number of States with a regulatory framework for water and sanitation services is increasing and so is the contingent of regulatory actors. However, there is no universal regulatory model. Regulation should be adapted to local circumstances, needs and challenges.
States have interpreted the role of regulation in various ways depending largely on the norms applicable to their particular context and corresponding needs, leading to a range of different institutional arrangements and regulatory models including self-regulation, regulation by contract and regulation by a separate regulatory body.
Being at the interface between policy-makers, service providers and users, while acting as guarantors of accountability, regulatory actors play an essential role in the realisation of the human rights to water and sanitation.
Continue reading “Leo Heller on : Regulation of water and sanitation services”
The results of the water and sanitation SDG baseline report are as surprising as finding safely managed drinking water in rural Honduras. But we should be cautious in jumping to conclusions.
It is surprising to meet people like Kristel Castellanos. She is the operator of the drinking water treatment plant of the rural municipality of San Matías in Honduras. She makes sure that the people of San Matías get water that is safely managed. Her work is not common, as rural water supply systems in Honduras rarely have a treatment plant. At most, operators may chlorinate the water, and even that is a big challenge.
Photo: Kristel Castellanos, operator of the San Matías treatment plant, checking the water flow (photo credit: IRC)
As surprising as finding such good water quality management in rural Honduras, were the data on safely managed water supply in the baseline report for the water and sanitation SDGs. According to that report 71% of the World’s population has the same level of service as the people in San Matias, i.e. piped supplies with household connections that is available 24/7 and that has good quality water, or ‘safely managed water’, as the JMP calls it. More surprising is that 56% of the rural population has such water.
Ahead of the publication of the baseline report, there was lots of talk in the WASH sector that thebaseline would come as a big shock. With the adoption of the SDGs, the bar for water supply has been raised. Under the MDGs, we measured whether people had an improved supply. The SDGs require people to have safely managed water. And by raising the bar, it would only be logical that a larger part of the population would not meet that bar. And indeed, the press release that accompanied the report was brought as a shock, using the headline figure that 2.1 billion people don’t have safe water. I found that a way too alarmistic take on the findings of the report. With 71% of the World population having safely managed water the glass is not half full; it is three quarters full!
The figure however is surprising, as the MDG end-line indicated that in 2015, some 58% of the world population had piped on premise (33% in rural areas). Piped on premise doesn’t fully coincide with safely managed services. Safely managed services also require water to be of good quality and availability. One would expect that the percentage of population with safely managed services would be lower than the population with piped on premise in 2015, as there are always piped supplies in which quality and/or availability are not adequate. But, instead we don’t have a glass being half empty; we have one that is three quarters full.
However, we can only see a third of the glass, as Ben Harris mentioned. Sufficient data on safely managed services are only available for half of the countries. No data is available on the biggest countries in the World: China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Most of the countries for which data are available are in the higher and middle income regions of Europe, Central Asia and Latin America. Only one region – Central and South Asia – has sufficient data on safely managed services in rural areas.
The report is very clear about these methodological limitations. And I think it is truly impressive that the JMP managed to make these estimates in such short time. But, it could have therefore also been more cautious in the message it sent out. It should have either said “more people than expected have safely managed services”, or better “the first estimate shows 2.1 billion don’t have safely managed services, but the data are too limited to jump to strong conclusions”.
Nevertheless, I would say to all sector colleagues: read the report; it really is obligatory reading. And if anything, read the methodological sections. They are not always the most exciting sections to read in a report. But if we don’t understand how the SDGs are monitored, the numbers will really take us by surprise. And by 2030, we should no longer be surprised to find as nicely safely managed water supplies in rural areas as the ones managed by Kristel Castellanos in San Matías.
For the 2017 JMP report and related data, go to https://washdata.org/
The original version of this blog is available here: https://www.ircwash.org/blog/third-glass-three-quarters-full.
Rural Water Supply Network - blog 