World Water Week Daily

Thursday, September 05, 2013

Evidence is key to getting cooperation from policymakers

Brian Arbogast, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Jacqueline Musyoki, Water Services Trust Fund

In tackling how to set up successful partnerships to bring sanitation to poor areas, getting policymakers to listen is a key step. During yesterdays seminar Partnerships For Financing Sanitation In Poor Urban Areas, delegates heard how hard economic evidence can secure cooperation from ministers and other stakeholders when it comes to planning and financing projects. The best way to make policymakers care is to have strong arguments and the best arguments are based on evidence, said Brian Arbogast, Director of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in his opening remarks. A case in point was raised by Jacqueline Musyoki of the Water Services Trust Fund in Kenya, who said that in some cases, policymakers were not even aware of the challenges. She related how she had asked the new Minister of Water and Environment for Kenya if she was aware that Kenya loses US$324 million every year through poor sanitation. The ministers reply? I am becoming aware of it. That figure for Kenyas losses came from an African study undertaken by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) as part of its

Economics of Sanitation Initiative. The need to gather credible evidence is exactly what drove WSP to launch the Initiative in 2007. Guy Hutton described how WSP had first targeted five countries in southeast Asia to provide analysis of the impacts and to put a dollar price on the costs and benefits of interventions in sanitation. The study found that the five countries were losing over US$9 billion a year through poor sanitation and Cambodia alone was estimated to be losing US$448 million a year, equivalent to 7.2 percent of its GDP. More than the entire aid receipts of Cambodia were being flushed down the drain, said Hutton. The Ministry of Finance needs to understand this is not just about dignity and intangibles, but about the economic impact [of poor sanitation]. In seeking to determine what the most effective interventions were, the WSP had used a sanitation ladder approach to compare wet pit and ecological facilities with more costly approaches such as septic tanks and sewerage. A study across the five countries and one province in southern China (Yunnan) had shown that all interventions were economi-

cally viable with benefit cost ratios greater than 1 rising to 3 to 10 dollars back for every dollar spent. In the Philippines for example, pit latrines had a return of at least five times the cost in rural areas. In reviewing how financial evidence can be used to plan and evaluate sanitation services, Patrick Moriarty, CEO of IRC, said that they had found that life-cycle costs were not being used as a tool in the countries in which they worked. IRC therefore has developed a WASH Cost Calculator as an app, which can assist organisations in preparing financial analysis on sanitation. Users without expert knowledge about the life-cycle costs approach can run a sustainability check on the delivery of water and sanitation services. They can make use of reliable cost information in the app to apply a life-cycle costs approach. The more people use the tool, the more data is being shared, the greater the platform for sharing on costs and service levels we can all use, said Moriarty. The app, which is being financed by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will be demonstrated today as a beta version at the IRC stand.

September 05, 2013

World Water Week Daily Page 2

SIWI supports textile industry in India

Spirituality can help resolve water conflicts

A spiritual approach can help to manage and prevent conflicts, delegates heard in yesterdays morning session on conflict, water and diplomacy. Think about what motivates most of the world, it is some form of spiritual nourishment, said Aaron Wolf, Professor from Oregon State University, USA. We certainly have a problem in northern Europe and North America thinking about Aaron Wolf, Oregon State spiritual values. We simply dont University talk about them any longer. With 276 transboundary river basins in the world and an estimated 148 states sharing international basins, delegates heard how water negotiations need new approaches and communicators. The business community was only brought into water discussions in the past five to ten years and the same is now happening with spiritual leaders. Wolf argued that they could not only assist in negotiations but also act as communicators to educate citizens about water use and sanitation. Its astonishing that we sit in these rooms thinking, How can we communicate about water? Well maybe if I show another 18PowerPoint slides Ill get my point across, he added. Slowly though we are beginning to see them [spiritual leaders] come into the room. Western dispute resolution systems have also much to learn from other regions. In western countries, Wolf said that negotiators have focused too much on a rational and scientific approach. He highlighted that during the first Palestinian and Israeli negotiations on water, personal and spiritual needs came out as the top priority for water use. This was huge symbolically and spiritually, Wolf said. It was recognised that all spiritual needs have equal legitimacy. If we have conversations about values, we find more in common. Delegates learned how a ceremony of forgiveness in the Muslim world could help negotiation techniques. Through the concept of taarrahdhin, the resolution of a conflict can be achieved without any humiliation. When we in the west are out teaching people how to do stuff, we forget to ask them what techniques they might have, said Wolf. When we exclude large aspects of society, we are excluding vast amounts of knowledge.

Eva Kindgren, KappAhl

The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) together with Swedish clothing companies Indiska, KappAhl and Lindex, and 35 of their Indian suppliers and sub-suppliers, have implemented a programme to develop Sustainable Water Resource Management (SWAR) for textile industries in Delhi and Jaipur. With co-financing from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the project was presented to delegates yesterday at the seminar Private Sector Partnerships For Development: Textile Sector. Ultimately the textile industry in India is in Jaipur and Delhi, which are water stressed areas,said Shiri Rawat, Deputy Water Minister, Government of India.Underground water reserves are falling rapidly in these areas so we need to find ways to use water more efficiently, improve management and awareness of water conservation, and encourage public-private partnerships in the industrial sector for water management and environmental sanitation. The SWAR programme involves 13 factories, spread out over 2,000square kilometres in the National Capital Region of Delhi, of which seven are dyeing and printing units, and nine garment manufacturers. In Rajasthan, the programme is partnering with the Jaipur Integrated Texcraft Park Ltd (JITTPL), which is a new state-of-the-art textile park set up 25 kilometres outside of Jaipur with support from the Government of Indias Scheme for Integrated Textile Parks. The textile sector is important to India and is the second largest employer after agriculture with between 35-45 million people engaged in textiles. The sector contributes around 4 percent to the countrys GDP and India is the worlds third largest textile exporter after China and Bangladesh. The dominant source of water for the textile industry is groundwater and so it is an important matter from an economic and water point of view, said Jenny Grnwall of SIWI. SIWI is tasked with the overall project management and contributes with policy research, outreach efforts and reporting. SIWI and the partner companies have formed a Management Group that will meet regularly over the course of the project to plan and monitor implementation in close cooperation with the Indian consultant, cKinetics. The reason we got involved in SWAR was because we wanted to decrease the environmental impact from the production of our garments, said Eva Kindgren of KappAhl. We wanted to cooperate with other clothing companies to reach the desired results and a joint environmental code. We are already involved in a cleaner production project in Bangladesh and I think this programme shows that small and medium-sized brands can make changes if they work together.

H.R.H. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden presents the Stockholm Junior Water Prize to the winning team from Chile

World Water Week Daily Page 3

September 05, 2013

Cross-sector partnerships are critical for urban development

How do we need to cooperate in the future for a sustainable world?

I think what is lacking a lot of the time is a holistic view to really acknowledge water is a limited resource we all have to share. Businesses, NGOs and governments all need to be better at realising everyone elses needs and perspective. Sara Tynnerson. Stockholm University, Sweden.

In most of the sustainability area, we need governments to cooperate. That is very critical as we are not seeing governments agreeing on things at the moment. Leena Oiva, WWF, Finland.

Graham Alabaster, UN-Habitat

The linkage between urbanisation, water and health is not easily understood but it is critical to the development of local communities, said UN-Habitats Graham Alabaster at the opening of yesterdays session Water & Urban Development From A Health Perspective. Lots of smaller urban centres are going to grow in an unplanned way and the sprawl from these and the development of slums will be one of the symptoms of unplanned urbanisation, said Alabaster. This will have a profound effect on health. Communicable diseases relating to water like cholera will get worse in peri-urban areas and without proper planning and transport, there will be an increase in cardiovascular diseases and cancer related to air pollution. I hope the sectors are going to work more closely together. One organisation that is seeking to develop cross-sector partnerships to bring together water and health issues is Conservation International, which has neatly summed up the need for integration as Life does not happen in sectors. When we talked to our development partners, the things people are really concerned about are basic services. So three years ago, we started working with the WWF and began to reach out to WASH Advocates and World Vision to

make links to see if there was common ground between us, said Janet Edmond of Conservation International citing as an example of the integration of WASH and conservation, the Nosivolo Project in Madagascar. Merri Weinger of USAID then gave a concrete example of how sectors overlap through a project in Bangladesh where WASH, diarrhoea and undernutrition are inextricably linked. The project is part of the Alive And Thrive initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to reduce stunting in children. In Bangladesh, 43 percent of children under five are stunted and Weinger said working with mothers there on handwashing and nutrition had identified interventions that could both reduce diarrhoea as well as nutrition. The project had targeted children between six and 24 months as this is the period where stunting occurs. The interventions were the promotion of handwashing stations with soap which are near food preparation and feeding areas, as well as counselling and demonstration of feeding of food in the right quantities at the right frequency, said Weinger. While we have no magic bullet, these are promising examples of water inclusive interventions which can reduce malnutrition and diarrhoea.

I think all the actors have a responsibility to understand the water scarcity problem equally and to define the action needed in a fair way. We are working with farmers as our key partners on this but also we are cooperating with other research organisations and with government. Kindie Getnet, IWMI, Ethiopia.

We launched a publication here for the 2030 Water Resources Group which is itself a partnership between the public and private sector and NGOs. I think there is a great opportunity for that sort of collaboration to continue in the future. Mark Tindale, Arup, UK.

This is the best sort of forum for cooperating on water. We are here for the Stockholm Junior Water Prize and young people at high school level can come here and see what other countries are doing and expand their awareness. Usa Jeenjenkit, National Science High School, Thailand.

I think it is really important people come together and this conference in Stockholm each year allows people to bring their ideas and collaborate. We work a lot in southeast Asia and with the Pacific Islands in terms of river management and a lot of companies and organisations can learn from what we do and implement it. Neetu Mysore, Australian National University, Australia.

Uganda has been left behind as most of the international organisations are working in the north. International organisations need to cooperate and work with the local NGOs at the grassroots level especially in Uganda. Micheal Kuteesa, Mitukula Womens Development Association, Uganda.

We need to find ways to exchange ideas between countries and to be exposed to modern technologies in the water sector. We have been trying to meet the 2015 MDGs but we need to bring private participation into the water sector. Sunmbo Owolabi, Oyo State Ministry of Water Resources, Nigeria.

September 05, 2013

World Water Week Daily Page 4

World Water Day 2014 to focus on the water-energy nexus

Bert Diphoorn, UN-Water

Panellists spoke of the need for the water and energy sectors to cooperate

At the UN-Water seminar yesterday, it was announced that World Water Day 2014 will focus on the issues of water and energy. The topic will also be the theme for the 2014 World Water Week in Stockholm, as well as for the 5th edition of the World Water Development report, which will be published next year. World Water Day is a very important event for UN-Water and is an area where we have made tremendous progress over the years, said Bert Diphoorn, UN-Water Vice-Chair. We celebrate World Water Day in a specific city, which will be Tokyo next year, but it is also celebrated in cities all over the world.

The theme of water and energy is especially significant because the two sectors are closely interlinked and interdependent. Energy generation and transmission requires the utilisation of water resources, particularly for hydroelectric, nuclear and thermal energy sources. It is vital for the water and energy sectors to understand and cooperate with each other to enable a more sustainable future, said Diphoorn. Recent interest in biofuels also creates an incremental demand on water resources. The most recent World Water Development Report (2012) predicts that even a nominal increase in biofuel demand (for

instance 5 percent for road transport by 2030, as predicted by the International Energy Agency) could push up demand by as much as 20 percent for water used for agriculture worldwide. Additionally, biofuel production is linked to increases in water pollution through greater use of fertilisers and agricultural chemicals. The key objective for next years World Water Day is raising awareness of the waterenergy inter-linkages, said Zafar Adeel of the United Nations University, Canada. It is essential to demonstrate to decision makers in the energy sector and water domain that linked solutions can achieve greater economic and social impacts.

Senior panellists warn youth not to repeat their mistakes

With questions from Twitter and from delegates in the room, an intergenerational panel yesterday debated the water challenges that all generations face and the role of cooperation in finding solutions. With regard to the food-energy-water nexus, senior members of the panel argued that this should be expanded to include lifestyle and agricultural practices. In my part of the country [India], the Maharashtra region, we shouldnt be growing sugar cane in a drought-affected area, said Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment, India, and 2005 SWP Laureate. We use huge amounts of energy for it and then we also wonder why we have an obesity problem. The inefficient use of subsidies in agriculture was a facet of the current market that youth panellists were urged to change. We are in Europe, birthplace of the common agricultural policy which I think actually sucks, said Narain. The global agricultural subsidy system is pushing farmers in Africa and Asia in the wrong direction towards expensive dry land farming and grain-fed agriculture. A move back to a time when agriculture took into account nature and the local environment was also needed. Senior panellists urged everyone to take note of the comments of this years Stockholm Water Prize Laureate, Dr Peter Morgan, on the need to use nature more effectively in finding water and sanitation solutions. Let nature teach us about the solutions, said Dr Roberto Lenton of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska, USA. We can easily look around and see examples everywhere, just as Dr Morgan has in his findings. One area that many water professionals are to be blamed for is creating unnecessary jargon. Generating applause from the

Sunita Narain, Centre for Science and Environment

audience, Narain warned the youth delegates not to fall into the same trap as her generation. Five years ago everyone talked about IWRM but I never knew what that meant, Narain said. Dont let this world become something in which you keep discovering new terms every five years which mean the same thing. Thats what we need to stop doing.

Stockholm Water Front World Water Week Daily

Publisher: Torgny Holmgren, Executive Director, SIWI. Editorial Staff: Britt-Louise Andersson, Victoria Engstrand-Neacsu. PFD Publications Ltd: Jonathan Andrews, Richard Forster, Caroline Fort, Nick Michell. Photo: Thomas Henrikson, Cecilia sterberg, Exray. Circulation: 1,200. www.siwi.org.