Access to water and sanitation are basic needs. Source: © Dominic Sansoni / World Bank
Water and sanitation are essential for human security and development and for pro-poor growth. Yet more than one billion people lack access to clean water, and 2.5 billion people lack access to proper sanitation. MDG7 requires a halving of the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation between 1990 and 2015. The world is just about on track for the water target, but sanitation remains the poor cousin, lagging behind in attention and funding. 2008, the International Year of Sanitation, aims to move this issue up the development agenda.
ODI believes that the achievement of the MDG7 targets for water and sanitation requires effective governance and sufficient resources, backed by social and political environments that enable progress. Its work in this area is led by the Water Policy Programme, which examines water and sanitation related resource management issues from a range of perspectives: governance, environment and poverty reduction.
ODI resources on this theme cover the following areas:
show details hide details
The Davos Question: Delivering on the International Year of Sanitation
Peter Newborne, of the Overseas Development Institute, offers his answer to the Davos Question, highlighting the importance on achieving sanitation for all, a goal of the UN's International Year of Sanitation.
ODI Audiovisual - Video blog
-
January 2008
Peter Newborne
|
| |
show details hide details
Why the International Year of Sanitation is no matter for prudery
With the declaration of the International Year of Sanitation by UN, Peter Newborne highlights why we can no longer afford to be coy about the S-word. He argues for changing the mindset of politicans and other agents for change, for any hope of meeting the MDG's on sanitation.
ODI Online - Blog
-
November 2007
Peter Newborne
|
| |
show details hide details
Mapping for better accountability in service delivery
This paper assesses WaterAid’s work in mapping water supply and sanitation delivery to the poor, finding that mapping can both improve the planning and delivery of services, and increase the public accountability of service delivery.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
29
-
November 2007
Katharina Welle
|
| |
show details hide details
Sanitation and hygiene: Grounding the HDR call for a global action plan
(PDF, 80kb)
'Can increased global recognition and funding for sanitation and hygiene be translated into effective action on the ground if the lessons of previous policy failures are inadequately learnt?'
ODI Publications - Opinion
77
-
January 2007
Katharina Welle
|
| |
show details hide details
Sanitation and Hygiene: knocking on new doors
(PDF, 316kb)
Sanitation and hygiene specialists should rethink key messages and take them beyond just water circles, to make new alliances, if poor households in developing countries are to be better served.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
13
-
December 2006
Peter Newborne and Katharina Welle
|
| |
| Water Resources Management
|
| |
show details hide details
Practical approaches to transboundary water benefit sharing
Download | Purchase from the ODI Bookshop
This paper considers practical mechanisms for moving towards an operationalisation of benefit sharing with regard to water resources. The focus is on steps for putting the concept into practice and the point of departure is lessons learned from existing cooperative efforts. In addition to case studies, the paper draws on literature from a wide array of disciplines, including economics, international relations, and political science. Written from the perspective of an economist, it attempts to demonstrate the utility of appealing to this field as one potential means of injecting some degree of objectivity into what is otherwise a highly political exercise.
ISBN: 978 0 85003 877 4
ODI Publications - Working Paper
292
-
July 2008
Halla Qaddumi
|
| |
show details hide details
Time to get things done in the water sector? A little less conversation...
Though talk of the urgency of achieving Millennium Development Goals targets on water supply and sanitation is not new, there was a definite sense of drive to get things done at the last World Water Week in Stockholm (12-18 August 2007). Josephine Tucker reflects on proceedings of the World Water Week.
ODI Online - Blog
-
July 2007
Josephine Tucker
|
| |
show details hide details
Beyond the UNDP Human Development Report 2006
The 2006 UNDP Human Development Report (HDR), entitled ‘Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and Global Water Crisis’ is now available. While many of the individual issues and arguments presented will already be familiar to water sector experts, the report cleverly draws together the wealth of existing knowledge, lays bare the challenges faced and sets them within a much wider context. Tom Slaymaker summarises the report and suggests success will be determined by the reports' ability to spur the water sector to meeting those challenges.
ODI Online - Blog
-
November 2006
Tom Slaymaker
|
| |
show details hide details
Water: Sharing works best
(PDF, 96kb)
'The guiding principle of the Nile Basin Initiative is to look beyond national boundaries to ways of optimising and sharing equitably the benefits available to all through better water management, allocation and use.'
ODI Publications - Opinion
53
-
September 2005
Alan Nicol
|
| |
show details hide details
Right to Water: Legal Forms, Political Channels
(PDF, 92kb)
Discussions of the human right to water have been mixed with argument over private versus public services and proand anti- 'commodification' of water. This paper analyses the three principal legal forms of a right to water – respectively, as a human right, contractual right and property right – to understand the divergences in opinions.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
-
July 2004
Peter Newborne
|
| |
show details hide details
From Plan to Action: Water Supply and Sanitation for the Poor in Africa
(PDF, 118kb)
Discusses the results of research in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which investigated key stages along the ‘journey’ from Water Supply and Sanitation (‘WSS’ or ‘WatSan’) ‘allocations’ in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to budget allocations and actual expenditure on sector outputs. The research has observed the kind of events or factors which may disrupt and delay the flow of funds and their translation into poverty reduction outcomes.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
-
April 2004
Peter Newborne, Tom Slaymaker, Tim Williamson, Belinda Calaguas and Mary O’Connell
|
| |
show details hide details
Secure Water? poverty, livelihoods an demand-responsive approaches
Investigates whether a Demand-Responsive Approach (DRA), which brings water users into the process of selecting, implementing and, ultimately, financing the long term delivery of water services, can be made to address broader poverty reduction concerns.
ODI Specialist Series - Water Policy Programme Briefing
4
-
January 2003
Alan Nicol and Tom Slaymaker
|
| |
show details hide details
The 'Water Crisis': Faultlines in Global Debates
(PDF, 88kb)
Looks at the global 'water crisis', as it is often labelled, where increasing pressure on world water resources are felt as global population grows and demand for water rises. The 'crisis' is a major feature of the development landscape. International meetings regularly focus on images of empty reservoirs, overflowing sewers, the poor carrying water over long distances, and foaming, polluted rivers. These images help to raise concern over the lack of access to clean water and the future means to address availability, but also point to faultlines between different approaches to tackling the issues. This briefing investigates these faultlines.
ODI Specialist Series - Water Policy Programme Briefing
1
-
July 2002
Alan Nicol and Tom Slaymaker
|
| |
show details hide details
Sustainable Use of Soil and Water: Links with Food Security
(PDF, 54kb)
One of four briefing papers on key issues in food security, produced by a team of food security and rural development specialists coordinated by ODI. They aimed to brief DFID on key recent debates and international best practice in advance of the Committee on World Food Security, held at FAO, Rome, May 2001. This paper looks at how to deliver the sustainable increases in food production that are critical for achieving food security for growing populations in many developing countries.
ODI Specialist Series - Food Security Briefing
4
-
February 2002
Tom Slaymaker
|
| |
show details hide details
Adopting a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to Water Projects: Policy and Practical Implications
(PDF, 258kB)
This paper has three elements. The first identifies the pre-eminence of a health-based view within the water and sanitation sector. This view emphasises the health impacts of improving access to supplies of clean drinking water and better sanitation. It then assesses the relevance of this view to wider debates on how to achieve supply sustainability by adopting demand-responsive approaches (DRA) and by shifting the emphasis to the principle of ‘consumer pays’. The paper argues that an overemphasis on health impacts does not fit well with DRA, which is being increasingly advocated by agencies at an international level. Thus, in order to encourage demand for water services in particular, and to ensure that communities can be engaged in self-financing their development, greater attention has to be paid to the role of water within wider household livelihood strategies – and livelihood impacts should become a major focus of interventions.
ISBN: 0 85003 466 3
ODI Publications - Working Paper
133
-
April 2000
Alan Nicol
|
| |
show details hide details
Why is Harmonisation and Alignment difficult for donors? Lessons from the water sector
• The Harmonisation and Alignment (H&A) agenda offers important opportunities for the water sector.
• The sector’s progress towards H&A remains piecemeal – with substantial differences between countries and within the water supply, water resources management and sanitation sub-sectors.
• Future efforts in H&A need to reach down to decentralised levels of government, in tandem with strengthening implementation capacity.
ODI Publications - Project Briefing
6
-
January 2008
Katharina Welle, Alan Nicol and Frank van Steenbergen
|
| |
show details hide details
Rethinking governance in water services
Download | Purchase from the ODI Bookshop
The purpose of this working paper, a think piece on governance in water services, is twofold. First, it aims to provide a basis for discussion and debate as to how the Department for International Development (DFID) should improve its approach to governance in water services. Second, it aims to develop a more comprehensive and structured approach to the analysis and the development of governance in water services by applying DFID’s current governance thinking at the sector level. The paper therefore draws on internal DFID governance thinking, terminology and approaches and is, in this first version, targeted primarily at a DFID audience interested in governance, basic services and water.
ISBN: 978 0 85003 857 6
ODI Publications - Working Paper
284
-
December 2007
Janelle Plummer and Tom Slaymaker
|
| |
show details hide details
Mapping for better accountability in service delivery
This paper assesses WaterAid’s work in mapping water supply and sanitation delivery to the poor, finding that mapping can both improve the planning and delivery of services, and increase the public accountability of service delivery.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
29
-
November 2007
Katharina Welle
|
| |
show details hide details
Water and GATS: Lots of smoke but where exactly is the fire?
(PDF, 106kb)
'The prospect of developing countries making commitments on trade in water services under the General Agreement of Trade in Services has given rise to considerable controversy. Subsequent debates have revealed a great deal of confusion and have tended to produce a lot of misleading 'smoke' which makes it very difficult to see where the real 'fire' might be.'
ODI Publications - Opinion
62
-
December 2005
Tom Slaymaker, Peter Newborne, Sven Grimm and Dirk Willem te Velde
|
| |
show details hide details
Water and the GATS: Mapping the Trade - Development Interface
(PDF, 180kb)
Considerable debate has arisen around the prospect of developing countries committing to the application of rules under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to water services. Views tend to be polarised around a pro-trade ‘ versus' pro-development axis. A key question is whether ‘ pro-trade' and 'pro-development', and specifically ‘pro-poor, objectives of policy in relation to water supply and sanitation (WSS) are consistent and coherent? If pro-trade and pro-development objectives are to be compatible and convergent in relation to WSS, it must be possible at a national level to liberalise the market according to GATS principles and to regulate so as to secure (poor) citizens' access. But is that actually the case? And do GATS procedures and rules allow for flexibility?
There has been little detailed empirical study of how the GATS-development relationship operates in practice, and the water sector provides a topical example with which to consider the relationship between the above twin goals. ODI has recently undertaken studies (a collaboration between ODI's Water Policy Programme and International Economic Development Group) in Mexico, South Africa and Senegal where existing markets in urban areas offer opportunity for analysis of ‘live' examples of services liberalisation in the water sector.The studies ‘mapped' the trade-development interface and showed how the inclusion of water services under GATS might affect the achievement of development goals, particularly for developing countries.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
-
October 2005
Peter Newborne and Tom Slaymaker
|
| |
show details hide details
Towards better integration of water and sanitation in PRSPs in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from Uganda, Malawi and Zambia
(PDF, 560kb)
This brief examines why the Water and Sanitation Sector (WSS) has not fared well in Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSPs) processes in Africa. Based on a study commissioned by the Water and Sanitation Program–Africa, the paper analyzes the integration of WSS in PRSPs in three Sub- Saharan African countries – Uganda, Zambia and Malawi – and compares this to generic experiences in Education and Health sectors. It provides recommendations on how WSS actors can better align themselves towards PRSP process and take actions to help the sector gain priority in PRSP and budget processes.
ODI Specialist Series - Water Policy Programme Briefing
5
-
November 2004
Tim Williamson, Tom Slaymaker and Peter Newborne
|
| |
show details hide details
From Plan to Action: Water Supply and Sanitation for the Poor in Africa
(PDF, 118kb)
Discusses the results of research in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which investigated key stages along the ‘journey’ from Water Supply and Sanitation (‘WSS’ or ‘WatSan’) ‘allocations’ in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to budget allocations and actual expenditure on sector outputs. The research has observed the kind of events or factors which may disrupt and delay the flow of funds and their translation into poverty reduction outcomes.
ODI Publications - Briefing Paper
-
April 2004
Peter Newborne, Tom Slaymaker, Tim Williamson, Belinda Calaguas and Mary O’Connell
|
| |
show details hide details
Financing Transboundary Water Management
(PDF, 49kb)
Over 40% of the world’s population lives within transboundary basins and aquifers, making the successful management of this resource central to poverty reduction, sustainable development of the environment and long-term political stability, To date, financing for transboundary management has been limited and dispersed. This policy brief assesses the current financing situation and makes a case for increasing the financing of transboundary water management processes. This includes a focus on innovative financing options appropriate to particular stages in the management process and an analysis of appropriate roles for donors and national governments to take at particular stages.
ODI Specialist Series - Water Policy Programme Briefing
2
-
July 2002
Alan Nicol, Frank van Steenbergen and Dirk Willem te Velde
|
| |
show details hide details
Poverty Reduction and Water: 'Watsan and PRSPs' in sub-Saharan Africa
(PDF, 52kb)
Despite the accepted importance of water supply and sanitation concerns, preliminary analysis of emerging Poverty Strategy Reduction Papers (PRSPs) in sub-Saharan Africa indicated that these concerns have not been adequately reflected. This policy brief aims to contribute to debate on water and poverty reduction, and to strengthening of the water elements in PRSs. It outlines key issues in relation to water and poverty: first, the intended functions of PRSPs, secondly, the scope of the water 'sector' as related to PRSPs, thirdly, the application of sustainable livelihoods principles to national poverty reduction planning and, fourthly, organisational challenges for countries involved in PRS processes.
ODI Specialist Series - Water Policy Programme Briefing
3
-
July 2002
Peter Newborne, Tom Slaymaker and Belinda Calaguas
|
| |
show details hide details
Money into Water, Water into Money
Providing access to clean water and better sanitation for the poor is a global concern. But access alone is insufficient to reduce poverty. Based on RiPPLE research programme theme of Money into Water, Water into Money, this film looks at improved access and poverty reduction in both rural and urban environments in Ethiopia. Understanding links between availability, access and use of water and sanitation is crucial to the challenge of achieving pro-poor economic growth.
ODI Audiovisual - Film
-
June 2007
Alan Nicol and the ODI Water Policy Programme
|
| |
show details hide details
SecureWater
The SecureWater film detailes the linkages between water, livelihoods and poverty in Kenya, India and Sri Lanka. Using discussions with poor households, community leaders and key interveners in a mixture of urban and rural settings, the film highlights the nature of the challenges facing poor people, yet provides positive images of communities trying to improve their access to water and sanitation in support of their livelihoods.
ODI Audiovisual - Film
-
January 2004
ODI Water Policy Programme
|
| |
|
