Distinguishing rhetoric from reality: the search for common ground in water and sanitation

As water becomes increasingly scarce, should we focus on controlling demand or augmenting supply? Can the split between public and private management of water be resolved? Should water be reserved for food production or can food security be guaranteed through trade? How should developing countries adjust their economies in response to water stress?

A paper from the Overseas Development Institute’s Water Policy Programme sets out the key issues shaping the global debates over water and sanitation. It argues the need for an explicit pro-poor agenda to support livelihoods strategies. Water and sanitation interventions must be grounded in wider resource management and poverty reduction strategies.

The challenges ahead of us are enormous:

• On current population growth projections, by 2025 an additional 3.1 billion people will need access to water and 4.9 billion to sanitation.
• By 2025 we will have to find an additional 22 per cent of primary water to meet future food needs.
• Already some 30 countries are considered water­-stressed and 20 face absolute water scarcity: by 2025 a third of the world’s population – some two billion people – will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.
• Disparity in service levels between rural and urban areas is getting worse.
• Global warming, and the increased incidence of extreme weather events in already vulnerable regions, is likely to make precipitation more erratic and increase food insecurity.
• Overcoming the crisis of under-provision for domestic, industrial and agricultural uses will require an annual investment of US $180 billion over and above the existing expenditure of some US $75 billion.

Where are these funds to come from? While private investment is booming, it is geographically skewed. There is only the minimal amount of private money going into water supply in parts of Africa and Asia, where the needs are greatest. In many regions the capacity of the private sector to fill the funding gap simply does not exist.

How can we reconcile the idea of government as a guarantor of basic service delivery, social equity and basic rights to resources with market-based approaches that emphasise cost-recovery and the long-term financial sustainability of supplies?

The paper challenges the concepts which have become identified with the focus on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). This takes the hydrological basin as a starting point for water management, from which it constructs a version of ‘good governance’ of water, based on notions of decentralisation, user participation and demand management.

International support for this agenda requires:

• further reinforcement of the now well-established concepts of demand-based development and user-financing of services
• greater involvement of local political actors whose support is critical to ensuring the practical success of policy processes
• awareness raising to improve understanding of water-livelihoods linkages and to facilitate the greater participation of poor people in new decision-making bodies
• increased co-operation between riparians (situated on the banks of a river) to address issues of equity and resource management: the Nile Basin Initiative could provide a model of how to improve relations between states, promote basin-­wide socio-economic development and tackle poverty
• consolidation of networks and the disparate international institutions and initiatives working on transboundary water resources
• moving away from target-driven to process-led and environment-enabling approaches.

Source(s):
‘The “Water Crisis”: faultlines in global debates’, Briefing Paper, Water Policy Programme, Overseas Development Institute, by Alan Nicol, August 2002 Full document.

Funded by: ODI

id21 Research Highlight: 20 August 2003

Further Information:
Water Policy Programme
Overseas Development Institute
111 Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7JD
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7922 0300
Fax: +44 (0)20 7922 0399
Contact the contributor: a.nicol@odi.org.uk

Water Policy Programme, ODI, UK

Other related links:
'The commodification of water: leaving us high and dry?'

'Water without frontiers: improved management of transboundary water resources'

'Water and sanitation goals: Is progress in the pipeline?' Insights #45

See id21's links on water and sanitation

'Pro-poor regulation of water and sanitation: the role of tri-sector partnerships'

'Access for all: the delivery of water and sanitation in urban Bangladesh'