John JamesA LEADING think-tank has issued a call for a post-2015 development target aimed at making better use of scarce water resources, realising the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, and increasing resilience to droughts and floods by 2030.
The appeal, from the Stockholm International Water Institute, came after a week of discussions and consultations with aid agencies, development organizations and water experts on how to build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set a 2015 target to improve access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
“The MDGs have provided an incredible focus for the international development agenda and served as a rallying cry at a time support for international goals was waning,” said Michel Jarraud, chair of UN-Water. “Water-related challenges hit the poor the hardest – this is where we should focus our efforts. We now need to build on what we already have and how to make the next goals even better.”
This issue was one of the key topics of debate at the World Water Week, an event that winds up today in Stockholm. The next 12 months are seen as essential to securing a target for water and sanitation that will help guide relief and development efforts for the next 15 years.
Yet, despite positive indications from the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, a dedicated water/sanitation target is not guaranteed; water experts fear years of difficulty if the process is botched, and there were signs at last year’s Rio+20 summit that world leaders may be lacking enthusiasm for new water pledges.
“Not having a water goal will only complicate our job of keeping water very high on the public agenda,” said Bart Devos from the World Youth Parliament for Water (WYPW).
Mixed MDG outcomes
Since the MDG target baseline year 1990, at least two billion people have gained access to a source of improved drinking water. But nearly 800 million are still left out; 40 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Not having a water goal will only complicate our job of keeping water very high on the public agenda.
“It [the MDG water target] was useful because it made governments think about what they were doing and how well they were doing. But it also went through a couple of hiccups, which were quite educative,” Mike Muller, from the University of Witwatersrand’s School of Public and Development Management, told IRIN.
“When ministers thought that all they had to do was to put pipes in the ground and taps on the end of them, they focused on infrastructure provision, and they were able to say ‘We’ve provided infrastructure for millions of people’. There was just one problem in many cases – the infrastructure didn’t work.”
Indicators were later tweaked to try to make sure only water services that worked were counted.
The global water target was achieved five years early in 2010 but sanitation has remained a tougher objective; 2.5 billion people still lack access to improved sanitation facilities. Diarrhoea is the second biggest cause of death in many developing countries, and 1.1 billion people are relieving themselves in the open.
The challenge of sanitation is likely to increase as urban populations rise; the World Bank estimates that 70 percent of China’s population will be in towns and cities by 2030.
The MDG water and sanitation target helped stimulate action by countries, donors and agencies; it was aspirational and could be measured and communicated.
What they were less strong on was tackling inequality, which campaigners hope will be more strongly emphasized in the post-2015 targets, dubbed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But that may be a harder challenge, particularly with universal water and sanitation targets that mask regional variations.
Amanda Marlin from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) however says they should not just aim for easy targets.
“The MDGs have helped us, but we want to do better post-2015. We don’t want to just go for the low-hanging fruit, just trying to bring down numbers, and that the hardest to reach are left out again and again.”
What to aim for
Unlike the development of the MDG targets, devising the SDGs has involved a wide-ranging and sometimes bewildering consultation process, which has left room for lobbying and comments from all parts of the sector.
Though all see water and sanitation as basic issues, there are a variety of views about the best strategy to embrace.
Many, including those behind today’s Stockholm Statement, argue for a stand-alone or dedicated goal aiming at a variety of targets. Popular suggestions include a target to end open defecation and a target for universal access to water and sanitation.
And there is a desire to move beyond quantity to look at quality – how safe is the water, is it free from pollution, and do the toilets that were built still function? Should there be a target for installed water and sanitation facilities in schools and health centres? Should there be an equality element?
“We need convincing targets, and we need [to see] that they are based on measurable indicators. We are not there yet. A lot of people are proposing too many targets, far too many,” said Gérard Payen, from the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB).
Other suggestions include aiming for fresh water withdrawals to match what is sustainable to supply, and some sort of goals on handwashing and menstrual hygiene.
For each target, there needs to be a way to work out whether the objective was reached, a condition that makes some targets less workable. Measuring the wrong proxy indicator could lead to unintended or even negative results.
If the water community does not go into discussions early next year with one voice, Muller worries, they may end up with a result that satisfies no one.
“It’d be much better if we went in with a really well-constructed set of goals. Otherwise, what happens – and that’s what happened with the MDGs – is you go with a huge shopping list, it doesn’t make sense, they all agree that there’s got to be a goal, and somebody kind of cooks it up late at night, and it’s a bad compromise,” said Muller.
Go it alone?
