Patrick Moriarty, CEO of IRC (credit IRC)
There has been growing recognition in recent years that improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene provision are best secured by using a systems-based approach. Patrick Moriarty makes the case for wider progress.
It is clear that making sure every man, woman and child on the planet has a safe source of water and a safely managed toilet by 2030 will require a monumental global effort. This is the case despite the international community’s support for water and sanitation over many years achieving mixed results. In recent years, this has fed a growing belief in the need for a new approach – an approach known as WASH systems strengthening.
The acronym WASH – water, sanitation and hygiene – encapsulates a main element of good hygiene practice. Broadly speaking, the group of people and organisations most comfortable with using WASH to describe their ‘sector’ and work are those focused outside of the more formal, mainstream public utility provision of drinking water and sanitation services. Typically, these organisations work in rural areas, smaller towns and informal settlements. The WASH systems agenda does have things to say to the utility end of service provision, but it has much more to say to the informal world of WASH.
The WASH systems agenda has grown out of concern that, despite reasonable progress under the Millennium Development Goals, something is not really working in WASH. Headline figures for coverage are largely moving in the right direction, but they are doing so too slowly – and the quality and sustainability of the services delivered are too often inadequate. A widely shared guesstimate has around a third of water supply infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa not working at any given time. More detailed research paints a bleaker picture still, with norms for reliability, ease of access and, especially, quality at point of use too often missed. This means that, in practice, the majority of people living in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to safe or adequate water or sanitation, and so are deprived of their human rights.
In practice, the majority of people living in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to safe or adequate water or sanitation
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There has been growing recognition in recent years that improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene provision are best secured by using a systems-based approach. Patrick Moriarty makes the case for wider progress.It is clear that making sure every man, woman and child on the planet has a safe source of water and a safely managed toilet by 2030 will require a monumental global effort. This is the case despite the international community’s support for water and sanitation over many years achieving mixed results. In recent years, this has fed a growing belief in the need for a new approach – an approach known as WASH systems strengthening.
The acronym WASH – water, sanitation and hygiene – encapsulates a main element of good hygiene practice. Broadly speaking, the group of people and organisations most comfortable with using WASH to describe their ‘sector’ and work are those focused outside of the more formal, mainstream public utility provision of drinking water and sanitation services. Typically, these organisations work in rural areas, smaller towns and informal settlements. The WASH systems agenda does have things to say to the utility end of service provision, but it has much more to say to the informal world of WASH.
The WASH systems agenda has grown out of concern that, despite reasonable progress under the Millennium Development Goals, something is not really working in WASH. Headline figures for coverage are largely moving in the right direction, but they are doing so too slowly – and the quality and sustainability of the services delivered are too often inadequate. A widely shared guesstimate has around a third of water supply infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa not working at any given time. More detailed research paints a bleaker picture still, with norms for reliability, ease of access and, especially, quality at point of use too often missed. This means that, in practice, the majority of people living in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to safe or adequate water or sanitation, and so are deprived of their human rights.
In practice, the majority of people living in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to safe or adequate water or sanitation
[FOR MORE...]
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