Presentation from the 2014 World Water Week in Stockholm

Tools for asset management and beyond Lessons from the 5 th WASH sustainability forum Patrick Moriarty 2 nd September 2014 Supporting water sanitation and hygiene services for life

Index Background Water Sanitation Hygiene Emerging trends Preliminary recommendations Personal reflections link to Beyond Asset Management session

Background - 5 th Forum - Bringing together (NGO) practitioners; policy makers and funders mainly from the USA and Europe - Initially driven by concerns on sustainability of NGO programmes - Subsequently moved from a focus on understanding sustainability in general, to tools and approaches to address it - Focus of 2014 forum: tools - Initially on water increasingly on sanitation and hygiene too - Organised by SustainableWASH.org network Photo : Felix Kalkman

Water - Sustainability of benefits of service (service level), and of factors affecting it at different institutional levels - Tools for: Assessing sustainability comprehensively; Focusing in on a certain aspects of sustainability, e.g. finance; Monitoring and improving service delivery, e.g. through asset management; Assessing institutional performance - Tools findings: By far the largest both in number and type of tools Comprehensive tools for broader advocacy; more focused one allowed direct corrective actions, but may miss the bigger picture Generally the costs of developing and applying these tools are not known

Sanitation - A definition of sustainability focused on levels of services delivered to beneficiaries over time - Tools for: Sector analysis; Planning; Sustainability scoring - Tools findings Few tools focused specifically on sanitation Sustainability of sanitation is a combination of hardware and behavior change - which are more difficult to monitor and maintain sustainability. Cost of developing and applying tools not systematically captured; where measured between $1k to $10k and are generally financed by external organisations Tools aimed at advocacy purposes and influencing policy

Hygiene - For hygiene - sustainability means sustaining consistent and correct practice or behaviour change - Determinants such as social norms, policies, and presence of enabling technologies are the primary factors required to sustain behaviours. - Tools: In general far fewer hygiene specific tools developed than water or sanitation. Reflecting hygiene s relative lack of emphasis in WASH Much to learn from more advanced sectors: health, education Cost of meaningful longitudinal monitoring of behaviour change Photo : Felix Kalkman

Emerging trends Most tools are freely available in the public domain - documentation on adaptation, application and interpretation of results is not Tools presented were, generally, project or organisation specific. Few examples were institutionalized within government from the outside (SIASAR an exception) Challenges in the application of tools: balance between complexity and simplicity; rigour and cost; strategic oversight and operationality. Many more tools for national than local level. Gap between national and global level. Generally, costs of developing and applying the tools not monitored & impacts on the sustainability of interventions not be identified.

Preliminary recommendations Better documentation of tools will aid uptake and application Many commonalities between tools ( not invented here syndrome?): need to continue sharing particularly indicators and methodologies for collecting and analyzing data. Increasing flow of monitoring data calls for shared standards and open data More government engagement- less new tools, but strengthen government in using what exists, and better work within government in the development and application of new tools

Toward asset management and beyond Asset management or its lack actually area of weakness in (rural) WASH. Asset management tools are badly needed! So: towards asset management and beyond Sector analysis tools are essential but scary you may identify missing bottles, rather than bottlenecks. Essential to overcome the continued resistance to understanding WASH as a system but need to work alongside tools that focus on smaller parts of the puzzle (such as asset management) Still too little attention to the $: rural WASH still tending to avoid confronting the money issue (WFP s at what cost an exception). Tools for ensuring more and better public finance are essential: still too much of a tendency to ignore this elephant in the room

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