Rethinking basic needs: the multiple roles and benefits of WATSAN

Safe and secure water is essential to poor people's survival and health, but meeting basic needs is not just about health and hygiene, nor do people always see clean water as their most pressing need. Providing water security can play a wider role in poverty reduction and improving livelihoods. Improved domestic water supplies and improved institutions surrounding them bring multiple benefits: they reduce sickness, save time, generate income, enhance food security, strengthen local organisations and build cooperation between people.

"Before the construction of the water project, the women hauled water to the houses from waterfalls or from small springs. It was used for food preparation, drinking and bathing the young children, as well as for the family gardens close to the house and for the domestic animals: horses, cows, chickens and pigs. To wash the clothes, the women had to go to the river. The older children, adolescents and adults would go to the river to bathe, or else use the waterfalls. After the construction of the system, the water from the system was used for drinking but also for washing and bathing, for the family gardens, domestic animals and sometimes for coffee processing". (Schouten and Moriarty, 2003)

Until recently, the multiple benefits of domestic water supplies had not received as much attention as they deserved. The traditional view of domestic water as largely a 'public health' benefit persisted even beyond the 1980s when international agencies continued to focus on 'clean drinking water and adequate sanitation' as a key right and development goal.

Now a broader range of non-health benefits have started to be recognised and targeted in an increasing number of studies and reports. Linkages between water and livelihoods have been explored in a series of meetings and initiatives (Box 1). A recent evaluation by WaterAid - an NGO specialising in domestic water supply and sanitation (WATSAN) - of some of their older water supply projects, found that a much wider range of benefits were reported by beneficiaries than had been expected or targeted at inception.

Box 1 Some milestones in thinking on water and livelihoods

An increasing number of meetings and workshops since the late -1990s have developed thinking on relationships between water and livelihoods. Some of these included:

• The 'water and livelihoods' workshop in Harare in 1997 organised by Save-the-Children (Nicol, 1998)
• DFID water and livelihoods seminar in 2001 (reported in Waterlines special issue)
• A workshop on ;livelihoods, water resources and WATSAN' at the 27th WEDC Conference, in Lusaka in 2001 (Moriarty, 2001)
• The 'Water and Livelihoods: the linkages between access and livelihood outcomes' seminar in 2002 organised by DFID in London (Allen & Sattaur, 2002)
• An international symposium held in Johannesburg in 2003 on 'water, poverty and productive uses of water at the household level' (Butterworth et al., 2003)