WASHCost research teams identify key components for service ‘ladders’

The WASHCost project is gearing up for a massive effort in 2010 to address key cost issues to improve service delivery on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). A meeting of the research teams from Burkina Faso, Ghana, India and Mozambique was held in Maputo, Mozambique, from 2-7 November 2009 together with the Netherlands team based in the Hague. The meeting set plans for collecting data in hundreds of communities and for embedding WASHCost in the planning and budgeting processes within countries and internationally.

Service ladders for water and sanitation

The WASHCost team made significant gains addressing problems that obscure the link between costs and service delivery. It agreed the outlines for water and sanitation ‘ladders’ to assess levels of service within countries, linked to the service level ‘norms’ adopted by Governments. Separate service ladders for water and for sanitation will be published in early 2010.

Catarina Fonseca, WASHCost Project director, said: “This was a special research meeting. This project is not only about collecting costs it is also about the services provided and we finally managed to get that part of the puzzle completed.”

Research protocol to be published in early 2010

The full WASHCost research protocol will be published in early 2010, detailing research questions and sampling methods. Country teams will be sampling households in hundreds of villages and peri-urban areas to identify the options that people have for water and sanitation, the cost drivers that affect those options and how and why households and governance bodies make their decisions.

WASHCost is focusing on increasing understanding of the life-cycle costs approach and how information is used. Country teams are embedding WASHCost into decision making at country level (state level in India) and developing ‘learning spaces’ where all those involved in WASH issues share their experiences and learn from each other.

An internal monitoring programme has been adopted to track how well WASHCost is doing in influencing others to adopt a life-cycle unit cost approach, how well the project is being embedded and how well it is being managed.

The next global meeting of WASHCost teams will be in Ghana in June 2010, followed by a public symposium at IRC in the Netherlands in November 2010 on the financing of decentralised WASH services.

The full article with interviews is available on the WASHCost website.

Author: Peter McIntyre