Why Communication?

The Water and Sanitation Sector has an ambitious aim; striving to offer every community, in every country on earth, the opportunity for safe water and sanitation. This immense human challenge is not simply technological. It demands a change in the orientation of the whole sector.

The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD) which ended in 1990 brought safe water and sanitation to 2.1 billion people and scored impressive technological advances, but ended with the job half done. The situation today is that an unacceptable number of people in developing countries still have no access to safe water and proper sanitation, and a large number of people choose not to use the facilities built for them. Faced with increasing populations, higher levels of pollution and resources which are stagnant or falling, the sector has the task of bringing the benefits of safe water and sanitation to another 2.9 billion people.

Achieving success on this scale means changing the way that people think and act. The sector must develop new ways of working so that policy makers, the water and sanitation sector, and users work towards common goals.

There are many people inside the sector who are now convinced that IEC (Information, Education and Communication) is a necessary ingredient of effective water and sanitation programmes. These people know that the seriousness of the current state of water and sanitation provision has not been presented persuasively enough to those who make key decisions. They know that resources fall woefully short of what is needed and that new challenges demand more creative use of available resources. They also recognise that the effective use of improved water supplies and latrines must be based on participation and understanding.

They accept that most water and sanitation-related problems must be tackled by the people in the villages and urban slums, who must be properly empowered and equipped to take actions themselves. This means that field workers must communicate more effectively with women, as well as men, in order to involve communities in planning and managing their own facilities and to make hygiene education effective. It also means that technical support must respond to the real needs in the communities. These lessons, positive and negative, have produced broad agreement that changes are necessary in the attitude and behaviour of the people who make decisions about development priorities to expand coverage, and of the people in the communities. Therefore, to do this, the sector must create what we can call a communication culture, where dialogue and participation become second nature in sector work. There is broad agreement on the aims of a communication strategy, remembering that the strategy is in support of sector goals, and forms part and parcel of achieving those goals. In that framework, the overall objectives of the communication strategy for WSS are:

• recognition
  a broad understanding of the importance and benefits of WSS to the economic, social and physical health of communities;
• efficiency
  optimising available human and financial resources, through greater co-ordination;
• effectiveness
  full application of the lessons learned during the Decade;
• participation
  maximising co-operation and support, both human and financial.

Success stories about the role of communication abound in the health and nutrition fields, a source for inspiration and motivation. Immunisation and oral rehydration campaigns in recent years produced impressive results. Immunisation has reached 85 percent of the world's children, preventing over 1.3 million deaths per year. Oral rehydration is now being used by more than 20 percent of the world's families and preventing over 600,000 deaths a year. Health programme specialists say that use of sophisticated communications strategies and IEC have been crucial in obtaining such promising results.

The changes being sought in the WSS are deeper, more profound, changes in human behaviour and attitude than taking a child for immunisation. The behaviours which will protect drinking water supplies and ensure good sanitation practices are private, daily habits. A village or urban health worker may check that children have been immunised, but there can be no daily checks to ensure that adults and children wash their hands before meals, except those that parents use to teach children.

The changes being sought are deep and subtle, and cannot be brought about through top-down instruction, however well motivated. Effective communication involves dialogue with partners so that the benefits of the new behaviour are understood and accepted.