Supporting Innovation through Research and Development
Supporting innovation means being in the vanguard of sector developments. With partners, IRC develops emerging sector themes in a way that creates an information feedback loop between its research, training and briefing activities, and documentation services. Priority themes in IRC's current programme include community water resources management; the sanitation gap; community-based services in low-income urban areas; decentralization; and effective and well-used water supply systems.
Water resources management
With an impending water crisis looming on the horizon, water resources management has become a priority issue. Affordable and integrated plans made together with user groups can lead to protected water sources that can continue to serve the population in even the poorest areas of developing countries.
An international workshop was convened late in the year as part of the 'Promising Water Resources Management Approaches in the Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Sector' project. Participants documented a number of positive experiences but also found that there is still a considerable gap between the water resources policies agreed to in the 1992 Dublin meeting and the practices in drinking water supply and sanitation projects today. These findings will be highlighted in a publication in the IRC series. The project is being funded by VROM (Netherlands), DGIS (Netherlands), UNDP, SIDA (Sweden), and SDC (Switzerland).
| In Colombia, water demand in San Felipe exceeded the local treatment plant capacity. Inspection of the distribution network showed that over 90% of users had leaks in taps, pipes and sanitation facilities. In partnership with Tolima Health Service which provided technical guidance, and CINARA, the community set a schedule for operation and maintenance and installation of water meters. Consulting with the community, the Water Committee set a tariff for basic supply, rising incrementally as use increased. As a result, 90% of users reduced their water use. |
Contributions to two other international workshops on water resources management gave IRC opportunities to share the findings of the project. A paper on promising water resources management approaches, taken from the project experiences, was presented at the International Seminar on Water Scarcity Problems and Water Resources Management, organized by IDPAD (Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development) in the Netherlands; and a paper on local water resources management was presented at "Encontra das Aguas", the first Inter-American Conference on Water Resources Management, organized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in Brazil.
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Often, sanitation solutions are clever, but many need improvement. |
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Closing the sanitation gap
In November, at the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council's Global Forum in Manila, a Global Environmental Sanitation Initiative (GESI) was launched to tackle the 'shameful' sanitation situation throughout the developing world. Donors, UN agencies, NGOs and developing country professionals have agreed that concerted action is needed to end the health-threatening conditions endured by some three billion people. They are committed to GESI, which is intended to accelerate achievement of the goal of hygienic sanitation for all people as soon as possible in the coming millennium. UNICEF, WHO and IRC were instrumental in launching this Initiative, and IRC has been requested to play a role as information hub in the GESI network.
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Zambia is one of the countries where cholera outbreaks occur every year at the onset of the rainy season. The disease has now become endemic. Since 1990 more than 20,000 cases of dysentery have been reported and there is a high incidence and prevalence of diarrhoea. The main factors underlying these diseases are the lack of proper excreta disposal, poor personal and food hygiene and the use of water from unprotected sources. Whereas sanitation coverage in rural areas is presented as 43%, effective coverage of latrines is estimated at only 12%. This clearly shows that providing facilities is not enough. In order to bring sanitation and hygiene promotion more to the forefront of national development, the Programme Coordination Unit (PCU), an inter-ministerial committee which is steering the implementation of sector reforms, established a Working Group on Sanitation in 1997 to develop and reach a consensus on a national strategy for sanitation. On the request of the UNICEF-supported WASHE programme in Zambia IRC, together with its partner NETWAS International carried out a sanitation and communication situation analysis for peri-urban and rural areas in Zambia. The evaluation team, together with extension staff and local leaders, found problems with technology, and with communication at community and district level. |
Hygiene education
The importance of proper hygiene behaviour for impact and sustainability of water and sanitation projects cannot be underrated. Over the past several years, IRC has been involved in the development of several hygiene education programmes in among others Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Togo. Common to all of these programmes is a participatory approach, which uses local knowledge and experience, thereby ensuring better integration of the hygiene education component into the often already existing programmes.
It is clear that the participatory approach has led to sustainable changes in hygiene behaviour. In Mali, for example, considerable changes in water use were found to have taken place over the four-year period recently evaluated by IRC. An overview of the results in the different programmes to date reveals several common elements that have contributed to the success of the hygiene interventions. Parties at all levels must be involved in planning the hygiene education interventions to ensure consistent messages which are realistic and culturally and socially appropriate. It has been found that good visual materials for education and training, which are aimed at behavioural change rather than information delivery, are very effective.
Hygiene education must be integrated into all phases of the project cycle, and from the beginning, hygiene promotion should be used to raise awareness about the importance of improved water supply and sanitation. Finally, periodic participatory monitoring should be carried out to allow problems and opportunities to be discussed. This way the community can boost their enthusiasm about their water supply and learn how to further improve their hygiene habits and thus their health.
Low-income urban areas
In the realm of basic infrastructure services for residents in low-income urban areas, IRC has been involved in a number of initiatives to promote research activities in this field in 1997.
Foremost has been the collaboration with the Water Utilities Partnership (WUP), a joint programme between the Union of Water Suppliers and two African ITN centres, TREND in Ghana and CREPA in Burkina Faso. IRC has been instrumental in assisting in the development of a research proposal for one of the WUP activities aimed at the improvement of access and affordability of water supply and sanitation services for low-income urban communities in Africa.
The project will be executed by utilities who will be assisted by a number of partners: IRC as overall coordinator, World Bank Regional Water Supply and Sanitation Group for Western and Central Africa and for Eastern and Southern Africa as sub-regional coordinators, and ITN centres and NGOs at country level.
Among the objectives of the project are the strengthening of capacity of utilities and other service providers to develop sustainable and environmentally sound water supply and sanitation services and the improvement of collaboration between public utilities and other service providers (private (in)formal sector, NGOs, community-based groups and micro-enterprises). Case studies will be carried out according to a general framework for analysis in ongoing programmes of utilities in ow-income areas.
The methodology for the case studies will be participatory, with all stakeholders involved to ensure that views of all concerned will be incorporated in the studies. The case studies will form the basis of a best practices document and practical guidelines, tools and methods which can be used in other areas and which will be test ed in the final phase of the project. While the primary audience for the output of this project is the utilities, the focus of the project is on replicability, going to scale and partnerships.
IRC was also involved in an assessment of options for the management of public latrines in Nairobi, Kenya. Often public latrines are the only possible sanitation solution for informal settlements in Nairobi, given the high densities, the high proportion of tenants and the very low incomes. Activities were carried out with a local NGO, KWAHO, and culminated not only in advice to local women's groups who were interested in the construction of public latrines, but also in an article on the subject published in Environment and Urbanization.
| In the urban slums of Nairobi, there are basically two types of public latrines. In the first type, the public latrine cubicles are more or less divided among the residents who each have a key to their shared cubicle which they have to clean in turn. The users also have to contribute to the maintenance of the latrine when needed. This system works provided there is a clearly defined user group and consistent supervision. However, it breaks down when people do not feel responsible, and the level of social pressure to clean the cubicles in turn decreases. Tenants are then far less committed to maintaining 'their' cubicle and are probably even less committed when it comes to contributing to maintenance costs. The other system is the more 'public' pay-and-use system (but still for residential use), where users have access to all cubicles and do not bear any responsibility apart from regular payment of fees. Where latrines are the result of a community effort, both in planning and implementation, this may work as the latrine operators tend to be residents from the area. To ensure that the operators keep the facility clean and the user group well defined and known, a minimum level of social control is essential. |
In urban Lima, Peru, residents often visit community centres with communal kitchens, to enjoy an inexpensive meal in a social environment. Improvement of the water and sanitation conditions in these centres was the aim of a joint project between IRC and IDEAS (Centro Investigación, Documentatión, Educación, Asesoría y Servicios). The project has produced the Spanish publication Estrategias Comunitarias de Agua y Saneamiento en Locales Comunales y Comedores Populares (Participatory Strategies for Water and Sanitation in Community Centres and Communal Kitchens).
Effectiveness and use of existing systems
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In the IRC-supported project on action research effects of training the communities are clear: Mr. Rameswor Lamichane, from the village of Lele in Nepal can now keep his financial records up to date. He commented, "This bookkeeping system is an achievement of the training." In Gajedi, another project village, Ram Bahadur Thapa has been elected as secretary of the water committee in a community meeting. This was the result of a decision to reform the committee. At the same time, a woman was elected as treasurer. In the words of Mr. Shiv Paudel, who had been both chairperson and secretary of the committee for a long time, "the women are more loyal and honest than the men". Mr. Paudel relinquished his position after training opened his eyes to the importance of leadership development and work division. |
Aiming to assist local communities and agencies to achieve self-reliant management of improved rural water supply systems is what a four-year participatory action research project funded by the Netherlands Government is all about. Local agencies in six countries (Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan) are working with IRC to develop approaches, methods and tools to enhance the capacity of four local communities in each count ry. Based on earlier work done with communities on identification of their problems with their water systems, the project's third year was marked by development of problem-solving strategies by the communities, and subsequent experimentation and field testing of these strategies, and methods and tools.
Clear from the project is that one of the main management skills to be strengthened is effective monitoring of both the research process, as well as system performance. Close, continuous monitoring facilitates adjustments of the strategies, methods and tools based on local findings and requirements. The monitoring approach is being developed with the partner organizations and the communities to ensure that it provides for the best possible learning opportunity for everyone.
The testing or experimenting in all cases has been a collective action, for the main idea behind the project is to build up more democratic forms of organization and management. Consensus at the level of the community has been sought about the cause and effect relationship of problems in their water supply system management, and about what possible solutions are to be tested.
The goal is to solve practical problems and develop new or improved knowledge and theory. In that way research becomes a process of getting to know and interpret social reality, with the aim of gathering sufficient knowledge to allow for the reproduction, transformation and induction of new processes in society.
The country research teams continue to play a supporting role: helping to strengthen local capacity in areas such as skills development, group building, confidence building for women and men, and in forging links with other communities or organizations. They also contribute to the improvement of maintenance, payment systems, and water source protection; a small budget allows funding of some technical improvements to the community water supply system itself.
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"Working in communities with existing water supply systems allowed determination of problems, and strategies to solve them. We should now also try to use Participatory Action Research for identification and documenting 'warning signs', signs we can act upon to prevent problems in new projects."
Director, Water Aid, |
An overview of the water supply and sanitation situation in each of the six countries at the beginning of the project was published this year in the Project and Programme Paper series, under the title Water Supplies Managed by Rural Communities: country reports and case studies from Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan.
With additional funding from the Netherlands Government, the project has entered a new four-year period during which it will focus on enhancing capacity building in community management, and disseminate its findings.
The importance of the community's role in systems management was also identified as a key issue in an interactive training course for operation and maintenance managers facilitated by IRC on request of WHO in Vietnam. The course was a response to the growing need of Vietnam to address the issue of sustainable operation and maintenance of rural water supply and sanitation services.
The experiences of this course were then used to review and adjust the WHO Resource Training Package on Operation and Maintenance according to specific needs and constraints in Vietnam. Furthermore, IRC provided technical guidance; collaborated in the assessment of the status of O&M services in rural areas of Vietnam; and helped to determine training needs.
The mission confirmed the importance of O&M and the community's role therein and the need for capacity building. Recommendations for the immediate future included similar workshops in 1998 to consolidate training capacity; development of a participatory evaluation of existing piped systems; development of guidelines at provincial level on how to carry out an environmental assessment; and attention to demand-driven approaches and community empowerment.
Annual Report 1997
Overview
- Table of Contents
- The Challenge to Do Things Differently
- IRC in 1997
- Making Optimal Use of Knowledge and Information
- Sharing Knowledge and Experience
- Facilitating Processes of Change
- Monitoring & Evaluation and Gender Issues: cross-cutting...
- Supporting Innovation through Research and Development
- Strengthening Partnerships
- General Information
