Blog - Water Services That Last
This blog aims to regularly report experiences, stories and questions on rural water supply. It will ask questions and provoke debate on how sustainability of water systems can be improved. It seeks to provide examples and learn from failures. It does not aim to provide ready-made answers; if those would exist, they would win the Nobel Prize for Water, or, more likely, the Silver Bullet Award.
We invite you to contribute your thoughts and stories, to provoke and to question, and to share these debates more widely.
Flying the flag – but breaking the pump?
09 May 13
One of the topics of discussion during this week’s Triple-S annual meeting was around harmonization of approaches to rural water supply between donors and governments. Presenting the experiences in Ghana, Vida Duti presented this nice map, showing which donors operate in which part of the country. One could interpret this map in a positive way; [...]
A bit short of a miracle …
03 May 13
By Patrick Moriarty and John Sauer What is it that IADB’s Max Valasquez Matute in Honduras finds ‘only a bit short of a miracle’? The decision by seven INGOs to align their programming in Honduras in support of an Everyone Forever movement aimed at delivering full coverage in sustainable rural water, sanitation and hygiene services. [...]
Planning for impact
01 May 13
By Patrick Moriarty Back in June and July of 2012, Triple-S underwent a mid-term assessment (MTA) by an excellent team led by Dr. Ben Ramalingam. The MTA was a hugely useful exercise, allowing the Triple-S team and our partners to take some time out from our day to day work to reflect on how we [...]
Islands of success
24 Apr 13
Sagar is an island at the mouth of the river Ganges where it meets the Bay of Bengal. Every year in January, about half a million pilgrims visit the island to worship at the holy Ganges. The hundreds of mobile toilet units standing on the empty festival terrain during the rest of the year are [...]
Subverting bad policy for the better
23 Apr 13
By Richard Ward, Aguaconsult The most recent Global Water Challenge (GWC) webinar hosted at www.sustainablewash.org gave another useful opportunity to highlight the findings of the Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) policy and practice research that has been disseminating during this (slightly cold) first part of 2013. Adding to the ‘reality content’ of those findings were two [...]
Sustainability checks, clauses and compacts – USAID and DGIS lead the way
10 Apr 13
By Stef Smits Over the past year, there has been quite a bit of buzz in the WASH sector on the sustainability clause that DGIS seeks to include in its contacts with implementers. The pros and cons of this have been widely debated . A key component of the clauses is to have sustainability checks [...]
A visit to Gammarth, Tunisia, or what I learnt at the African Development Bank’s retreat for rural water and sanitation
01 Apr 13
By Harold Lockwood Last week in Gammarth, Tunis the African Development Bank called a meeting, attended by about 160 sector experts and other government officials, to launch a new coordination mechanism for its flagship Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative, or RWSSI. It was an interesting couple of days and through the various presentations, discussions, [...]
Reflections from inside the beltway – what did the WASH Sustainability Forum achieve?
22 Mar 13
By: Harold Lockwood, Aguaconsult and Triple-S Just back from the WASH sustainability forum in Washington DC and as the dust settles, it is time to pick up on the blog I wrote in anticipation of the two days of discussion, reflection, and sharing. How did it all go? Did the earth move under our feet? [...]
What’s your role in building long-term sustainable WASH services in developing countries?
08 Mar 13
By Harold Lockwood Well, here we go again. Next week – 11th and 12th of March – there will be another gathering in Washington DC of a range of (primarily) US based Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector practitioners, experts, policy makers and funders to discuss the issue of the day: how to make services [...]
Everyone? Yes, everyone!
27 Feb 13
Anyone who works in the water sector cannot have missed the various consultations and debates on the post-2015 goals for water and sanitation, with the official one taking place here, but also good online discussions, such as the one on The Broker online. At the same time, technical proposals have been developed by working groups [...]
