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Why a Basic Urban Services initiative?

The provision of adequate water and sanitation services is one of the most critical challenges that cities in the world experience now. Particularly the urban poor face increasing health-related problems due to limited or non-existing access to drinking water, sanitation and solid waste management. Poor women and men face unequal access, management and decision-making over water resources and sanitation options. This situation limits their basic human rights and impairs their economic development and effective contribution to society.

The provision of basic services to the urban poor requires a new paradigm. For the achievement of sustainable solutions, innovative strategies to incorporate efficient and flexible approaches and the involvement of committed public and private partners, are necessary. Furthermore, municipalities need to show strong leadership and develop new capacities to address basic urban services provision as a strategy for poverty reduction and environmental improvement.

What is the Basic Urban Services -BUS- initiative?

The Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) and the Local Agenda 21 Programme (LA21) intend to improve specific assistance on water and sanitation to its municipal partners through the decentralisation of efforts at regional and national levels. For this purpose, SCP has engaged the IRC, based in the Netherlands, to take the lead in the implementation of the BUS initiative. IRC has been identified for its recognised expertise on supporting Southern water and sanitation institutes, facilitating and designing participatory processes, capacity building, and expertise on information and knowledge development and management.

Over a period of five years, IRC will lead the Basic Urban Services (BUS) initiative to strengthen the abilities of local governments and their partners in the water and sanitation sectors. With a focus on poverty reduction, IRC will provide technical advice for the implementation of demonstration projects in six SCP partner cities and will promote alternative approaches such as the Household Centred Environmental Sanitation. The demonstration projects will be followed by a scaling-up process with capacity building, advocacy, improved leveraging of resources and gender responsiveness as main elements of action. To ensure the sustainability of the experience at local level, the strategies described below will be followed.

Information and Documentation Strategy

A comprehensive documentation and information sharing strategy will accompany the process. This will ensure the production of appropriate capacity building tools, the adequate documentation of the lessons learned, regular exchange of ideas and the promotion of alternative channels of information exchange. It should also signal potential factors of success and failure identified from previous experiences, and promote the strategic use and versioning of this knowledge by key partners according to their specific contexts, needs and demands. Local partners are of special interest to the initiative. For this reason, the repackaging and distribution of information generated by the initiative will depend on the level of accessibility and management of different communication media that each stakeholder has.

To support the implementation of the demonstration projects, a handbook will be produced. This is a technical tool that will compile approaches and methodologies proposed by IRC. Targeted to the municipality officials in charge of implementing the demonstration projects, it will bring together an interesting range of key concepts, basic approaches and examples to support their BUS interventions qualitatively. At the end of the project, a source book on "Partnerships for the promotion and management of basic urban services" will be produced using the documented information from the demonstration projects and additional experiences from SCP and LA21 partners.

Regional Anchoring Strategy

Regional anchoring strategies will ensure the connection between the local activities and global support of SCP, ensure sustainability and continuity. Representative regional and national capacity building organisations will receive support to strengthen their role as information clearing houses, to develop BUS-focused training activities and programmes, and to facilitate advocacy efforts.

BUS could help enhance the anchoring organisation's own capacities, strengthen its institutional development and the recognition of its work at various levels. The selection of six regional or national anchoring organisations will consider institutional, methodological and operational criteria. On the other hand, to assist the anchoring organisations to develop or strengthen certain necessary skills, IRC in collaboration with SCP, will facilitate capacity building and institutional strengthening support in key selected areas.

The demonstration projects

To ensure the minimum set of conditions required for the execution of the demonstration projects, interested municipalities must fulfil specific criteria determined at political, institutional and operational levels. These criteria will ensure that the commitment to the process and existing capacities are available during the implementation and up-scaling processes. According to its possibilities, the BUS initiative would provide technical advice and facilitate capacity building for initiatives related to water supply, stormwater drainage, wastewater collection and treatment, human excreta disposal and solid waste management. During the first year of implementation, two fast track projects will start, followed by four others until the end of the initiative. The geographical coverage of the demonstration projects will consider Africa, Asia and Latin America with priority. The up-scaling process will start if enough interest and support is generated by the demonstration projects with the municipalities and partners involved.

BUS is an ambitious initiative that promotes the active participation and building of partnerships of a diverse group of stakeholders. For its success, BUS assumes key support, commitment and strong leadership from the municipal authorities involved. The approaches proposed require longer implementation periods, receptiveness to "learning for change" and explicit support for the up-scaling process.