Ton Schouten, Director of IRC’s Triple-S initiative presented the keynote paper at the first consultation on developing post-2015 Indicators for Monitoring Drinking-Water and Sanitation, held in Berlin from 3-5 May 2011 and organised by WHO and UNICEF. As the first consultation about what will be measured after the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals has passed, the event was well-linked to IRC’s committed focus on advocating for “sustainable services at scale”. Amongst a group of 60 high level professionals in the sector were representatives from UN organisations, development banks, and international networks and knowledge centres. IRC had a strong participation at the event, based on its pioneering work on service levels and pro-poor and country-led approaches.

Based on the IRC paper - “Taking a service delivery approach to monitoring water supply in low income areas and implications for the Joint Monitoring Programme,” Ton presented the latest thinking as well as promising examples of how to address the need for a change in monitoring practice. He also posed questions on the future role of the Joint Monitoring Programme in supporting this change.

Water supply in low-income areas needs to shift the focus from building new hardware, to providing sustainable services. To support this shift, monitoring practices will also have to move from tracking coverage (the number of systems built and users who have access) to tracking services delivered at an agreed level of quality over time.

Current monitoring is conducted via:

1) sample based surveys which shape policy and decision making, as well as international comparisons; and

2) service provider data used for management purposes.

Both methods are integral to achieving good governance and improved service delivery, but both need to be adjusted to take into account the actual service delivered.

Guy Hutton, Senior Economist at the World Bank, agreed with this line of thinking, saying: “Since the milestone year of 2010, the question of what will happen after 2015 is increasingly asked. Monitoring progress towards the current target is based solely on the use of facilities and does not take into account other important parameters, such as the drinking-water quality, the overall availability of adequate quantities of water for domestic use, the distance to a water source or sanitation facility, the time members of a household spend on access and use of sources and facilities, the number of hours the service is available, social obstacles to access for certain population groups, maintenance of the infrastructure, whether excreta are safely disposed of, or whether the services and facilities are affordable. For the people for whom they are intended.”

If universal coverage was an elusive goal when it was set in the 1980s, and is also seemingly difficult to achieve within the term of the Millennium Development Goals; then the question now arises about what the WASH sector believes the target(s) should be after 2015.

One possible answer regarding post-2015 targets comes from the human rights community, that governments, rather than aiming to solve the drinking-water and sanitation crisis by a set date, should make tangible progress towards the realisation of this human right, as outlined in the Human Rights Framework prepared by the United Nations General Assembly in July 2010.

Angelica de Jesus, IRC

Tags: monitoring & evaluation, policies & legislation, sustainable service delivery, water supply