Summary of the water track sessions on day 1 of the 5th WASH Sustainability Forum by Stef Smits and José Gesti Canuto.

1. Supporting water sanitation
and hygiene services for life
1st of July 2014
Summary water track
sessions day 1
Stef Smits and José Gesti
Canuto
2014 WASH Sustainability Forum

2. Introduction
• 4 groups of tools, differentiated between dimensions of
sustainability, institutional levels of application and degree of
zooming in / out
• Dilemmas around them:
– Comprehensiveness vs keeping it simple
– Big picture (assessments) vs zoomed in (identifying of actions)
– Complexity commensurate with institutional capacity to use them
• Guiding questions:
– What are the underlying design principles of the tools?
– What is needed to make the tools work?

3. Session 1: sector analysis tools
• WASH Bottleneck Analysis Tool:
– Assessing bottlenecks to sustainable and equitable service delivery
– Part of a broader process of defining sustainability compacts and
checks in multi-stakeholder process
– General finding: main bottleneck at the middle level
• Issues arising:
– Can you talk about bottlenecks or rather missing bottles? Identifying
priorities among very many factors, or rather highlighting need for
overall sector change
– Communicating results: bottle half full or bottle half empty
– Need for clear indicators: defined by stakeholders or common ones
– Data availability – start from some commonly agreed data, but carry
out targeted data collection depending on the result

4. Session 2: tools for financial sustainability
• AtWhatCost: analyse life-cycle costs for water supply systems as basis
for dialogue on tariff setting and capital replacement costs
• CUPPS: financial module for asset management
• Issues arising:
– Use of the tools by different stakeholders: regulator or operator
– Because of different incentives to use the tool, with the right
information, and accountability over them- need for (financial)
regulatory environment
– Tools are publicly available, but can the results be made available?
– Insight into the tariff needs raises need to rethink the “saving-for-
replacement” paradigm:
 Avoid risk of inflation and money sitting idle
 Possibilities of cross-subsidies between and within systems

5. Session 3: sustainability of service delivery
• Sustainability metric at health care facilities: likelihood of sustainable
water access at such facilities. Main outcome: concrete
recommendations for operators
• SIASAR: comprehensive sustainability assessment through coverage,
system performance and service provider performance, targeted at
technical assistance providers
• Issues arising:
– Without an institutional framework for follow-up, a tool cannot be
effective
– Institutionalisation of the tool in government
– Costs of tools – mainly in time of staff to collect and analyse data;
who pays?

6. Discussion
• Groups of 5-6 persons
• Discuss for about 25 minutes at your table
• Question 1: what are the design principles of these tools – and
others you may know – for sustainability?
• Question 2: what are characteristics of the processes in which the
tools are used, to make their use effective?