A Good Scratch

I made the mistake recently of asking a British friend of mine “What are the first three things you do in the morning?” His reply: “Well, I finish me gin from the night before, I smoke a ciggy, and I have a good scratch.”

I suspect that safe, clean water will be more important for those of us with less vigorous mornings.

Imagine your morning without water. Imagine your bathroom trip, your shower, your coffee/tea, imagine brushing your teeth without water. If you woke up and realized your home didn’t have safe water, what would your first three actions that morning look like? Forget the first three things – what is the first ONE thing you would do?

Water is vital not only to our morning rituals in the developed world; water is life in its barest essence. Water is security, human security.

Without water, women and families in Africa, Asia, Latin and Central America and elsewhere spend significant parts of their days NOT learning, NOT working, NOT being productive members of society, NOT watching their children play. We in the States are increasingly aware of this challenge abroad – throughout the developing world – and are increasingly active on behalf of the issue. Yet effectively tackling the global safe drinking water and sanitation problem is not as easy as driving to the local soup kitchen and ladling soup to homeless people on Thanksgiving - which reminds me - do that too. Ensuring that poor communities in Africa, Asia and elsewhere have safe water and sanitation is tough work – and requires money, political support, thoughtfulness, and patience. And of that list the most important may well be thoughtfulness.

The recent announcement of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation’s commitment to the sector - called the Global Water Initiative - is an important one, and one which displays many of the best – or at least emerging practices in the sector. It is also an announcement which merits MUCH more attention in the media than it received. John Sauer nailed it in The Huffington Post, trying valiantly to get this announcement the coverage it deserves.

$150m is important. Having a name like Buffett associated with its support for the global safe drinking water and sanitation sector is important in that it minimizes the risk of the next philanthropist getting on board. The focus on both water and sanitation is important. However, arguably more important are the Global Water Initiative's (GWI) efforts to streamline and decentralize decisionmaking throughout the entire process. Long before the formal launch GWI was consulting with a select group of several of the finest implementing organizations on the planet. Long before the launch the GWI was looking at ways not simply to build more systems but to catalyze systemic change in the world's most vulnerable communities. Long before its launch GWI was looking at ways not to measure quarterly or even annual results, but looking at what it could achieve over a ten year period and beyond. And long before its launch GWI was streamlining the process of distributing these grants and the process of receiving these grants in-country, so the focus could be on making the work itself as sustainable, as holistic and as inclusive as possible.

I myself would have chosen fewer countries to minimize dissipation of effort, and to make it more likely that this initiative will produce meaningful successes at scale - the sort of successes that generate headlines like "Every School in Guatemala Now Has Access to Safe Drinking Water" and "Every HIV/AIDS Clinic in Uganda Now Has Private Sanitation Facilities." It is money, it is political support, it is lots and lots of technical know-how and elbow grease that will push this sector onward. However, it is thoughtful initiatives like the Global Water Initiative that are likely to demonstrate not the gravity of the water problem or quick technical fixes, but how solvable the problem is if approached thoughtfully.

Hearts and Minds

Rear Admiral William McRaven had an intriguing quote in The Economist on June 14, 2007:

American officials insist that AFRICOM will not be all about building bases and airstrips but will co-operate with development agencies, NGOs and diplomats to win African hearts and minds and so deny terrorists havens from which to operate. Rear Admiral William McRaven, head of the special forces now operating in the Sahara, says his men are much more likely to drill boreholes and build houses than to shoot at anyone. “I don't want a fragile state collapsing any more than Greenpeace or USAID does,” he says.

Rear Admiral McRaven is Special Operations component, SOCEUR (Special Operations Command, Europe). His comment comes in the broader context of The Economist article called Policing the undergoverned spaces.

This post is not to suggest that the U.S. will win the long war by drilling boreholes, nor is it to suggest that U.S. military forces, much less the Special Forces, should be taking care of the water needs of the developing world (in fact I argue against this). There is, however, a growing recognition that along with traditional military operations we should be pursuing less militaristic methods of winning hearts of minds, particularly in countries deemed most likely to become breeding grounds for terrorists. The provision of water and sanitation becomes a particularly salient intervention in this equation. The U.S. intelligence community has realized for some time that overlaying the map of water scarce countries with the map of countries deemed the biggest threats to U.S. national security gets an almost perfect match. Plus the USG gets the biggest bang for its development dollar (in both direct and indirect returns) by investing that dollar in relatively simple water and sanitation initiatives.

One good recent example where this all comes together is CSIS's recent post on Below the Surface: U.S. International Water Policy. Erik Peterson notes:

Targeting water would also yield other geopolitical dividends—including removing what is a serious obstacle to stability and security within states and reducing the possibility for conflict or tension between countries with shared water resources. Finally, water represents an avenue for the United States to demonstrate leadership in the world at a time when its image has eroded so considerably. In short, a water-centered set of policies could represent a remarkable opportunity for the United States to “do good” while “doing well” when it comes to pursuing its own interests in the world.

So maybe this post is about how to win the long war after all.

Since you asked...

This is what keeps me awake at night (or at home on a Friday evening):

No matter how much I do, or anyone I work with or consort with does, no matter how much the international donor community does to support safe drinking water and sanitation around the world, no matter if every international donor dollar is spent in exactly the right, highly coordinated way, all we can hope for is for all of those resources collectively to be the cherry on top of the cake, or at best a little gas to get the water development engine going.

Where's the real money? Approximately 70 cents of each dollar that is invested in water/sanitation/hygiene in the developing world comes from public sector finance in developing countries themselves - Ghanaian, Nicaraguan, Vietnamese, Indian taxpayer dollars/rupees/cedis etc. Ten percent give or take comes from the international donor community, with the rest coming from international and domestic private investments in water and sanitation infrastructure.

The end game - universal coverage of water and sanitation, like we enjoy in the States, Europe, Japan - must be played and won by the developing country governments themselves. They must do a much better job of prioritizing water/sanitation in their own budgets over the long run, and do a better job of prioritizing water in international aid requests in the short/medium term (e.g. Millennium Challenge Corporation compacts). [So shouldn't I/we be lobbying those governments instead of the donor community here? Now you try to get some sleep with that question hanging over your head...]

Government subsidies, tax incentives, and grants are all partial answers to how developing country governments should tackle this problem. There are also a number of regulatory paths to take, and I just read of a couple more today:

The Disease Control Priorities Project (DCPP) is an "ongoing effort to assess disease control priorities and produce evidence-based analysis and resource materials to inform health policymaking in developing countries." They recently published a very insightful piece on Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene: Simple, Effective Solutions Save Lives.

It's a clear, short (4pp!) paper detailing both the problem and at least hinting at some interesting partial solutions. One example: with respect to sanitation infrastructure (e.g. building pit latrines), government subsidies are often unruly, inequitable and highly politicized. The DCPP recommends a regulatory approach to address the challenge:

In Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, for example, the local administration withdrew land tenure rights from owners who did not build a latrine on their plot within a specified time. As a result, 90 percent of households now have their own latrine. Another effective regulation requires landlords to provide latrines for their tenants.

Yay. Another opportunity for developing country governments to more effectively encourage the construction of pit latrines is through what is commonly known as social marketing, much and well-practiced by Population Services International in the donor arena. Governments are encouraged by the DCPP to promote latrines by almost any means possible, as it is perhaps the most cost-effective way to ensure their construction. It is also likely to come out ahead in any cost-benefit analysis. Pit latrines do NOT sell themselves, so governments stepping in to make them more compelling one way or another is part of the solution. And the scale of the solution matches the scale of the problem and I get to go out on Friday nights...

I also have self-doubts about the fact that if only the world's agriculture were 10% more water efficient, there might not be a drinking water supply problem at all, so maybe I should be working on that issue?!? But that's for another post.