Will the Millennium Development Goal target on water and sanitation be met?
In September 2000, 189 UN Member States adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), setting clear, time-bound targets for making progress on the most pressing development issues. Goal 7 is to ensure environmental sustainability, and one of its targets related directly to water. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development added a sanitation target, which is now included as part of the MDGs:
To halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The water part of the target is on-track in global terms. However, there is slow progress in sub-Saharan Africa on the water target, with 42% of the population still unserved. At current rates of progress, the water target will not be met there until 2035. Sanitation fares even worse. At the current rate, the world will miss the MDG samitation target by over 700 million people and the target will not be achieved in sub-Saharan Africa until 2109 - a century too late. This would mean that 2.4 billion people will still be without improved sanitation in 2015, almost as many as there are currently. Many poor people are still dying every day just because they don’t have safe water to drink and do not live in hygienic conditions.
What are the main reasons for insufficient progress?
Progress can only be made if international donors, national governments and civil society groups all play a part and work together in partnership. The research of Tearfund, and of other organisations, has shown that problems both at the international and the national level have hindered progress in this area. Some examples of these problems are listed below:
National level
- Sanitation and hygiene are often not prioritised by local people, national governments or donors. There is huge under-investment in sanitation at all levels; a need for much better coordination between all players; and a massive lack of human and technical capacity amongst both state and non-state actors. Governments should give much higher-level political attention to these issues and develop national plans to ensure the MDG targets are met. Civil society groups can advocate for these to happen. You can find out more about these issues in Tearfund's report The Sanitaion Scandal
- Corruption due to a lack of transparency and accountability can lead to the loss of funds for water, sanitation and hygiene from government budgets. Civil society groups need to play their part in holding local and national government to account.
- Water, sanitation and hygiene are often given insufficient priority in government budgets and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), despite being a top priority for poor people. Civil society groups need to engage with the PRSP consultation and other relevant processes to ensure that governments allocate a reasonable proportion of the national budget to these issues.
- Poor coordination between the various government ministries with some responsibility for these issues (such as ministries for health, the environment and water) can hinder progress. Also, there is often poor coordination between national and local government, between government and NGOs working in the sector, and between various NGOs themselves. Good national coordination mechanisms are vital.
- Water programmes frequently focus heavily on urban areas, resulting in poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene in rural areas. Civil society groups should try to ensure that national policies and programmes give a balanced coverage of urban and rural areas.
- If inappropriate or costly technology is installed without proper training and support, water supply often breaks down quickly due to difficulty in obtaining spare parts or carrying out repairs. It is vital that appropriate technology and training are provided.
These issues and others are discussed in more detail in the Tearfund briefing papers: Making every drop count: Financing water, sanitation and hygiene in Sierra Leone; and Making every drop count: Financing water, sanitation and hygiene in Ethiopia.
International level
- While international aid has been rising steadily since the mid-1990s, the share to water supply and sanitation has decreased since that time. The low levels of financing and priority afforded to the sector need to be urgently tackled.
- Progress in health and education is dependant on access to affordable sanitation and safe water yet donors fail to recognise the inter-relationship between these three essential services. Donors should treat water and sanitation as an equal priority for funding as health and education.
- Donor investment is failing to target the poorest countries. The region of the world that is most off-track is sub-Saharan Africa. However, of the five countries receiving most aid for water and sanitaiton over the past five years, none were in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2002-2006, Least Developed Countries received less than a quarter of aid for sanitation and water. Donors should ensure aid is targeted at the poorest countries.
- Money and time have been wasted on inefficient bureaucracy and on poor coordination among donors. For example, the European Union’s Water Initiative – launched in 2002 – has so far only resulted in a series of meetings without providing, as yet, clean water or sanitation to a single extra person. An Empty Glass is a Tearfund and WaterAid report on the EU Water Initiative
- Many donors prioritise funding for large-scale systems over small-scale systems which are more likely to be aimed at poor communities. It is vital that donors support and supply water programmes which are appropriate to their setting and which reach the poorest people within recipient countries.
Sanitation and Water: Why we need a global framework for action is a report by Tearfund and Water Aid that explores some of these issues and outlines our calls suggesting how this situation can change.
Campaigning for change
Tearfund is joining with the End Water Poverty coalition to campaign for water and sanitation for all. We are calling for:
- Governments and donors to immediately reverse the decline in spending in the water and sanitation sector. They should prioritise these fundamental services in an internationally recognised Global Framework for Action on sanitation and water. This framework should include one annual review of the sector, one annual High-level meeting, and it must ensure that no credible country plan consistent with achieving the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) targets on water and sanitation will fail to lack of finance.
- Developing countries to commit to spending up to 1% GDP on sanitation and water. Funding gaps in meeting agreed sanitation and water goals should be filled by the donor community from official development resources.
- National governments to develop one country plan: to establish the targets, cost and financing gaps; one coordinating mechanism to design and coordinate the delivery of services; and one monitoring and evaluation framework: to assess progress, diagnose bottlenecks and promote remedial actions. For more details about what we are calling for click here