Jon Lane is the former executive director of the UN’s Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. WaterCan presented him with the Michael Lubbock Award in October in Ottawa for his contributions in the field of international water and sanitation. The following are excerpts from his acceptance speech.
I started work in water and sanitation in developing countries in 1987, the same year WaterCan was founded.
It was a very exciting time to come in. I was one of a cohort of people attracted to this work by the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981 to 1990).
A lot of organizations were formed in that decade and a lot of professional people were inspired to become part of that work. We are still fortunate that some of that decade’s innovations and ideas have been of great help to us over a long time. For example, it was the decade that changed the way we looked at water and sanitation, which had previously been thought of as a utility, a municipal duty, and brought in the concept of what was originally called “community participation,” then “community management.” Now we would use the phrase “people-centred approaches,” but the idea that the most important people, when we are looking at improving lives, are the people themselves is a thought that took root during that decade.
Something else was the invention or development of different technical solutions in water and sanitation that were designed to be maintained by people themselves. Whether that would be in water or sanitation, these are some of the fundamentals of our trade to this day. That was an important milestone in getting our work going.
The year at the end of the decade, 1990, subsequently became adopted as the base year for the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs raised the political profile of development issues in general. [They} also gave us not just the targets, but the measures against which we have been carrying out our work ever since.
A couple of thoughts on how we are getting on using the MDGs as our benchmarks:
If we look at water, we are not doing badly. There are lots of organizations that work in water. It is an attractive subject and something we’re passionate about, but it is also something we can communicate relatively easily. It is something politicians love. Every politician likes to have their photo taken working a tap and nice clean water comes out. We are exceeding population growth, so, as the world’s population increases, the number of people still without water is decreasing, and that is great. We are moving in the right direction.
There have been a couple of blind alleys over the last 20 years. Perhaps the big one is an idea that was very strongly pushed about 15 years ago — that the private sector would come in to developing countries with new investment and would be the answer to our water problems. That never happened. It just got started and kind of fizzled out.
There are a couple of things that are still bothering me. One is that in the future, we are going to have huge problems in maintenance and replacement of water supply systems. Everybody loves to do something new, and when we are doing our fundraising or whatever, it’s great to be able to say, “here are some people who do not have water and as a result of what we are doing they will have water.” But in terms of the numbers, of people and amounts of money, the really big tasks are much less glamorous — maintenance, operation and replacement of water infrastructure.
The other one, the biggest challenge, is that, behind those numbers and that headline of “we’ve achieved the MDG target,” don’t forget that the MDG target is reducing the people unserved by half, which is a pretty pathetic target.
What really bothers me are the people who don’t have water, because you can bet they are the poorest; the excluded; the minorities. They are the neglected in their own societies and globally. The important thing we have to do is make sure those people are the ones we put at the centre, to catch up with the good fortune of others. There is a really strong issue here about the equitable provision of water services.
Sanitation and hygiene have traditionally been badly neglected. Sanitation is a much less attractive subject. I have not met many politicians who want to have their photos taken [while] opening toilets. We’ve all struggled with sanitation and you can see it in the MDG numbers. We are not even keeping pace with population growth. There are still 2.5 billion people without sanitation and that is the task.
Hygiene has also been neglected. If you look at the numbers, one thing that stands out is that in terms of reducing diarrhea in children, for example, it is simple hygiene measures, such as washing hands, that actually [cut] the numbers of diarrhea cases and deaths.
I do see three positive points with sanitation. The first [involves] the methods of work in the field. We’ve seen various great ideas and, for a year or two, we thought, “oh yeah, this is it,” and then “oh, actually no, that didn’t really work.” But there is one that is now proving to be the most exciting single idea in sanitation that I’ve seen. It is the community-led sanitation philosophy that was born in Bangladesh 12 years ago from work done by Robert Chambers at Sussex University.
[It created] a whole range of methods, of working with communities to help them analyse their own situations, make informed judgments for their futures and apply that philosophy. We want to have that right, that opportunity to make our own decisions about our futures. [It was in] applying those ideas that this methodology was born and it has spread like wildfire. That’s a real plus in achieving enormous, rapid progress on sanitation.
The second point is on the more poitical level — the designation of the International Year of Sanitation in 2008. The idea for that came from your first Michael Lubbock laureate, Maggie Catley-Carlson.
That year really moved us forward in a number of ways, because it brought sanitation to the attention of political leaders all around the world who previously had not been interested. We, the sanitation enthusiasts, were able to agree on some common messages on sanitation and the benefits it can bring, not only in social development, but also in economic development. Those clear messages are standing us in good stead, and the International Year of Sanitation has given us a huge boost.
The third one was last year’s resolution by the United Nations that not only water, but also sanitation, are human rights. In the case of water, that had been sort of presumed, but the sanitation part of it was contentious. I think it is enormously exciting that this has been done.
It means that the work we do is not some sort of charitable gesture; it’s actually serving people’s rights and supporting and enabling them to stand up for their rights. That is a total switch of mindset and is immensely powerful.
In terms of future issues in sanitation, the point about equity that I mentioned in water also applies in sanitation. We do have some technical difficulties to overcome, notably in urban areas. With more than half the world’s population now urban, the next three billion who will join that population will almost all be living in urban areas in developing countries. That is a shockingly huge sanitation problem we need to deal with.
There is a great deal to do. The optimism I have as I look to the future is that we are now getting better in knowing how to communicate with politicians and what we need to do. Now that the MDG time scale is coming to an end in 2015, politicians are already thinking about how they want to shape the post-2015 global development agenda.
What we need to do is to communicate to those political leaders and decision makers that water and sanitation are essential for the whole framework of global development post 2015. They are not to be thought of as little topics in isolation, but are a fundamental part of the aspirations we have for the world in social and economic development beyond 2015. We also need to be persuading other people that water and sanitation can help them achieve their goals – for example, people who work in health, education or economic development, or in so many other different areas. If we can explain to them that water and sanitation are tools that can help them achieve their aims, that is going to be extraordinary and extremely powerful.
Jon Lane is the former executive director of the UN’s Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
