Hi All,

This blog might be higher level than the questions generated but I think it is good food for thought on how we start strategically tackling the systemic change needed. Please let me know your thoughts.

John

psiimpact.com/2016/01/3-ways-development...heir-impact-in-2016/

or here: washfunders.org/Blog/3-ways-development-...their-impact-in-2016

Dear Elisabeth,

Cor Dietvorst (IRC) and Pauline (RedR) answered some of the questions through Knowledge Point(knowledgepoint.org/en/questions/3637/ach...er=3652#post-id-3652):

Regarding the question on why "we expect poor rural families to pay the full cost? [of rural sanitation]", I suspect that the "we" in this case refers to supporters of CLTS and others who claim that subsidies don't work. Rural sanitation subsidies are common and can be effective if properly applied. A recent UNC review of sanitation subsidies concluded:


Global experience with well-designed and implemented sanitation programming suggests that subsidies are not necessary to dramatically reduce open defec[a]tion in many locales. However, there are other contexts in which access to finance or carefully designed, implemented, and targeted hardware subsidies may play an important role in accelerating the adoption of improved sanitation.

Source: Detailed Review of a Recent Publication: Sanitation Subsidies in Bangladesh. (WaSH Policy Research Digest ; issue 1). UNC Water Institute, July 2015. waterinstitute.unc.edu/files/2015/06/WaS...-Digest-july2015.pdf

Cor Dietvorst, IRC

Thank you for your interesting query. My initial, knee jerk response would be that the transition from 'emergency' situations to 'development' is very difficult and the lines become blurred. Whilst emergency situations may attract a lot more attention , the longer term sustainable development is perhaps a slightly different economic and political model. I am no doubt elaborating on the well known issues rather than providing any definitive response, I hope some of our experienced experts will be able to contribute more.

Best wishes Pauline RedR

We will post more of these questions on Knowledge Point during the next days.
Looking forward to receiving comments from our SuSanA members.

Regards,
Evelyn (on behalf of the SuSanA secretariat)

Dear Trevor,

What you posted here on 3 October sounds really very interesting. What came out in the end of the consultations on Knowledge Point and have the experts worked on providing some answers to this list of unanswered questions? That would be great.

Here's what you had said:

Albeit with some delay here is the opening post with which we would like to present some of the collected unanswered questions. There are a few questions that some of the other convenors also collected, that will be added to the list below.

The panellist will in the coming weeks answer the questions they can here in the forum. In addition, the SuSanA secretarait will post a few of these questions in the coming weeks in Knowledge Point to see what answer are posted there. These answers will be shared back in this thread.

The questions remind me a bit of this interesting forum thread on local government involvement:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/142-go...n-for-the-urban-poor

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear all,

We agreed during the Stockholm World Water week Seminar on "Pieces of the Puzzle: Achieving Sustainable Rural Sanitation at Scale" on 27 August, that the many questions that were collected during the break out sessions from the participants that the panellist were unable to answer would be answered here in the SuSanA Forum in a follow-up to the Seminar.

Albeit with some delay here is the opening post with which we would like to present some of the collected unanswered questions. There are a few questions that some of the other convenors also collected, that will be added to the list below.

The panellist will in the coming weeks answer the questions they can here in the forum. In addition, the SuSanA secretarait will post a few of these questions in the coming weeks in Knowledge Point to see what answer are posted there. These answers will be shared back in this thread.

List of unanswered questions:

• *Local government has limited capacities while supervision and coordination of the process of service delivery in sanitation needs a mix of multiple capacities not always present. Experience on how to deal with this?
• *How do you/we ensure government ownership in the SNV approach?
• *What about the designing of services? Operations, maintenance, emptying
• *How do you build capacity when you have 3 year donor funded programmes and governments wants/needs 10-15 years of support? How can we change the paradigm to make longer commitment to governments?
• *Does the MFI verifies the latrine construction? Is the sanitation loan bundled with some other product loans or is it stand alone? Can government realistically investment in household sanitation services?
• *How much do you expect from government? What’s government’s role in a rural sanitation project? i.e. Are they engaging the local businesses? Or do you do that, with the government providing an enabling environment?
• *Good tools, SNV-WSP. Assuming high demand by governments following SDGs. How can the tools best be shared? Central training on tools to governments or WASH specialists? On line tools? How is the sector coordinating around government tools and support to maximize impact and avoid overlap?
• *Will building up capacities on local level be sufficient? Or do you need a minimum capacity development on national/ regional level?
• *Can NGOs effectively facilitate private sector/ businesses (that make money)?
• *Any examples of cross-financing rural sanitation through water supply and related experiences/ approaches/ methods to provoke institutional change?
• *We should think, plan, implement for scale from the minute zero, stop the ‘scaling-up”-myth
• *Financing for the entire sanitation cycle needs to be ensured. Too much focus is given to infrastructure only. Role of government? Financing through taxes, tariffs and transfers.
• *How to get local government to put budget on long term management of sanitation facilities?
• *How do we get governments to invest in rural sanitation? Governments seem to use the no-subsidy on rural sanitation to avoid investing in it.
• *Sanitation services are heavily subsidized by government in developed countries and cities in developing countries. Why do we expect poor rural families to pay the full cost?
• *Why do you still talk so much about technologies? Go to a session on drinking water, they speak about governance, financing (of management, maintenance etc.), policies, monitoring mechanisms, international cooperations etc. Sanitation should be beyond the technology question. We to look at systems, frameworks and the government responsibilities.

Some quick links:
To the Seminar description in the SWWW Programme: programme.worldwaterweek.org/event/4899

Kind regards
Trevor