The capacity gap in the water and sanitation sector

In 2006, WHO estimated that 4.3 million additional health workers are needed worldwide - 1.5 million health workers for Africa alone - to alleviate the current human resource crisis. UNESCO (2008) estimates that 18 million new teachers are needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of achieving universal primary education sub-Saharan Africa alone needs to increase the number of its teachers by 1.6 million or 68 per cent. It is also expected that adequate quantity and quality of service providers is one of the preconditions to making progress towards the MDG targets for safe water and basic sanitation. Yet the human resource gap in this sector is relatively unknown. This paper outlines a piece of research that is being conducted to provide reliable data on the extent of the capacity gap in the water and sanitation sector

Water use and rights

United Nations treaties guarantee the human right to water. Although states must fulfill this human right and businesses must respect the state’s obligation, approximately 900 million people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water. Despite growing awareness of the need for sustainable water use by companies, increasing global population and inequitable access to water will create controversy and lead to conflict

Accountability in the provision of urban services

This paper assesses the potential of accountability arrangements to improve the quality of local services as well as the responsiveness of services providers to the needs of users and in particular those of the poor. In the first section of this paper municipal services are embedded in a social and political context, before moving on to explore a broad set of contemporary innovations in the way services are delivered. The research on which this paper is based was undertaken in cities and so specific attention is paid to urban areas. Accountability is defined using the existing literature and the current models for accountability are presented. In the second part of the paper research from case studies in South Africa, Bangladesh and the UK are presented. These studies reveal that while the provision of urban services is often based on ethics that is, that no one should be disadvantaged by where they live (in the UK) or that everyone should have access to services such as water, sanitation, and electricity (in South Africa) ethics alone are not enough to ensure adequate urban services. Accountability is most effective when these ethics are translated into more tangible rights or guarantees of performance, which enable ethics to be realised. Increasingly, however, accountability is used to better manage services and their users and has been reduced to a set of technical tools and procedural measures which can be universally applied. Consequently, ethics do not necessarily function as an input to systems of accountability. In conclusion, it is recognised that accountability cannot be reduced to a technocratic, politics-free management tool but are a product of a particular socio-cultural context

Combating corruption in the delivery of infrastructure services

Internationally, corruption in the planning, procurement, construction and operation and maintenance (O&M) of infrastructure services (defined here as water supply, sanitation, drainage, access roads and paving, transport, solid waste management, street lighting and community buildings) has been recognised as a constraint to development. What progress has been made, therefore, in implementing greater accountability to combat corruption in the planning and delivery of infrastructure services? This paper documents the growing interest (in developed and developing countries) in securing better governance for the delivery of infrastructure and assesses the potential of greater accountability to improve both provision and performance of infrastructure services

Corruption in social services and human development: water, sanitation and electricity sectors

Corruption costs the Water, Sanitation and Electricity (WSE) sectors millions of dollars every year, siphoning off scarce monetary resources and diminishing a country’s prospects for providing these crucial utilities for all. This paper examines how corruption manifests itself in the WSE sectors in order to identify and design sector programmes aimed at improving the well-being of the poor. It provides a comparative, cross-country study of the experiences of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Combating corruption in the WSE sector requires action from the public sector, private sector, citizens, civil society organisations and the media to monitor WSE services and promote more ethical behaviour. The authors note that particular attention should be paid to the supply-side of corruption, as consumers’ willingness to pay for better service creates a supply-side pressure that perpetuates corruption. The paper concludes with policy pointers and recommendations for successful anti-corruption mechanisms in the WSE sectors

Improving public urban services through increased accountability

This article is concerned with the potential of accountability to improve the performance of public urban services. A number of assumptions are made in the literature relating to accountability; these concern the necessity of multiple strategies of accountability, information symmetries, sanctions, trust, homogeneous service users, community-level answerability, incentives, self-regarding behaviour, and for users’ voice to be heard in service delivery. It is the purpose of this paper to reconsider these theoretical propositions for the functioning of accountability in light of practical experience from UK, South Africa, Bangladesh and South Korea. Each of these case studies was selected to illustrate a different form of accountability. The forms of accountability investigated in this research are professional, political, user and managerial accountabilities. An assessment is made of whether accountability is demonstrated in these case studies in the way predicted by the literature. The empirical data demonstrates that factors like multiple strategies and information/resource symmetries are critical to accountability but that there is only partial evidence to support the need for sanctions, trust, incentives, self-interest, and user voice for effective service delivery. The research indicates the need for greater emphasis on the operation and maintenance of urban services and direct accountability to service users. However the assumption that service users are homogenous is disputed. This article concludes with a review of the practical implications of strengthening accountability as a means to improve the performance of urban services

Accountability arrangements to combat corruption and improve sustainability in the delivery of infrastructure services

Internationally, it has been recognised that corruption in planning, procurement, construction and operation and maintenance (O&M) undermines the sustainability of infrastructure services (defined here as water supply, sanitation, drainage, access roads and paving, transport, solid waste management, street lighting and community buildings). What progress has been made, therefore, in implementing greater accountability to combat corruption in the planning and delivery of infrastructure services? This paper documents the growing interest (in developed and developing countries) in securing greater accountability for the delivery of infrastructure and assesses the potential to improve both provision and performance of infrastructure services

Accountability arrangements to combat corruption: Literature review

This review describes accountability arrangements to combat corruption in the infrastructure sector. The sustainability of the livelihoods of the poor in low- and middle-income countries is compromised by corruption in the delivery of infrastructure services. Such services include water supply, sanitation, drainage, the provision of access roads and paving, transport, solid waste management, street lighting and community buildings. For this reason, The Water, Engineering Development Centre, (WEDC) at Loughborough University in the UK is conducting research into anti-corruption initiatives in this area of infrastructure services delivery. This series of reports has been produced as part of a project entitled Accountability Arrangements to Combat Corruption, which was initially funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government. The purpose of the work is to improve governance through the use of accountability arrangements to combat corruption in the delivery of infrastructure services. These findings, reviews, country case studies, case surveys and practical tools provide evidence of how anti-corruption initiatives in infrastructure delivery can contribute to the improvement of the lives of the urban poor. The main objective of the research is the analysis of corruption in infrastructure delivery. This includes a review of accountability initiatives in infrastructure delivery and the nature of the impact of greater accountability

Increasing strategic accountability : a framework for NGOs

Recently, the accountability of international development non-governmental organizations (INGOs) has attracted a great deal of interest from academics and development practitioners. INGO accountability falls into two categories: practical accountability for the use of inputs, the way activities are performed and for outputs, and strategic accountability for how INGOs are performing in relation to their mission. It is the purpose of this paper to present a conceptual framework for exploring INGO accountability. This paper is based on information collected through a literature review and semi-structured interviews with representatives from 20 UK based INGOs. The research found that INGOs tend to use a number of qualityassurance mechanisms to achieve ‘practical’ accountability for their inputs/outputs. However, it is suggested that this kind of accountability will not necessarily enable INGOs to achieve their missions to alleviate poverty and eliminate injustice. Furthermore, the predominant use of practical accountability has led to a number of gaps in INGO accountability, which are discussed. It is suggested that, like the term participation before it, accountability has been co-opted for its instrumental benefits to INGO project performance and management. It is argued that if INGOs are to achieve their missions, this will require more ‘strategic’ forms of accountability geared towards fundamentally changing those social, economic and political structures that promote poverty

Partnering to combat corruption in infrastructure services: a toolkit

Problems with corruption have long been recognized as key constraints to the development of sustainable infrastructure services. The objective of this Toolkit is to propose a framework and tools geared to understanding, exploring and acting on corruption in the delivery of services. The scope of the work covers infrastructure services in urban and rural areas of developed and developing countries. A number of Toolkits on corruption have been published in recent years; however, to date, these have not been focused on the infrastructure sector or the impacts of corruption on the poor. This Toolkit is intended to fill that gap. The Toolkit is cross-sectoral in its approach, making it of relevance to those working on water supply, sanitation, drainage, roads and paving, transport, solid waste management, street lighting and housing sectors. This Toolkit brings together, in a systematic way, a variety of individual tools, which support the process of combating corruption in infrastructure services. The tools themselves are synthesized from real world experience; derived from a review of literature, desk-based case surveys and country case studies. These are not academic concepts, but genuinely operational tools. This Toolkit avoids taking a blueprint or top-down approach, but rather takes the perspective of operators, regulators and service users, especially the poor. By taking these tools, and relating them systematically to various aspects of combating corruption, this Toolkit should fulfil the urgent need expressed by policy makers, professional staff, regulators and consumers