Cost information is key to advocacy of sustainable water and sanitation services

According to Clarissa Brocklehurst, Head of Water, Environment and Sanitation Section, UNICEF is starting to look into the full life-cycle cost in order to justify investments as other sectors do (health and education). WASHCost co-convened a session at the Stockholm World Water Week with organisations looking into costs and benefits of Water and Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) interventions. The conclusion from diverse studies shows the difficulty of accessing cost information.

There is also still much discussion on the methodologies on how to measure benefits in the water sector. Numbers are so context specific that it is critical to adapt at country level and for local needs. For example, a hand pump can be three times more costly in two areas: within the same district or between Asia and Africa. Materials used in construction, geological conditions or aspects such as labour availability are all factors to take into account.

Harmonisation of methodology

The real value of cost/benefit information lies in the harmonisation of a widely accepted methodology to assess the life-cycle costs of WASH service delivery. A government official of the Ministry of Water and Environment of Uganda, Aaron Kabirizi, explained it clearly, “We need to know if we should invest in new infrastructure or if we should rehabilitate what is already there.” Concerning benefits, he mentioned, “Our budget for the water sector just decreased. With cost-benefit analysis we will be able to argue better for increased funds.”

What seems to be critical is the re-packaging of the information, both for the use of practitioners and for advocacy purposes. When questioned by the audience about the spending of large amount of aid on hand pumps that only last a couple of years, the Head of the Water, Environment and Sanitation Section of UNICEF, Clarissa Brocklehurst, said that UNICEF is starting to look into the full life-cycle cost in order to justify investments as other sectors do (health and education). Additionally, Peter Feltman from PLAN International added ‘that life-cycle unit costs are a way of incorporating accountability into this business.’

The WASHCost presentation was done by Dr. Kwabena Nyarko, WASHCost Ghana Project Director and Dr. Ratna Reddy WASHCost India Lead Researcher, Livelihoods and Natural Resource Management Institute (LRMNI). Their and other presentations can be found online at the SWWW 2009 site.

Ongoing initiatives

The seminar presented ongoing initiatives to address the economics of sanitation and water and discuss current thinking on the costing of sanitation services. WHO/University of Geneva presented cost-benefit analyses of improved sanitation options for low-income communities. WASHCost focused on cost identification and disaggregation over the entire WASH service delivery cycle, presenting two cases from Ghana and Andhra Pradesh, India (presented and questions answered by Ratna and Kwabena). EAWAG presented a costing tool for sanitation technologies, ranging from simple pits to constructed wetlands. WSP the findings of a financial and economic analysis of ecological sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa, which compares the cost of EcoSan with conventional sanitation systems as part of WSP’s broader Economics of Sanitation Initiative. All presentations are available at the SIWI website.

The seminar was convened by:

• IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre,
• WASHCost,
• Department of Public Health and Environment of the World Health Organization (WHO), Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG),
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
• Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) and
• University of Geneva, Switzerland

The second part of the seminar was a panel discussion with:

• Ms. Clarissa Brocklehurst, Head of Water, Environment and Sanitation Section, UNICEF
• Mr. Barry Jackson, Programme Manager of the Global Sanitation Fund (WSSCC)
• Mr. Peter Feldman, Plan International
• Eng. Aaron Kabirizi - Directorate of Water Development, Uganda