THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORT

THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORTAuthor(s): DAVID COLLETTSource: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 131, No. 5326 (SEPTEMBER 1983), pp. 616-627Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41373641 .

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THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES

AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORT

A paper by DAVID COLLETT

Director of Water Aid ,

given to the Commonwealth Section of the Society on Tuesday 26th April 1983, with His Excellency B. A. Kiplagat, High Commissioner for Kenya ,

in the Chair

THE CHAIRMAN: I have great pleasure in introducing Mr. David Collett, who is going to speak to us on the Water Decade. He has come from Kenya, where he met with people in the Ministry of Water Development and other ministries and voluntary organizations. He

has worn many hats in his life, taught at LSE, directed VSO - so he has been very much involved in voluntary organizations. He is now heading Water Aid, the baby just one year old.

The following paper, which was illustrated, was then given.

THE title, Decade

1980s

the (or, International

has to been use

designated its full

Drinking and

the laborious

Water

Water Decade (or, to use its full and laborious title, the International Drinking Water

Supply and Sanitation Decade). Some of its early publicity implied that, by 1990, there would be clean and acceptable water for everyone in the world, along with adequate hygienic sanitation. Reviewing progress, almost a quarter of the Decade having passed, it must be said that any such dream is far beyond fulfilment, and that even the year 2000 is probably over-ambitious for such an enormous target.

Is the Decade then a failure? Has the promised deluge of water turned into a miserable trickle? I think not. There has been progress, despite many constraints, of which widespread economic recession is only one. The goal must be practical and sustainable improvements, and preferably at an accelerating rate, rather than the complete fulfilment of universal services in such a short period.

In fact, those who started the Water Decade were quite realistic about it. Its endorsement by

the United Nations General Assembly in 1980 was preceded by a conference at Mar del Plata in 1977 which called for governments to 'adopt programmes with realistic standards for quality and quantity to provide water ... by 1990 if possible'. The words 'if possible' clearly recog- nize the enormity of what was proposed; and the words 'realistic standards' introduce a theme which will recur throughout this paper.

In the paragraphs which follow I first try to summarize why the Decade is so much needed. Then follows some discussion of progress or lack of it, and particularly of themes which need to be taken further in the next few years. The situation in Kenya (reflecting discussions during a recent visit there) will illustrate some of the points already made; and a discussion of voluntary non-government organizations will suggest their extremely important rôle in the years ahead. In conclusion I mention Water Aid as one rather unusual response to the Decade, and suggest a number of further steps which we in this country can and should take.

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SEPTEMBER 1983 THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORT

Children and polluted water , Sierra Leone ( Hugh Speed)

THE PROBLEM SUMMARIZED

Generally accepted estimates are that 1,800 millions of the world's population lack reasonable access to clean water; and even more, about 2,400 millions, lack adequate sanitation. These huge numbers of people are of course concen- trated almost entirely in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The health consequences express themselves in different forms: ★ water-borne diseases (such as diarrhoea, . • cholera, typhoid) spread by drinking or other

use of contaminated water; ★ water-washed diseases (such as round-worm,

whip-worm) spread by poor personal hygiene or lack of facilities for disposal of human wastes;

★ water-based diseases (such as bilharzia) trans- mitted by a vector which spends part of its life cycle in water and enters the human through skin or mouth;

★ water-related diseases (such as malaria, river blindness, sleeping sickness) passed through insects breeding in stagnant water;

★ fecal disposal diseases (such as hook-worm) caused by organisms breeding in excreta.

Protracted sickness or early death can often result; it is estimated that water and sanitation deficiencies underlie 80 per cent of all Third World sickness - and cause the deaths of 30,000 children every day of every year.

Given such evidence, some find the humanitarian case for a Water Decade quite sufficient in itself. For others the economic case - the importance of health to employment, the signi- ficance of water for animals, for crops and for other productive endeavour - is equally com- pelling. For most, what might be called the population case - the likelihood that improved health and life expectation will result in much smaller families - is a powerful additional reason for giving to the Decade the very highest priority in the development strategies of the years ahead.

WATER DECADE PROGRESS Our own forefathers knew something of the problems just outlined, but we should beware of assuming their experience to be applicable elsewhere to-day. Their problems were the fewer for our temperate climate; and the great achievements of nineteenth and early twentieth century

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS

Tank for storage of rainwater, Kenya (UNICEF)

public health engineering occurred in a time of rapid economic growth, indeed of industrial revolution.

Worldwide, the 1980s offer a very different climate. Yet the Water Decade opened with some enormous estimates of potential cost - it was frequently said that $800,000 millions of investment would be needed if conventional facilities were to be provided for all. This would imply an average investment of $80,000 millions each year, more than ten times the average of the late 1970s (the United Nations Development Programme quotes a total of $7,000 millions in 1978). Viewed in another way $800,000 millions implies an investment of about $400 for each of approximately 2,000 million people presently unserved.

It is sometimes assumed that most of this money was being asked of concessionary aid from the economically developed world. This is not so. For many years past Third World countries have themselves been providing almost 90 per cent of all their investment in this sector, and Water Decade planning has always assumed that at least 80 and possibly as much as 90 per cent of finance would continue to be found thus. Clearly 618

the Water Decade needed not only a massive shift in priorities, elevating water and sanitation to primacy in development spending, but also a sustained economic boom in the poorest countries.

Inevitably a few years into the Decade it has to be acknowledged that, measured formally in terms of new investment, progress is small. The $7,000 millions of 1978 had become about $10,000 millions per annum by 1981 and, after allowing for inflation, that implies hardly any increase in real terms. The constraints have been several.

The first is of course the ramifications of economic recession. We are conscious of such recession here in our own country, but very much more so still if our work takes us into the Third World. To add to the perennial problems of frail Third World economies there has been in recent years continuing decline in the prices of primary products on which so many depend; rises in the price of oil, an import on which so many development programmes of the 1960s and even 1970s induced dependence; and greatly increased interest charges on debts. It is estimated that the 1982 cost of servicing external debts was $50,000 millions, more than double that of only




Millions of women spend several hours every day carrying water (Oxfam)

three years earlier. The Third World is trapped within these enormous problems, and few other governments are presently disposed to join in the far-reaching steps needed if they are slowly to be overcome.

Secondly we must note changing aid policies. In the late 1970s the World Bank was developing an increasing momentum towards aid and development for the very poorest. Its investment in the water and sanitation sector built up to about $800 millions per annum. It is now about $500 millions per annum, and the reduc- tion seems to have been largest in Africa and Asia, which is generally speaking where needs are greatest.

The aid policies of several western governments have followed a similar path. The Reagan administration has reduced aid in real terms and significantly redirected it to areas of immediate political interest rather than areas of greatest need. Our own government moved in similar directions a few years ago, though there have been some encouraging modifications in the last twelve months. The Overseas Development Administration states that it has at the moment commitments totalling £80 millions to the water

and sanitation sector. For all OECD countries concessionary aid to the Third World - soft loans and grants - had by 1981 shrunk to 0.35 per cent of gross national product (compared to 0.5 per cent in 1960, and a widely accepted aim, achieved only by a very few member countries, of 0.7 per cent).

These are by no means the only constraints. Alongside them one must set another which is of great substance - indeed it is one which would be increasingly exposed were the others to be overcome and major resources suddenly became available for the Water Decade. This is the capacity of the Third World, in the short term or even in the medium term, to handle the implica- tions of conventional water and sanitation for all. Are governments and other institutions capable of absorbing the additional infrastructure? Are tens of thousands of engineers and scientists and technicians trained and ready to put into effect huge amounts of capital works? Do 2,000 million people all sufficiently want water and sanitation - sufficiently perhaps to pay something for it, sufficiently to play their part in caring for what would have to be an extraordinarily dispersed system, sufficiently for water and sani-

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS tation to become a top priority and therefore for the fulfilment of other needs perhaps to be phased back? The answer to this question is, I suggest, quite simply no.

REFINING THE TARGETS So far I have implied acceptance of the $800,000 millions estimate. It was quite widely propagated at the start of the Decade, which many people will therefore presume stands or falls on reaching that figure. In fact it is not only unrealistic in its ambitions; it is also, with its assumption of conventional services, unnecessarily high. For conventional services are normally taken to mean piped water supply and water-borne sewerage.

Seventy per cent of the presently unserved live in the vast rural areas of the Third World, many of them at or near a subsistence level. The Mar del Plata Conference spoke of 'realistic standards', and clearly conventional services are not remotely realistic for such dispersed popula- tions. They would require extraordinary levels of investment, induce greatly increased consump- tion of water, and invite endless problems of maintenance and operation. Charges to consumers could cover only the tiniest fraction of cost.

Altogether more feasible surely are programmes which set out to capitalize upon small dispersed supplies, and which dig wells or drill boreholes or distribute with the aid of gravity or protect spring sources or facilitate catchment and reten- tion of rain water.

For sanitation, there are improved versions of pit latrines and there are various pour-flush latrines which offer real public health gains without the very high costs of water-borne sewerage. The government of India hás recently given an important lead towards an appropriate mixture of standards, with its announcement that the expense of water-borne sewerage will only normally be considered for towns of a population exceeding 100,000.

SELF-HELP AND COMMUNITY ACTION The uncomplicated technology which is usual in small schemes is inexpensive, and allows for the major participation on a self-help basis of those who are going to benefit. There is something manageable and finite to do, and the result will be a latrine for one's own family, or a better water supply for the immediate community in which one has probably spent one's whole lifetime. 620

To maximize all that self-help and community endeavour can achieve seems to me the principal objective for the remainder of the Water Decade. It reduces costs, and it probably increases the chance of effective maintenance and operation over the ensuing years - not only because technology can be simple, but also because most of us care rather the more for things which have absorbed some of our sweat in their construction. Most important of all, though least easily measured, is the social benefit. To play a major part in improving one's own future is surely more acceptable and more dignified to most people than to be meek and passive receivers of help provided by others. Through such efforts the poor may come to feel less powerless; and may be able, first in this way and then in others, to make their own contribution to escaping the rigours of poverty, and so eventually to a more equal world.

With an increasing momentum of self-help, numerous small efforts can add up to a substantial whole. To complement so much human effort, the technology is going to have to be not only simple but reliable. Hand pumps provide an example. They will play a big part in this strategy. It is reckoned that a Water Decade adjusting rapidly away from earlier thoughts of conventional services could need as many as five millions of them. Our own Consumers' Association is one of more than 20 organizations co-operating worldwide, under the auspices of the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, to test and assess the numerous hand pumps already available. The aims are to improve quality, minimize initial cost and subsequent maintenance problems, and ensure that more and more pumps can be manufactured in the Third World itself.

The last few years have produced new evidence of what can be achieved, at very low cost, by a mixture of self-help and simple technology. I quote three examples.

Malawi has for some years been an acknowledged leader in this field. In its rural communities, wells and boreholes fitted with hand pumps are costing only $6 per caput, and with a target maintenance cost of $50 per well per year.

In Upper Volta wells to a depth of 30 metres and lined with reinforced concrete are costing $11 per caput if fitted with a bucket, and just over $14 per caput with a hand pump. Each village is expected to gather together a further




Jerry cans at stand pipe, Uganda (John Pickford) $145 before work begins, to pay for an initial kit of spares and as a first contribution to the cost of a mechanic (who is responsible for maintenance in between 15 and 20 villages).

In Zimbabwe a subsistence farmer can build an upgraded pit latrine called the Blair ventilated improved privy; with a superstructure of local materials and a ventilation pipe which he makes and plasters for himself, the cost of materials which he must purchase is about $10, suggesting a cost per caput, per user, of between $1 and $2.

This is heartening evidence of what people can achieve for themselves at truly small cost. Of course in the towns and cities, and elsewhere if there are particular local difficulties, costs will be considerably higher. But the $800,000 millions figure can be firmly put aside. A mixture of technologies and service levels, giving real improvements for all, has led the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank to an alternate estimate of $300,000 millions. Current investment of $10,000 millions a year is still only a step in that direction, but at least the lower target feels to many ultimately achievable. Kenya Kenya is the Water Decade, its problems and its potential, in microcosm.

Its Ministry of Water Development has substantial work to its credit. But these are difficult times. It is under constant pressure to improve water, here and there and everywhere. But where is the money? Charges to consumers hardly cover the cost of normal operations and maintenance, and certainly cannot contribute to the amortization of expensive loans; capital aid is much less available than a few years ago; and the Treasury is faced on the one hand by rising expectations in every sector, and on the other hand by an economy much less able to support new public spending than in years gone by.

Can the people provide where the government cannot? The spirit of 'harambee', of pulling together, has already much to its credit (for example in the building of schools) in the Kenya of the 1960s and 1970s. To capitalize upon its potential in the Water Decade there is now KWAHO, the Kenya Water For Health Organi- zation, setting out to stimulate action at the grass-roots, and find any external finance it may need, and prevent any duplication of effort. Other major non-government organizations, such as Maendeleo ya Wanawake with its 5,500 local women's groups, are working under the KWAHO umbrella, and the government itself has helped with free office accommodation.

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS

Blair ventilated improved privy, Zimbabwe (Blair Laboratory)

Digging pit latrine, Uganda (John Pickford)

each year to the Water Decade. Governments may be deflected by political preferences or by the urge to channel their aid through their own country's goods and services; these independent non-government organizations are free to work on a people-to-people rather than government- to-government basis, and they can reasonably claim that an unusually high fraction of their $125 millions is going to points of very greatest need.

WaterAid is a new organization of this kind, a registered charity and the first to be created specifically as a response to the Water Decade. From the start, its main supporters have been working within the British water industry. These are people who are glad to earn their own living from something of such social value; and who are prepared, some to offer financial support, others their time and skills if these can be used either at home or overseas.

How then is this rather unusual charity actually working? The paragraphs below will outline first what it is doing to win support at home; and then how that support is being applied to meet needs overseas.

KWAHO is as yet a shoe-string operation, but its success over the next few years is important to Kenya and the Kenya government. Its chief officer has only a tiny staff, and feels it would be significantly strengthened were it to acquire for the first time an engineer as technical adviser - assessing the feasibility of projects, and offering a little guidance or supervision during construction. But when people give money to KWAHO it is nearly always ear-marked for practical work in the villages. And so there are no funds to pay for that modicum of professional advice which could help groups of ordinary people achieve really lasting improvements.

NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS AND WATERAID

As in Kenya so elsewhere there is opportunity for non-government organizations. India is said to have at least 12,000 of them, and in our own country such as Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund and Voluntary Service Overseas are familiar and respected names. They and similar organizations in many other countries are altogether contributing about $125 millions 622



SEPTEMBER 1983 THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORT There are ten regional Water Authorities in

England and Wales and each has a volunteer Water Aid 'representative', a senior member of staff who sets out to explain the needs of the Water Decade and build teams of supporters and helpers in each work place and in the trade unions and professional societies. There are now fully a thousand such people, many of them moved not only by humanitarian concern but also by professional curiosity at the contrasts between their own experience and the ways of organizing water and sanitation in the Third World.

I have stressed that Water Aid is based upon the people rather than the institutions of the industry, but fortunately those institutions are creating a climate to help that process along: ★ The National Water Council has given free

offices and office services. ★ Water Authorities and Water Companies

have made it easier for employees to give practical support to Water Aid (for example by allowing those who wish to make financial contributions to do so by payroll deduction; or by guaranteeing re-employment and main- taining superannuation for those who seek leave of absence to work overseas in a Water Decade capacity).

★ Companies associated with the industry - for example some of the manufacturers, and consulting and contracting engineers - have contributed to Water Aid's early fund-raising, aware that this was one thing which the public sector organizations could not do. None of this turns WaterAid into a major

organization; it is a fledgling still, as yet engag- ing the interest of only a small minority of the industry. It sees itself as something of a proto- type, examining how far a major industry can in a disinterested way be a new force in development, alongside the existing work of governments and the publicly supported charities such as Oxfam.

In 1983 WaterAid's resources will hardly exceed £100,000. In 1982 they were much less than that. What can it usefully do overseas? First, minor funding or equipment can be given to village self-help projects, particularly where they look likely to set a pattern which others may follow. This has now been done in ten different countries. Secondly, advice and back-up can be sought within the British industry where engineers and technicians overseas, some of them profes-

sionally very isolated, write and explain their needs. Eighteen people in eight different countries have so far taken up this offer.

There are also, however, occasions when experi- enced people can usefully be deployed overseas. In Sierra Leone , a WaterAid engineer and surveyor have since January been attached to the Ministry of Energy and Power, designing simple gravity-fed improvements in a group of villages and small towns. In Uganda an engineer has been giving technical help to the Bishop of Busoga, who has major plans for water in a wide- ranging rural development programme. In the South of Sudan a mechanical and electrical superintendent has examined broken-down water treatment and other plant and advised on the possibility of its rehabilitation.

Earlier I mentioned the Kenya Water for Health Organization, and its shortage of staff. WaterAid has recently expressed interest in seconding an engineer to it for a year or two, if no Kenyan is available.

A further example of new work for the months ahead is in low-cost sanitation. Last year some minor financial support was given to the Blair ventilated improved privy programme, already mentioned, in Zimbabwe. WaterAid simply funded experiments with a fibreglass mesh insect screen; the making of a filmstrip to be used in village by village health education campaigns; and the construction of privies in three schools. More and more it is recognized that the Blair privy, or something similar, has major potential beyond Zimbabwe: WaterAid will where neces- sary offer modest financial support in other African countries, if church or other community groups want to build and test really low-cost sanitation measures of this kind.

All of this is small indeed in relation to the 2,000 million people whom the Water Decade addresses. But is has been a recurring theme of this paper that progress is going to mean not one great technological blitz but rather a multitude of small steps forward. The early experience of WaterAid is that some practical things can be achieved at very low cost, and that this encourages others, both in this country and in the Third World, to join in the effort.

THE MID 1980s I end with a call for action by the people and the government of this country. A few generations ago, Britain enjoyed great power and influence

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS in the world. Her colonies and major trading interests gave international experience and an international perspective to many of her people. Times have changed, self-confidence is reduced, and there is a risk that inward-looking attitudes will prevail.

Yet surely an international vision is still needed. This country should: ★ play its part in efforts to re-arrange the world's

economic system so that it bears less formid- ably upon the very poorest countries;

★ increase the official Aid programme to at least 0.7 per cent of gross national product;

★ concentrate more and more of such Aid into the poorest countries and into development

sectors concerned with such really basic needs as water and sanitation;

★ encourage more international understanding particularly among young people - for example through renewed government support for initiatives in development education. As a result the Water Decade would benefit,

and Britain would be giving a lead to many others. Clean water and basic sanitation would still not be universally available by 1990, but they will come the sooner if the rich world can take a more generous attitude to the poor - and if in the remaining years of the Decade self-help and small initiatives are extended and supported in all possible ways.

DISCUSSION

MR. J. к. Thompson, CMG: Ithank Mr. Collett for that remarkably interesting talk. Would he say a word about administration - not just for administration's sake - but in this United Nations International Water Decade, where is the central stimulation? Is it UNDP? Is it the World Bank? Can he identify where the stimulus really comes from? At the other end of the scale, we know that in deve-

loping countries departments are all vying with their ministers of finance for their share of the cake, often a very small cake. Where does this responsibility lie in typical, small developing countries? It is a vast subject to cover, and I don't suppose it comes under the minister of health, and in many countries there is not a minister of water development. Where does ministerial responsibility lie in a developing country?

MR. JEREMY LUMBERS (Lecturer, Public Health (Environmental) and Water Resource Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Imperial College): I should like to add comments on the positive side of the achievements of the Decade, particularly in relation to education, because that is my current business. It is interesting to note that many degree courses in this country, particularly engineering and public health engineering, have become much more aware of the need of developing countries. Imperial College has always been thus aware, but certainly many curricula have changed in this way, which is a positive thing and will have a long-term benefit. Another point is that the Science and Engineering Research Council recently allocated specific money to the problems of developing countries. That was something which has come about because of the realization of the problem. In general the Decade has undoubtedly changed people's attitude towards the provision of these facilities, so there has been a political benefit. Suddenly the Decade has meant that you no longer keep on giving better

water supplies to those people who already have supplies, but consider those people who have never been covered by traditional services. Thus there has been political benefit, real but not easily measurable.

MRS. ZENA DAYSH (Executive Vice-Chairman, Commonwealth Human Ecology Council): We in CHEC are making a contribution in the non-governmental sphere to the water decade. Two of the law schools of two of the polytechnics in London, Middlesex and Central London, have joined together with this Coun- cil and with the Commonwealth Secretariat to analyse (reading from a recent journal of ours) 'existing environmental legislation and to extract elements of immediate use as models we see as a valuable under- taking', but the volume and variety of world legislation is so large as to make analysis a formidable task. How- ever, the Commonwealth framework, while including a full range of world problems and stages of economic and political development, may well simplify legislation on account of the common language and the various traditions. The environmental aspect of water supply and control has been chosen for the pilot study, from which it is planned to produce a series of studies and publications embracing all major aspects of environmental management. The Commonwealth organizations and the Polytechnics, together with IUCN, are now going deeply into environmental management and water aspects to see how law and human ecology can contribute.

DR. MARY TIFFEN (Overseas Development Insti- tute): I was very interested in what was said about self- help in Kenya and the voluntary agencies there. During the last year I went to Kenya. I was looking, amongst other things, at the social services component in a District Integrated Development Programme, and trying to work out why, when it was quite evident that

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SEPTEMBER 1983 THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORT there was a lot of self-help activity within the district, the people responsible for the projects, whether from the Kenyan government or expatriates, did not seem to feel that the Social Service department was pulling its weight. It turned out that the community development assistants, who were doing a great deal to promote self-help for water as well as other things, were in fact employed by, and reporting to, the County Council. Therefore the central government and foreign agencies involved in this integrated development project were not fully aware of the situation on the ground. Water in Britain is very much a regional and local

government responsibility. I wonder whether there is contact through Water Aid with local authorities in other countries as a channel for water assistance?

MR. JOHN KENDALL, ARIBA, ARICS, FRSM: It is rather unfortunate that the word 'sanitation' has been effectively dropped from the description of the Decade. Your figures for those that apply to water and those that apply to sanitation indicate that sanitation is an even greater deprivation than water, and I would suggest that in the next nine years, to achieve the maximum results from the effort, sanitation should be linked with water all the time. In the UK, obviously, water and sanitation have been brought together in terms of administration and related use. I think that is a very important point. I am personally very interested in primary health care and have had put to me a mobile water purification plant which is capable of producing potable water for villages of up to two hundred souls, from brackish water, run simply by diesel engines. I should like to ask whether you have come across this type of thing in your travels. It was developed apparently in submarines by the Americans during the war and it is a perfectly sound proposition as a simple mobile water purification plant.

DR. MARILYN Carr (Intermediate Technology Development Group): I should like to congratulate Mr. Collett on the comprehensive nature of his speech and for mentioning so positively so many of those technologies which my group seeks to promote. The Intermediate Technology Development Group is publishing a special quarterly journal called Water Lines which is being issued specially for the Decade. I believe that Mr. Collett and one of the previous speakers who asked a question are technical advisers to the committee for Water Lines. This is one of the ways in which we hope to disseminate more information on low cost technology of use during the water decade. Although we have been stressing technologies here -

coming from a technology organization myself I believe that we should not forget them - you mentioned that technology is not always enough. Certainly this is something that I have found in my own experience of trying to disseminate technologies to community groups in the Third World. Have you anything to say

about how we might get beyond the pilot project stage, into widespread dissemination of these technologies, especially since so many of them are things from which communities can see no immediate economic benefit? If people are to put effort and money into these technologies, normally the ones which have immediate economic return are the ones that win. With many of these sanitation schemes it is very difficult for people to measure benefit. Unless that is done, it is difficult to think in terms of widespread automatic dissemination.

MR. HENRY GRACE: I am a retired consulting engineer and have been involved with development for many years. What thought has been given to obtaining contributions from the people who actually benefit by the supply of pure water? I remember that this was often a difficulty, and in many cases the payment for the water had to come from the Government Development and Welfare Fund. It was difficult to obtain contributions from the people who immediately benefited from the supply.

MISS MARGARET А. в RA YT ON (Commonwealth Nurses Federation): When he spoke about Kenya, Mr. Collett referred to that wonderful group of women and the work that they have done in the water and sanitation situation. That organization is linked worldwide with the Associated Countrywomen of the World, and when they attend international conferences those women are the best disseminators of information on the work they have done in Kenya and many of their examples have been used in many other parts of the world.

MR. P. A. BROWNE, С Eng, FICE: I am an irrigation consultant. The point I should like to make, which the speaker has already raised, is how difficult it is to get all this work done in the short space of a decade. Some years ago I was a project manager for the World Bank on an agricultural development project in Afghanistan. This was designed to benefit the small farms by providing them with wells for irrigation and drinking water; also putting in small-scale irrigation schemes, small diversionary dams and that type of thing. This particular project took seven years to set up. I do not know whether that was due to the bureaucracy of the World Bank, but it took seven years to identify the project, prepare it and negotiate it. I went out on a three-year project, I had a four-man team of expatriates, we recruited Afghans, and it took us eighteen months actually to get started. This was to get equipment and vehicles, rigs, pumps and so on. After eighteen months we got going and then we did quite well. We imported about four hundred pumps and by the end of three years we had about two hundred wells installed on farms. They were mostly hand-dug wells, all done by the farm labourers. We provided pumps on credit. That

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS PROCEEDINGS worked out quite well, but in putting in small dams and small water supply schemes, we came up against a lot of social, political and economic problems, mainly due to the fact that we were having to deal with un- sophisticated tribesmen. Then unfortunately there was a coup ďétat and that was really the end of the project. But the point is that after ten years the project had only just got going. You have to think ahead for at least ten years; twenty years would probably be better.

MR. R. A. GYAMPOH (Ghana High Commission): My own view is that in designing some of these schemes, it is important to consider use of local materials as opposed to imported items. When a project has been set up, usually there are

break downs here and there of equipment. When the material for the project is something that has been imported, later on, it becomes difficult to get replace- ments because either there is foreign exchange con- straint or some other problem. But if the question of local materials is considered seriously, then replace- ment of worn out parts becomes easier and the project can continue for much longer without undue inter- ruption.

the LECTURER: I think I can respond to some of these points more adequately than to others. The tendency to omit sanitation and concentrate on

water - I am sure the point is absolutely sound. It is an extremely difficult one to get around because clean water is much more saleable and much more attractive to people. I had an example this afternoon; I was talk- ing to some admirable film makers who have been for the last year making a film related to the Water Decade. To-day was about the fifth time I have talked to them. Originally they asked for ideas on where to film. Nearly twelve months ago we produced six or seven sugges- tions. They have been co-operative and friendly in responding to them all, except one; it was not possible to get them interested in sanitation. This was unfilm- able; it has to be water. I tell the story only to underline the point. Few of us know an answer. There was a question raised about the stimulus within

the international system. The formal answer is that there is a 'Steering Committee for Co-operative Action' for which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provides the Chairman, and seven or eight other predictable organizations including the World Bank in the membership. The Secretary of that Water Decade Committee is a full-time United Nations official who in the last year or so has been sited in the World Health Organization to improve liaison between UNDP and the World Health Organization. He was originally a UNDP man. The question about which ministry in a typical

country carries the can is unanswerable. It differs in each country, and there are very few countries where one could give a clear-cut answer. You may feel that

the elements of division of responsibility are themselves a weakening thing. The point about mobile purification units is one

which I should like to duck if I may; not being an engineer, I would not wish to exhibit my ignorance; but I should like to hear more of it. Then there was that important question about the

extent to which communities contribute. My impression is that many people pay quite a lot of money already for very inadequate water. My guess is therefore that it is often not the principle of paying something for water which is difficult to overcome in small-scale schemes but the organization of it and the collection of revenue. If people are contributing substantially in kind, either to the construction or the subsequent operation and maintenance phase, that must also be valued as a contribution of importance just as a cash payment would be. May I turn to Dr. Carr's important question con-

cerning the ways of replicating small schemes. There is no one answer to this. Miss Brayton has referred to the value of international conferences, and good experience being passed on within them. Others would argue that the key lies in the media, and the vigorous use of such as transistor radio. Radio may pass on information, but can it motivate? We must employ these and other means to spread the word. We should also look for gains through word-of-mouth or direct visual experience - with one community seeing and hearing of change in another, and as a result deciding to do something itself.

DR. MARY TIFFEN: You did not mention whether you had any contact with local authorities.

THE LECTURER: Only rarely so far. In a few cases Water Aid has been working with governments - and that may eventually lead to work with local government. More often, however, our partners have been non-government organizations like ourselves.

MR. JEREMY LUMBERS: I should like to add something stemming from the point about co-ordinat- ing sanitation and water supply, which is the keystone of the Decade. Last year I had a post-graduate student surveying all the aid agencies he could contact in this country regarding their approach to co-ordination. He did not find any which had a positive policy or approach to matching water supplies and sanitation. I suggest that whilst there is a lot of lip service being paid to co- ordination in reality nobody has actually thought very clearly about it.

MR. JOHN KENDALL: I must disagree with the last speaker inasmuch that I am sure that Oxfam has done a lot in the way of co-ordination of water supply and sanitation. They have a system in India where they have very large polythene bags which provide community sanitation on quite a large scale in a very effective

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way, but equally they are concerned with wells and that sort of thing; they do marry the two things together. If you have not got good sanitation, it is not a lot of good really having potable water. The one operates against the other. the LECTURER: I think you need to allow for the

extent to which aid organizations have to be reactive. They are not the prime movers of these services in the Third World, and we as outsiders are merely responding albeit selectively to things we are asked to do by the prime movers. In watching in these early months of Water Aid I have been concerned with the extent to which we could easily do what you are saying - that is respond to water here and sanitation there. This is frequently what one is asked to do, and one has neither the power nor necessarily the wish to try to press the organizations that we are working with and tell them that we really know their business better than they do. THE CHAIRMAN: It remains for me on your behalf

to thank Mr. David Collett for a very sober and interesting lecture. He has sown seeds at least in my own mind, and I am sure that he has watered others in yours that had already been sown, on this very important topic of water, which is the life blood of a nation. When it is contaminated it can bring death, and when it is clean it brings life. The last point mentioned was co-ordination. In Kenya we call it the spirit of harmony, of bringing different people together to work on a specific project, and this applies particularly in water. My mind went back home thinking of the importance of involving the people themselves at the grass roots level in the rural areas, but they alone are not sufficient.

We need also the local governments to come in, and also the central government. So with the working together of local people, local government, central government, and even more so yourselves here, the experts and foreigners who come and help us, when we pull together we do achieve a lot. Lectures stimulate thoughts from here and ideas

that come in the more developed countries. I have worked myself in a voluntary organization and I tuned my antennae so finely to echoes coming from the countries that have manpower and finance, and adjusted my priorities often to what was the ш-thing in the developing countries. It would have been hopeless for me to try and write up a project which would not find a buyer. I think this idea of the Decade is so crucial because it has been a priority, but in the past whenever one presented a project, whether sanitation or water, it did not really find an opening. I am more than delighted personally, Mr. Collett, that you yourself carry out this important task of trying to stimulate more people to think about water, so that those of us who are selling projects can find buyers fairly easily. These efforts will not get very far unless we have trained people who can carry on with this work at all levels, whether simple technicians or fully fledged engineers. I am pleading really that you should open your institutions to those coming from the Third World for training, because this is a very neglected area. It is only recently that universities have set up departments of engineering. Ours is less than fifteen years old. We emphasize the humanities, but I think it is time that we put more effort into technologies. I ask you all to show your appreciation to Mr. Collett.

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Documents

THE WATER DECADE: PRIORITIES AND THE RÔLE OF VOLUNTARY EFFORT