Water: Developing Countries

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate on a substance without which life on planet Earth would not be possible. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for bringing it to your Lordships’ House and for the informative way in which he introduced it—I certainly learned a lot not just from him but from contributions from other noble Lords. I am proud to associate myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, with respect to Gaza. I hope that the Minister will take up some of the suggestions made.

We have heard from across your Lordships’ House how access to clean water and hygienic disposal of human waste permeate every aspect of human health, affecting education, economies and livelihoods. We have also heard how competition for this increasingly scarce resource is affecting the environmental integrity and biodiversity of our world.

Without sound and sustainable management of water availability in developing countries, we cannot hope to achieve the global goals set out in the 17 SDGs. The World Wide Fund for Nature has sent a useful infographic showing how clean freshwater is linked to every one of the 17 SDG. It makes a powerful case for paying attention to the Chinese proverb: when you drink the water, remember the spring. The undeniable fact is that freshwater ecosystems are the source of almost all the water we use in cities and industry and about half the water we use to grow crops. Given that from an international development view there are profound implications of rivers and aquifers running dry, what is DfID doing to support improved water policy in countries where the need is greatest? I too was encouraged to receive a briefing from the CDC stating that over the next five years it has committed to reducing water consumption across its portfolio of companies, which is to be welcomed.

Water is indeed life, but for many of us in developed countries good water is so plentiful and readily available that we rarely pause to consider what life would be like without it. However, we know that for many of the world’s poorest, clean water, on tap, is a dream.

The challenges faced by developing countries have been spelled out by noble Lords, and they are many. I cannot hope to cover them all in the time available, so I shall focus the remainder of my remarks on three aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene—commonly known as WASH programmes—where I think DfID can make a real difference.

First, I want to talk about data, because the old adage that if you cannot measure it you cannot manage it holds firm in the context of WASH programmes. The primary recommendation to DfID in ICAI’s report of May 2016, entitled Assessing DFID’s Results in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, was to improve the measurement and reporting of the development impact of WASH programmes. While I wholeheartedly congratulate DfID on reaching 62.9 million people with vital WASH support between 2011 and 2015, I nevertheless put it to the Minister that the consequence of not collecting better data is that DfID does not have what it needs to assess whether WASH programming is maximising impact, particularly for vulnerable groups.

Secondly, I want to talk about the longer-term sustainability of WASH programmes, about which the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, spoke eloquently. The ICAI report was also critical of the fact that DfID measures only initial and not sustained access to its WASH programmes. We have no way of knowing how many of the 62.9 million people whom DfID had reached are still being reached today. This is a real weakness in the programme design. The situation has changed little since the National Audit Office report of 2003, which made a similar recommendation. Has DfID moved away from programmes designed to maximise reach to focus rather on longevity?

Thirdly, I want to talk about the impact of SDG 5 on women and girls, and the wider commitment to leave no one behind. When I managed to glean some evidence on human well-being, it showed that DfID’s WASH programmes have an enviable knock-on effect on the wider development goals. Here is a really good example. In Bangladesh, DfID spent £48.5m on the sanitation, hygiene and water supply project between 2007 and 2013, providing the poorest regions with arsenic-safe water, improved sanitation facilities and hygiene messages. A programme evaluation found that the project led to increases in school enrolment and reductions in dropout rates, particularly for girls. Because the fact is that without sanitation and hygiene facilities in schools, girls stop going to school when they start menstruation. Also, of course, the burden of collecting water is removed from them. It also showed that improvement in sanitation facilities led to a reduction in water-borne diseases: the diarrhoea rate for children under five fell from 11% to 5.1%. In other words, it more than halved in the target area, alongside reductions in parasitic worms, malaria and skin infections.

What a story—this is something to be really proud of. The ICAI report gives other examples where WASH programmes have shown impressive wider development impacts. So it is not surprising that ICAI lamented the fact that the data is not routinely collected at programme level, even when it is readily available. This is a real shame, because collecting this data would enable DfID to fine-tune its programmes in real time and better target investment towards the most vulnerable, such as women and girls, the elderly and people with disabilities. This is very important because of the SDGs’ commitment to leave no one behind.



There is growing recognition of the importance the WASH sector plays in tackling issues of gender violence. A DfID research programme, “Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity”—SHARE—has produced a toolkit on how to design WASH facilities so as to reduce vulnerability to violence. I hope that the Minister will confirm that this programme will be accompanied by robust monitoring arrangements to determine its effectiveness. While I welcome the difference DfID WASH programmes are making, I want to emphasise how much support the department would receive if it did more of it. The fact is that WASH programmes have a great deal of support among the public and they do not come under attack from the tabloids. It is a no-brainer. We do not need the World Health Organization to tell us that for every pound spent on WASH, an estimated £4 is returned in productivity. However, currently only 1.6% of DfID’s bilateral aid is invested in WASH programmes. The UN has identified this SDG as a key area facing funding shortfalls. I hope that DfID will consider increasing the amount that it gives to WASH programmes.

We have seen the positive knock-on effects of WASH programmes on other development goals—in other words, its prevention potential. There is a real case for not only increasing our contribution but encouraging others to do likewise.