“I’m super excited about this Congress and the fact that it is happening in Rwanda,” says Doulaye Kone, deputy director of the water, sanitation, and hygiene programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and chair of the 2023 Water and Development Congress Programme Committee.

Supporting the foundation’s work to help secure access to safe sanitation for the 2.5 billion people currently lacking it, Kone champions disruptive technology that challenges the status quo by reimagining the possibilities for sanitation in developing countries. The foundation aims to sow the seed for a new, innovative and equitable sanitation industry.

Looking towards the Congress, Kone continues: “I think there are many aspects of progress in water and sanitation services that we can showcase. There has been tremendous progress in the past decade on water services in Africa, but sanitation is lagging behind. Everyone is looking for the best way to deliver solutions at scale.

“In Rwanda, we will explore how policymakers are driving improvements, and provide an environment where delegates can learn from the experiences of others around the world.

“When I look at sanitation delivery, it is dominated by the private sector. This is a strong industry, but there is much work to be done. This Congress will provide an opportunity for good conversations to take place between utilities, service providers and the diverse breadth of stakeholders for which this issue is so important.”

The challenge of meeting SDG 6

The overall theme of this year’s Water and Development Congress is ‘Water, sanitation, and climate resilience – keys to a water-wise future’. This is particularly timely given the event is taking place in Africa, home to 1.3 billion people.

The UN’s Global Water Security 2023 Assessment found that all countries in the continent are facing water insecurity, with 13 of them assessed as being ‘critically’ water insecure.

Africa is a region of fast urbanisation and it has strong academic institutions, but it has the lowest levels of safe water, sanitation and hygiene services worldwide. Almost 31% of people in Africa do not have access to basic drinking water services, and only 15% have access to safely managed drinking water. In the case of sanitation, 82% of people still live without access to a safely managed sanitation service. These low levels of dealing with wastewater are linked to high mortality rates, with the World Health Organization raising the alarm in 2019 that 20 countries in Africa had ‘extremely high mortality rates’.

Kone says: “When it comes to sanitation, coverage is not that great across many countries in Africa. Rural sanitation is quite a challenge. I see a lot of very good examples, but it takes a lot to make things happen at scale.”

Big problems require inspired solutions

“Africa is not waiting for landline solutions,” says Kone. “We now have digital platforms and infrastructure that almost everyone can access. Africa has the opportunity to rethink and find new solutions to complement or close the gap when centralised services are not the best response. As we innovate, we must also build in resilience to climate change.”

While climate resilience is crucial to development across all regions of the world, it has particular significance to the continent of Africa. The region has the highest number of countries at high risk of floods and droughts, with water insecurity exacerbated by accelerated population growth, urbanisation, and industrialisation.

Kone says: “There are competing opportunities, but some of these are very well linked. Flooding is a concern. Water quality is a concern. Water scarcity is a concern. But a strong strategy can help to alleviate some of these pressures. I hope we can leave the Congress with some solutions. I think we can increase prospects for those without adequate water and sanitation. And I’m looking forward to an inclusive dialogue.

“The conversation at the Congress will provide important opportunities for stakeholder dialogue. The plenary sessions and the technical sessions are really important for stakeholders and partners to learn the principles and connect with one another. The Congress creates an incredible energy, and this is something we can build on to progress change.

“The Water and Development Congress, held in Sri Lanka in 2019, provided an opportunity for delegates to meet among themselves and exchange ideas. This enabled people to learn very quickly and to transfer this knowledge into policy recommendations. That is the type of dialogue we want to foster throughout this Congress.”

Book your ticket

This year’s event provides the opportunity to influence positive change in Africa and beyond, providing a catalyst to inspire water professionals to make a lasting contribution that will not only transform lives, but also save lives.

It is taking place in Rwanda’s capital and largest city, Kigali, which is an economic and cultural hub surrounded by breathtaking views of the region’s rolling hills and valleys. Whether your interest is in the circular economy, climate smart solutions, digital transformation, innovative technology or policy, IWA’s Water and Development Congress has much to offer.

Kone says: “The data shows that most countries will miss the 2030 target for the delivery of safe water and sanitation. But this doesn’t mean progress is not happening. We could progress faster with more resources. Sanitation delivery is more challenging. We need to completely rethink the service and business models, and acknowledge the level of investment that is required.

“The speed to close this gap is not about willingness; it is about resources. One of the biggest things that happened at the UN Water Conference was commitment at country level. This needs to be backed by strong investment to enable us to accelerate action. Resource mobilisation will be key. But we also need to have the policy framework, so that, when the resources arrive, we have the ability to deliver. We should be thinking about building water and sanitation opportunities that increase resilience and provide a response that reflects on what communities are facing today.”

Kone concludes: “My hope is for this event to ensure countries looking for solutions receive clear guidance on how to achieve a national dialogue. Very often, there is no framework for how to extend service delivery to poor communities. Poor communities suffer from lack of infrastructure and lack of financing. We need to fill that gap.” •

More information

To register and find out more about IWA’s 2023 Water and Development Congress & Exhibition, visit: waterdevelopmentcongress.org

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For the UK’s Anglian Water, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a useful way of framing its activity in a broader context.

“There is an element of credibility to the SDGs, so it helps people to understand that what we’re doing at a local level is contributing to a wider, greater good,” explains Andy Brown, head of sustainability at Anglian Water Services. This is particularly true when interacting with customers and other stakeholders in the region, he says. “It helps to create a common language and narrative.”

Beyond the water-focused SDG goal 6, an SDG lens highlights, for example, how Anglian, along with other water utilities, contributes to quality education, covered by goal 4 and, more specifically, target 4.4, which covers skills for employment.

This contribution includes delivering programmes in schools, and promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, says Brown. He adds that, in April, UK water companies signed up to The Social Mobility Pledge. “That is about targeting areas where there is the least social mobility with our education and recruitment programmes,” he says.

Another example is the contribution around goal 12, on sustainable consumption and production, specifically target 12.8, on ensuring that people have information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature.

“There is a huge amount of work that we do as a company, but also as a sector, in helping people to understand that,” he says. “There will be much more that we can do once we have smart meters in place – we can really help people understand the connection with what they are actually using and how that impacts on the outside world.”

Working with the SDGs

The SDGs are 17 linked goals, with sub-goals and numerous targets and indicators. They aim to secure action by national governments, so are not a fixed framework for action at the utility level.

“There is a big debate about whether you should look at all 17 goals or focus on the ones most material to you,” says Brown. “You can work in the spirit of all 17, but I think you have to focus on those where you are either having the greatest impact or you have got the greatest ability to make some positive change.”

Then there is the question of whether to express that impact in relation to a goal as a whole, or an aspect of it. “We think focusing at the target level is the right level for us as a business,” says Brown. Referring to the goal level perhaps brings a risk of overstating the contribution made. On the other hand, the specific SDG indicators are more relevant for judging national progress. “The target level helps you to really understand whether we are actually contributing,” he says.

Brown notes that he has shared experiences with his UK peers. “We are all doing things slightly differently,” he says. “It is different for every business, and you have got to do what is right for your business.”

Widening the focus

Consulting company Arup also maps its activities against the SDGs. Dr Mark Fletcher, Arup’s global water leader, explains that the company started capturing the social benefit of its work while the SDGs were still being formulated. “We look at the benefit per project against things such as drought, flooding, wastewater, water supply, and water treatment, and assign the social benefit of a project,” he says.

“What we have done, therefore, is looked at all of those projects through the lens of the SDGs, recognising that SDGs are national targets, not targets for Arup. We can then reflect back to our staff the fact that we are working across the SDGs – for some of them that is very significant.”

Fletcher explains that Arup has developed its approach beyond this, breaking down its contribution from a local, city, regional, national and global perspective, and whether the work is through influence, advice, or design. The company is looking to take this further, identifying whether work is for the public sector, private sector or third sector, and there is a further opportunity to capture the income level of those who benefit from projects. “That is the direction we are going to try to go,” he adds.

This all supports the view that there is value for water utilities in projecting their activities through an SDG lens. Indeed, “SDG 6 underpins all of the other goals – water sits at the centre,” notes Fletcher.

At the same time, this is just one aspect of a broader field of how to view and assess the work and contribution of the sector. “For us, it is about sustainable development,” says Fletcher. “The SDGs are a set of national targets. The six principles that we follow in terms of sustainable development would very clearly map onto what all the water companies are doing.” He lists these as improving health and wellbeing, transitioning to a zero-carbon economy, adopting circular economy principles, enhancing community resilience, creating social value, and respecting planetary boundaries. “All of these are consistent with what water companies do,” he adds.

Sustainability strategy

The way Anglian Water works with the SDGs is, indeed, part of its broader approach to sustainability. In that context, the links to the SDGs described above are about mapping positive and negative impacts across from its business plan. “I am quite happy and confident with the way we do that,” says Brown.

“The next level is then how you try to incorporate that mapping into your thinking and decision-making, both at a project level and a strategic level,” he continues. “I think every company is not as mature in thinking about how they do that.”

“We are looking at embedding six capitals metrics at the core of our decision-making process,” says Brown. This looks at natural, human, social, intellectual, financial and manufactured capitals, and how a business transforms these inputs into outputs. “Those are the key things we will track through investment decisions,” adds Brown.

“What we try not to do within Anglian is create lots of different systems that we are tracking at the same time. We want to track one set of metrics and be able to dial in or out interpretations of those metrics onto systems.”

Use of the SDGs will, therefore, work around that. “You can use those metrics to act as proxies towards the targets within the SDGs as well,” says Brown. “You can map those against the SDG targets and then be able to relate those to an audience who are interested in and understand the SDGs.

“We are working on those metrics at the moment. We’re looking at testing them over the next six months, and hope to be implementing them in April next year.”

SDG strengths

The SDGs clearly have a role in helping drive national action, as the latest phase in the global sustainability and development agenda.

“To me, they have galvanised the focus on some really important issues for the future of humanity,” says Arup’s Fletcher.

They have also brought a different perspective to this agenda, connecting issues and the progress of developing and developed countries.

“I think what is powerful is the underpinning of water underneath virtually all of the other SDGs,” adds Fletcher. “It is very powerful to acknowledge that in discussions; the SDGs are becoming a way of joining up what were previously siloed initiatives and endeavours.”

This does not mean they always provide a good fit as the main focus at, for example, a utility level, especially given that the SDGs are framed around a 2030 horizon.

Anglian Water’s Brown adds: “That is another reason why we are trying to overlay the SDGs on our normal embedded sustainability framework, so that it complements and supplements what we are doing, and it enables us to talk about our contribution to the SDGs without completely changing or adding another whole separate stream of work.

“However, the water industry has got sustainability pretty much at the heart of what we do.

“If you are in a company that doesn’t have that and doesn’t have all the regulatory framework and history that we have, using the SDGs as a framework to create your sustainability strategy is a really good starting point.”

Support for project SDG success

In a survey carried out last year, around 90% of engineers, academics and policy-makers felt it was very important to be able to make SDG connections in projects, but only 30% felt they had the appropriate tools and approaches.

This is according to Paul Mansell, who carried out the survey. He has been developing a tool to help incorporate SDGs in water projects, as a doctoral researcher under Professor Simon Philbin at London South Bank University. Development has included applying the model to an Anglian Water case study.

“The sense of the importance of this subject is very high, but there is frustration over a lack of tools available,” says Mansell.

“Getting alignment with stakeholders as to what defines success for individual projects is a critical part of starting successfully. If you add SDGs on top of that, it is both a real opportunity and a challenge.”

Achieving this alignment is difficult enough. It needs, for example, stakeholders to understand the differences between project outputs, outcomes and impacts, explains Mansell. “That is crucial for water project teams,” he says. Adding in the SDGs makes this more complex, not least because of their country-level focus. ìIf you [want to] align the ambitions of your water projects to SDGs at a goal level and a target level, you probably can’t do it by the official UN indicators,” he adds.

“If you can [align] at the goal and target level, it adds coherence to what you are trying to achieve at a more strategic level – that is the opportunity.”

The tool is based on a model called the Infrastructure SDG Impact-Value Chain. It would be used in conjunction with workshops. “These are needed to be able to align it with the specifics of an individual project,” says Mansell.

Having developed the theoretical basis, Mansell is looking for live project trials. “I have run a number of workshops and the feedback has been very strong, both in the UK and abroad,” he says. “For the next step, it needs to be trialled in projects that are operational, whether at the start of the project life-cycle or midway through.”

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Premier David Makhura announced the plan last week to officials at a forum for South African provincial governments and municipalities.

“The Gauteng City Region (GCR) is very vulnerable with regards to facing a water crisis and this is due to our location, the type of economy we run, and the number of people we attract,” he said, adding:

“We need to agree on setting up a water war room that will be made up of representatives from the provincial government and local government.”

The province continues to transform from wetlands used to graze livestock into an urban economic hub. It is the smallest region South Africa, making up only 1.5 percent of the total land, yet contains the country’s biggest city, Johannesburg. Its growing population (around 13.7 million people) is placing increasing pressure on its water supply, with recommended litres per person recently lowered from 347 to 287.

In the announcement, Makhura cited research showing that while Gauteng uses just 11 percent of the country’s water, it contributes some 38 percent of its resources to the national economy. In a State of Province Address in February earlier in the year, Makhura said the supply of both water and energy were “the most urgent and pressing challenge for the Gauteng City Region”.

“We need to harness new technologies to address a range of issues, such as water treatment, waste water management and sanitation, rainwater harvesting and aging infrastructure which leads to huge water losses,” he said.

The volume of water needed to sustain the province is unlikely to be met within the next seven years, according to water experts present at the recent forum. They urged Makhura to invest in infrastructure capable of ensuring the region has additional storage for water no longer stored naturally in the ground.

Makhura did not say whether the war room plans would introduce commercial parties to discussion of how to manage the region’s resources, though said it would be made up of a “political and technical component, which will be used to identify trends and respond to those”.

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By James Workman

On the 2nd of August 2015, UN member states unanimously adopted 17 goals and 169 targets for Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The vote marked an end to the gruelling threeyear process through which hundreds of groups boiled down thousands of discussions into one water and sanitation goal.

The ambition is to mitigate urban water challenges, ensure access to basic services, treat wastewater, and mitigate the impact of water-related disasters in cities, says Gérard Payen of Aquafed, who believes SDG6 “will create a revolution in the water world”. (See box for the full description of SDG6).

It may indeed. But it has also stirred up quiet backroom power struggles. For SDG6 raises questions about how to measure progress in water and sanitation: Which agencies get to monitor states? Where will funds come from, or flow to? What are the water SDG’s metrics of success, or failure?

In short: Who keeps score?

Technicalities matter

Rough answers have begun taking shape. In March 2016, experts proposed a list of indicators for the ‘High-Level Political Forum’ to endorse in July [see box]. The next month the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named a High-Level Panel on Water. Observers said the “remaining discussions are technical, between water specialists and statisticians”.

Those details, of course, are often where the devil resides. The water scarcity indicator, for example, has been “precisely defined” as “the percentage of total available water resources used, taking environmental water requirements into account (level of water stress).” Left unclear is who calculates how much is “available,” and which indicators define “environmental requirements” since dozens of competing scientific methodologies could yield as many answers. Meanwhile, the indicator for water efficiency remains a blank slate, open to interpretation.

How states count will add up globally. For drinking water, altering one indicator means that the targeted population quadruples from 0.6 billion to +2.5 billion people worldwide. And the implications of this shift matter nationally even locally. Member states could surpass or fall short of water and sanitation targets based on forces outside their control.

Success will be measured in physical changes, such as the extent of durable taps, equitable toilets, resilient tributaries, or efficient treatment plants secured by 2030. But those targets hinge on which performance metrics get established right now.

“If the agency that controls monitoring determines the water SDG performance indicators, a lot could be at stake,” warns Erin R. Graham, a politics professor at Drexel University. She has documented how resource-constrained UN agencies, like a dysfunctional family, routinely compete against each other (as well as with organisations outside the UN) for prestige, jurisdiction and funds.

Some regulators see water SDGs as a powerful tool that can help countries compare against each other using common metrics. Managers can discover asymmetries, address problems, and monitor progress. But success may also require customising general goals to specific needs.

“Performance indicators are only relevant if they are fit for purpose, and support decision-making,” cautions Helena Alegre from the Urban Water Division of Portugal’s National Civil Engineering Laboratory. She urges water professionals to “consider fine tuning some definitions, segmenting the target population or area, or complementing the SDG indicators with others when necessary in order to take the best of this opportunity for their own cases”.

Dysfunctional family

To score the water targets, Graham highlights two factors in tension. First, UN agencies push for narrow and specific performance indicators aligned to their own expertise, which improves the odds “that projects suited to their agency will be prioritised, and increases their access to any funds”. At the same time, she says, donors demand broad indicators that are easily measured and quantified, which all too often means “performance indicators tend to be associated with outputs rather than impact”.

Despite the stakes behind these questions, relatively few outsiders have a say in the answers. Compared with the boisterous, transparent, sprawling fights that shaped the water SDG goals, debate over measuring their progress has been comparatively calm, opaque, and contained.

Veteran insiders compare the merits and compatibility of an obscure alphabet soup of tools–JMP vs GEMI vs GLAAS [see box]–in small group discussions from New York to Geneva to Nairobi and Rome, with far less, if any, participation from non-experts.

Outwardly, the process seems subdued. The “UN-Water family” claims its core monitoring indicators are “based on an extensive consultation process including all UN agencies involved in global monitoring of water and sanitation, academia, business, civil society and Member States.”

Others see a struggle among the 26 UN agencies that deal with water. These large established bureaucracies “already answer to too many masters,” says Graham. Facing a grow-or-die imperative, each has a vested financial interest in seeking to grade water targets, by its own preferred metrics, using its own tool kit.

“In theory having one agency with exclusive authority to coordinate work across dozens of agencies and track progress on the SDGs makes sense,” she adds. “In practice, it is unlikely that the de jure authority of UN Water would translate into de facto authority. If UN-Water controls a lot of money, they can more effectively facilitate coordination. If not, it is likely to be an uphill battle.”

That uphill battle continues to play out behind the scenes, in meetings or coffee breaks. Power coalitions form, or end, based on how and who gets to score water performance.

On 15-16 March 2016, the global partnership entity, Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), organised a Ministerial Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The goal was to “improve accountability and work towards a common vision of universal access to safe water and adequate sanitation”. But some observers have suggested it was “about positioning SWA as a lead for monitoring activities”.

Similar jostling is taking place on the other water targets. The World Health Organisation/UNICEF coalition backs JMP, for example, and has been preparing to take water quality issues on board in their global monitoring.

It is a decidedly political process. Graham Alabaster, Chief of Section at UN-Habitat, has been pushing for the GEMI (the initiative focused on monitoring SDG6 targets 6.3-6.6) model but colleagues said he faced fierce resistance.

“As UN agencies we need to do a much better job of responding to the demands of member states and currently much more engagement is required,” says Alabaster. “Global monitoring is built from national monitoring, and national monitoring is driven by a country’s desire to make investment and other decisions.”

Trickle down effects

While such struggles may seem obscure and arcane to the average water professional, the outcome may impact budgets, priorities, careers, and sense of purpose.

The fourteen water targets will impact all national policies, says Payen, and all countries will have to measure progress based on outcomes, rather than simply inputs. That’s why the relative silence on the metrics of these outcomes is puzzling to some.

This is not only a complex issue but also a sensitive one. For example, failure to use GEMI, where it had been in place before, could mean that many countries will suddenly see a considerable reduction in their coverage levels for safe water supply, something that would not be received well by countries that have been judged to be successful under the Millennium Development Goals monitoring.

Crashing the exclusive global club For now, big decisions are emerging from a global elite. Ultimate responsibility for an indicator framework goes to the member state-led Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs).

Plans to “identify and apply specific, measurable and action-oriented indicators” for the water SDG lean towards buttoned-down order.

Yet exclusivity limits data and reduces peer review. Accurate scientific data, said UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, provide the “lifeblood of decision-making and the raw material for accountability.” This process needs deeply rooted stakeholders to collect vital information.

The SDGs call for a shift from global monitoring to selfmonitoring by national governments. UN agencies lack top-down capacity to monitor on their own, while member states could cherry pick data to show their progress in a favourable light. Aside from potential conflicts of interest, it remains unclear who will pay for the massive capacity building and operational costs such a shift would entail.

Measuring progress is expensive, and member states will have to foot the bill. “Working in ivory towers many UN bureaucrats don’t appreciate the implications of complex and expensive indicator frameworks which divert already scarce resources,” said Alabaster. “I believe we as UN agencies, should be more receptive to the country needs, rather than promoting monitoring approaches which are prescriptive and therefore unacceptable to thrust these ideas to countries without their full engagement. After all, monitoring will cost money and it’s more about nurturing progressive engagement than dictating.”

That’s where civil society organisations, especially those that transcend local jurisdictions, could play a decisive, affordable, and credible role. Local and international NGOs working in the water and sanitation sector at country level, could collect information on service delivery, performance standards, the presence of functioning treatment plants and the human resource basis of utilities.

Tech to the rescue?

Those shaping the goals have emphasised metrics, as “we can’t manage what we do not measure”. Many say the old Millennium Development Goal target on drinking water and sanitation gained traction largely due to its two indicators and a global monitoring framework.

Now, SDG6 elevates the stakes to a new order of magnitude and precision. Much as with education, there appears in water to be tension between a single scoring standard based on exclusive experts at the centre, versus a flexible multi-layered “open-source” monitoring/measuring process that accounts for local and national context.

In the age of web tools, mobile apps, drones, and satellites, some anticipate that technology will bridge the gap. “These are not mutually exclusive approaches when seen as part of a broader hydro-climatic data ecosystem,” says Alexander Fischer at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, who has been involved in the indicator-setting process.

Top down vs. bottom up political tensions are real, he says. “But there is enormous potential for new sensor tools and techniques to combine with data processing and distribution capabilities that expand the monitoring possibilities and ability to reconcile various data inputs for the water sector,” adds Fischer.

A lot has changed on the ground and in the sky since the MDGs. Apps track water points. North America’s climate monitoring data has brought value to public and private enterprise worldwide. GRACE technology reveals groundwater depletion from miles above the earth’s surface, tracking aquatic vegetation changes almost in real time.

Fischer identifies a key trend: “The decline of global reporting of in situ monitoring and aggregation of station data into centralised data bases. In an age of climate change and global goals, there are fewer systems aggregating country level primary data, like stream flow.”

This points to a paradox. UN agencies and member states are jostling over tightly measured and capital-intensive monitoring of indicators about water and sanitation just as such information-rich metrics become accessible to anyone with a smartphone. Payen’s revolution in the water world can only happen if those monitoring achievement of the goals understand that an inclusive approach is necessary.

It looks simple enough–on paper

For drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (SDG targets 6.1 and 6.2), the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) brings 15 years’ experience from MDG monitoring.
For the new targets on wastewater treatment and water quality, water use and use efficiency, integrated water resources management and water-related ecosystems (SDG targets 6.3 to 6.6), a new global monitoring initiative, Integrated monitoring of water and sanitation related SDG targets – GEMI, is being developed based on existing monitoring initiatives.
Finally, the monitoring of the means of implementation (SDG targets 6.a and 6.b) can build on the UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) and the GEMI reporting towards target 6.5 on integrated water resources management (IWRM), which is based on the existing UN-Water IWRM status reporting.
JMP, GEMI and GLAAS will be progressively aligned to ensure a coherent SDG6 monitoring framework, and together, they will be able to monitor progress towards the entirety of SDG6, while also underpinning the monitoring of many other SDGs and targets through the use of multipurpose indicators.

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