As the sustainable development goals (SDGs) begin in 2016, a number of to-do lists on how to solve the world’s development challenges cross my desk daily. These lists typically are long, technical, and feature the authors’ biases toward water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) solutions limited to one or two approaches: Increase supply; decrease demand; have the private sector fix it; focus on rural; focus on urban; rainwater harvesting is the answer. Here’s the good news: they are all correct.
However, for the SDGs to succeed, they need a strong head-start during the first five years, 2016 to 2020, encompassing all of these solutions and more. The SDGs commit to solving the problem in its entirety, so rather than another to-do list, I offer the following three guiding principles to inform WASH development efforts and give the SDGs the jumpstart they need and merit
Focus on 100%
If the SDGs are to succeed, every human being must have safe, sustainable, and affordable access to drinking water and sanitation by 2030 at the latest. Each of us should keep that clear goal in mind, and strive to contribute to efforts that both start and finish at scale. Scale is far more important than scalability – everything is scalable.
Instead of simply building 10 wells for schools, or constructing sanitation facilities for 300 disparate communities and hoping for scale, we could choose a defined geography ie a country, province, or locality, then collaboratively focus on reaching 100% within that geography. Then we should channel Malcolm X and use every means necessary to make sure that each and every person is included, particularly those disenfranchised by their dire poverty, being female, physical and intellectual disabilities, ethnicity, physical isolation, and so on. There are current examples of starting at scale, including India’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Campaign which commits to 100% coverage of sanitation and 0% open defecation by October 2 2019, Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday.
Believe it to see it
In House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox, author Bill Foege writes: “A less tangible yet no less important ingredient in smallpox eradication was simply the belief that it could be done.” The world’s WASH challenge is solvable. We have the cure – it’s simply a matter of getting that cure into the right hands. Everybody likes to bet on a winner, and safe drinking water is already 90+% of the way to the finish line. Sanitation lags at just over 60%, but is just as clearly solvable. It is far more solvable if we believe in and assert its solvability.
This won’t be easy, particularly with the threat magnifiers of climate change, demographics, conflict, and population movements. However, if we start our efforts with the belief that this is solvable, that will catalyse more ambitious commitments and more accelerated progress especially during the early years of the SDGs.
Create and strengthen political will
Water, sanitation, and hygiene are a matter of life and death. For something as fundamental to human existence as WASH, the public sector needs to lead, especially with the SDGs’ focus on leaving absolutely no one behind.
Every political leader in the world wants each of his or her constituents to have sustainable access to WASH. A lack of WASH remains a challenge because of a dearth of political will across the globe. The key to political will, however, is that politicians don’t create it, they follow it. In the 1930s, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt told labor organisers (whose positions he agreed with, but could not support at that time) to “make me do it”. Labor organisers in the US then undertook a series of actions that made it possible for president Roosevelt to do what he already wanted to: enact more progressive labor policies.
There are a number of efforts underway in the WASH sector to create political will that publicly-elected leaders can then follow. Regional WASH conferences in Asia (SACOSAN), Africa (AfricaSan) and Latin America (LatinoSan) focus heavily on creating and strengthening political will for WASH. Global platforms like the Sanitation and Water for All Partnership and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative council strengthen such efforts globally. There are strong civil society leaders and networks in all countries, actively encouraging their governments to prioritise WASH. Development organisations across the globe are not simply inviting mayors to ribbon-cutting photo opportunities but working with politicians and their staff throughout the lifecycle of programs.
To give the Sustainable Development Goals the jumpstart they need, we have to re-emphasise our focus on nothing less than 100% coverage of WASH, be more confident in our ability to solve this challenge, and push/pull political leaders across the globe to prioritise this life-and-death issue. If the WASH sector is to succeed with the SDGs over the next fifteen years, we not only have to end at scale, we have to start there.
John Oldfield, CEO of WASH Advocates from 2011-2015, is now launching Friends of Clean India to support prime minister Modi’s commitment to universal coverage of sanitation in India by October 2 2019, Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday.
