Sustainability

Sustainability is a key theme which cuts across all stages of the project cycle. Facilities installed and services provided need to retain their economic valuee and quality over a sustained period of time determined at planning and design. Regrettably, the experience is that many of the systems installed have not met the criteria of sustainability due to host of reasons. Following are some of the reasons for poor sustainability of RWSS schemes

• Planning without adequate consultation with stakeholders and beneficiaries.
• Inadequate attention to water resourcese adequacy and protection of water sources
• Inappropriate selection of technology in terms of choice and wilingness to pay
• Institutional and management weaknesses.
• Inadequate consideration of financial viability
• Inadequate consideration of social issues

Future planning and management of water supplies demand high priority consideration on sustainability of RWSS schemes.

Some of the general consideration in sustainability are illustrated below. Issues expressed here are based on experience and lessons learnt during implementation on Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project I

Social Sustainability

Most crucial challenge for social sustainability of RWSS facilities are improved hygiene practices to maximise heath benefits of RWSS faciliies, inclusion of women in the decision making process of the RWSS sector and the project, inclusion of disadvantaged and minority groups, and participatory processes to include large part of the beneficiaries in decision making to ensure a sense of responsibility and ownership. Some of the important issues deaalt under this topic would be

• Hygiene practices
• Gender Issues
• Poor disadvantaged and minority groups
• Ownwrship and Participation

Institutional Sustainability

A well functioning Community Based Organisations (CBOs) is the single most important condition for achieving a sustainable RWSS. Assessments carried out for CWSSP I concluded that the role and performance of CBOs met expectations in community participation in planning and implementationof schemes.A number of important issues were identified in these studies. Communities participated in planning and contributed cash and labour or material for construction Some CBOs were identified as inadequate to deal with financial management. project would focus on building skills and capacity of CBOs to address this issue. It has also been noted that women are not well represented among CBO office bearers, although they constituted about half of CBO memebership. Since water and sanitation are in many respects women's domain, involving them in decision making and management can be expected to have a positive influence on sustainability. It is also important for the project to provide some managerial support for CBOs afer construction of the schemes. This is in line with the global experience and lessons learnt. Following are two key areas for institutional sustainability

• Capacity building of Partner Organiation
• Improving sector capacity at Central, Provincial and local governmnet level.

Finanacial Sustainability

• Financial management. Inadequate financial managenet was an important issue during CWSSP I. However, significant progress have been made in this area and corrective measures in financial management have been taken, this has been noted by the World Bank.

Financial management and procurement manuals have been prepared in collaboration with provincial councils and local authorities to guide project implementation.A number of financial safegaurds have been identified and are mandatory conditions for receiving funds.

• Financial Viability

Implementation of cost recovery tariffs is crucial in ensuring financial viability of water supply schemes. While community contributions were higher than expected in CWSSP I (32% instead of 20%), the ability of CBOs to recover O&M costs from user charges has only been partially successful. Financial and organisational weeknesses were some of the reasons for poor performance of CBOs in financial viability. However, it was noted that some CBOs could collect realistic tariffs to cover O&M cost, preventive maintenance and expansion of schemes. Tariff covering O&M costs and replacement are higher, therefore, it is imporatant that communities fully understand the cost implecations of their choice of service level and type of scheme and base their willingness to pay for long term system sustainability.

Technical Sustainability

• Water Resources

Availabilty, access and quality. Measures to safegaurd water resources from pollution and overexploitation are presently inadequate for ensuring sustainability of water resources, without which the sutainability of some water supply schemes may be threatened. There is wide variation in flows of surface water sources due to substantial extraction for irrigation, deforestration of catchment areas that affect run off as well as local climatic variations. The quality of surface water sources is under threat from agriculture, industries discharging wastewater into streams and rivers, i.e sugar factories, rubber factories, chemical factories etc. Use of cheical fertiliser and pesticides in the country is very high and an adequate regulatory framework for banning/taxation of harmful substances and encouraging use of biodegradable pesticides is not in place. Little systamatic information is available on trends in water quality, but overexploitation of groundwater has led to intrusion of saline water in coastal aquifers in North Westaern and Southern Provinces and lowering of the groundwater table in many other parts of the country. The average groundwater level in the dry zone ha sfallen several metres during the past 10 years due manily to increasing groundwater use for irrigation. Likewise, deforestration in catchment areas has reduced groundwater infiltration while at the same time increase surface run off, erosion and siltation of water bodies.A number of water bodies ae showing signs of depletion due to unsustaianable use of surface water for irrigation. Monitoring source and catchment protection requires the cooporation of a multisectoral agency such as the Water Resources Council which with the Water Resources Tribunal, form the National Water Resources Authority. Sustainable implementation of RWSS projects requires the formation and maintenance of effective partnerships between RWSS diision, PCs, PSs, POs and CBOs.With limited technical capacity and capability these institutionsrequire substantial capacity building in the initial stages of project, including procedures for quality control of designs, material and construction work. To make best use of resources consultants or services of NWSDB can be contacted to maintain quality specification of constructions. This will certainly lead to long term sustainability of RWWS projects.

---

attachments