On the occasion of the Wilson Center's 50th anniversary, its Environmental Change and Security Program and nine co-sponsoring programs convened experts on November 28 from government, the NGO sector, and academia for a comprehensive look at the first year of the U.S. Government Global Water Strategy and new research and practice on water, peace, and conflict.
In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WSH) team partnered with USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) to establish WASH for Life, a $17 million pool of dedicated funding for innovative water, sanitation, and hygiene projects with the potential to scale.
“I have seen that real change comes from the bottom up, from pressure from society—from good, willing people and action groups who actually put pressure on their governments to change,” says Rolf Luyendijk, executive director of the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council, in the latest episode of USAID’s Global Waters Radio podcast series. “Linking up with these groups, I think, is critical to get politicians to prioritize investing in sanitation.”
The Sphere Handbook is aimed at practitioners involved in planning, managing or implementing a humanitarian response. This includes staff and volunteers of local, national and international humanitarian organisations responding to a crisis, as well as affected people themselves. The Handbook is also used for humanitarian advocacy to improve the quality and accountability of assistance and protection in line with humanitarian principles.
Backyard Cooperation Leads to Wastewater Treatment
With help from USAID, households in the Dominican Republic are turning to small-scale constructed wetlands to improve wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal.
An ambitious U.S. Government interagency collaboration celebrates 13 years of empowering communities across the world.
Water Currents is produced biweekly by USAID’s E3 Water Office. Each issue contains recent news and articles on water sector issues, partner and donor updates, latest sector research, and a special focus on one topic. Please provide your feedback and suggestions by contacting the waterteam@usaid.gov.
Patrick Moriarty, CEO of IRC, gave this TedX talk in the Netherlands in February 2017 to talk about the need for investing in systems to provide long-term solutions and instead focus on quick wins and opportunist leaders. He discusses what we can learn from people who are building systems in third world countries and the long term costs of pursuing quick wins.
IRC is a consortium member in the Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS).
