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Please join the Sustainable WASH Systems (SWS) Learning Partnership for a webinar that provides an introduction to network analysis and early lessons learned from analyses conducted in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Cambodia.
On February 21, 2018, the Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS) conducted a webinar that provides an introduction to network analysis and early lessons learned from analyses conducted in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Cambodia. SWS is using such analyses to better understand the complex interactions and interdependencies of actors in a local WASH system, with the ultimate goal of increasing the sustainability of WASH services.
Sustainable services remain a daunting challenge in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector. Traditionally, national and local governments, WASH service providers, and development partners have focused on the construction of WASH facilities and the expansion of service coverage. Less emphasis has been placed on sustaining and maintaining existing WASH services. As a result, failure rates of water supply and sanitation systems continue to be high.
Ato Mantegabtot Negash, the manager of the Gazer Town Water Utility. Together with three mechanics and two bill collectors, he is responsible for providing water services to more than 5,000 people in Gazer town, the woreda (district) capital of South Ari woreda in Southern Nation, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State of Ethiopia. Meeting him in his office recently, he expressed his frustration with his job.
Asset inventory is essential in Ethiopia to develop more realistic planning to increase functionality as well as coverage.
All of us who work on understanding and implementing development from a systems perspective can rattle off a litany of arguments as to why traditional approaches don’t work: linear results chains don’t reflect reality. People and their motivations and power dynamics matter. Unanticipated feedback loops can scuttle the best-planned activities. The list goes on, filled with jargon-laden concepts like “emergence,” “causal loops,” “dynamic modeling,” and “complex adaptation.”
That was the theme behind the first Collective Action Workshop held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last month. Dozens of actors from Cambodia’s rural water, sanitation, and hygiene [WASH] sector came together to chart a more collaborative effort towards meeting the sector’s shared vision of universal sanitation by 2025 and the goals outlined in the 2014 – 2018 National Action Plan [NAP].
Political drivers, including SDG indicators, directly impact sanitation efforts on the ground.
Here we look at shared sanitation at the national, district, and household levels in Ethiopia, and why it should not be overlooked by the SDGs.
More than you might think. The conservation and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sectors both face their share of challenges when it comes to sustainability.
Representing USAID’s Sustainable WASH Systems (SWS) Initiative at the Stockholm World Water Week (SWWW) annual conference last month provided us with an opportunity to see how our SWS Initiative fits among the development sector and where our best opportunities are for making an impact. It was very exciting to get the pulse of the sector in the areas of systems approaches to create sustainable service delivery and lasting impact.
