The Water and Sanitation Program - Environmental Health at USAID

DRAFTo a lack of capacity for users to hold providers and government accountable.WSP has been working in a global initiative to understand better new ways to support theprivate sector in the delivery of the water and sanitation services. With over 25 projects in16 countries, the global and local activities are fairly advanced and the lessons of practicewill be analyzed in a workshop to be held in June 2008. The scaling-up and replication ofthese lessons to other countries and regions will be the basis for the implementation ofthis key theme under the sanitation strategy.• Improved Governance. Under this fourth key theme of the sanitation mid-termframework, WSP will focus on the areas of decentralization, institutional capacitybuilding,regulation, civil society participation, accountability, and anti-corruptionprograms. In this important theme, WSP will use the lessons that emerged from itsEthiopia program where a key portion of the upstream support focused on: (i) raising thepolitical profile of sanitation through AfricaSan conferences and ministerialcommitments; (ii) facilitate a consensus around a national sanitation strategy; (iii)clarification of institutional mandates for sanitation; (iv) detailed implementationframework (the National Hygiene and Onsite sanitation protocol); and (v) federal andregional strategic plans for sanitation to pave the road for a national sanitation programwhich can receive harmonized support from donors. In practical ways, the WSP programover a period of almost a decade tackled a variety of governance issues in sanitation thatare now leading to large scaled-up program with noticeable change on the ground.WSP reviewed at the 2007 Council its global lessons on governance and capacitybuilding needs of the sanitation sector. Some of the lessons that have emerged from itswork, and that will be used in the implementation of the key theme of sanitationgovernance, include:o Design and implement effective advocacy process to find champions forsanitation. The champions need to be both at the highest levels (such as theMinister of Rural Development of India and Minister of Local Government ofBangladesh as key figures in total sanitation campaigns) and at the local level (forexample local champions in the Basia Region of Uganda have ld from 45% to75% coverage in one year, with same resources and mobilization of population;and in the Southern Region of Ethiopia: from 20% to 75% in 2 years)o Improve the enabling environment (financial resources allocation, policies,institutional arrangements, M&E, regulation)o Prioritize sanitation and hygiene in PRSPs and other financial instruments toscale-up programs and interventionso View decentralization as an opportunity as it can be a potentially powerful tool toscale-up and break sectoral barriers. At the national level, difficult barriers acrosslarge ministries can make it difficult to move forward the sanitation agenda. Atthe local level, with smaller agencies and champions at the sub-national leveladministration, progress can be more easily achieved.o Explore, when possible, comprehensive governance reviews that encompass fromthe national to the local level. Figure 4.4 illustrates how the Indonesia Sanitation20