Sanitation

Support the intermediate level

Service delivery to informal settlements is a key challenge to meeting the MDGs.

Target 10 of MDG7 urges governments to: “Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.” “The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF monitor the status of drinking water supply and sanitation coverage country by country on a periodic basis.

The latest statistics from the agencies’ Joint Monitoring Programme were published in 2005, based on coverage recorded at the end of 2002. Worldwide, the proportion of the population deemed to have access to adequate means of sanitation had risen from 49% in 1990 (the baseline for the MDG targets) to 58% in 2002, meaning that an extra 87 million people had gained access to improved sanitation services each year over that period.

To meet the MDG goal, the proportion served needs to reach 75% by 2015, which would mean serving close to 138 million people each year from 2002 onwards.” (WHO/UNICEF 2005)For some time it has been clear that city local governments and utilities cannot use standard strategies and operational instruments to deliver water and sanitation services to people in informal settlements.

New partnerships are needed requiring different approaches to governance and service delivery. In some cases, institutions in place lack implementation capacity, in others utility reform is needed to accommodate new partnerships and alternative delivery mechanisms, including adaptation of regulation, alternative contractual arrangements, the use of appropriate sanitation technologies, different planning models, a demand responsive approach and attitude, and so on.

The IRC’s strategic decision to support the intermediate level speaks directly to challenges encountered by decentralised local government agencies in sanitation delivery in informal settlements.
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