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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781843390138 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | IWA Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2005 |
| Pages: | 392 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.75(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Jens Lønholdt
1.1 BACKGROUND
Over the last 25 years a significant number of water and sanitation projects have been implemented in developing countries. Projects have covered rural as well as urban water supply systems, wastewater collection, disposal and treatment systems, and have mainly been financed by international funding agencies such as international Banks and international aid organisations. However, unfortunately it is a fact that the number of failures, or non-functioning, of the established systems, outnumbers the number of successes. In project related jargon, professionals will often express this by saying that systems often turn out not to be sustainable, or they are so-called White Elephants.
There are a number of reasons for this but it is the claim of this book that the major and basic reason is that these systems were designed and implemented in a manner that is too narrowly based on engineering and technical considerations taking their point-of-departure in technologies from developed countries. This point-of-view is supported by a recent evaluation by the World Bank of its water supply and sanitation assistance from 1990 to 2001, which can be found on the World Bank website (www.worldbank.org: Efficient, Sustainable Service for All? An OED Review of the World Bank's Assistance to Water Supply and Sanitation. September 2003).
This evaluation concludes the following (taken directly from the report):
• The outcome, institutional development impact, and sustainability of closed projects have improved over the 1990s although the sector continues to rank low among all sectors rated
• The proportion of satisfactory outcome ratings has risen from about half to about two-thirds for projects closed in the 1995 – 2001 period. The ratings for institutional development impact and sustainability have also improved, but remain at low levels: only one-third of the closed projects have ratings of "substantial" and less than half have sustainability ratings of "likely"
• The Bank's effort to introduce effective regulation has failed to produce lasting results. There are few well-functioning water supply and sanitation regulatory agencies in developing countries, and practically none in the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and South Asia Region
• There is a general consensus regarding what needs to be done – universal metering, charging tariffs that reflect future costs in accordance with economic principles, subsidising connections to the poor, and targeting consumption subsidies to the poor – but these steps have been applied only erratically
• The sector has made some, albeit uneven progress during the 1990s by adopting a more relevant sector development paradigm that focuses on "efficient, sustainable service-for-all"
According to the new paradigm, which is in full accord with the major finding of the World Bank as given above and "branded" Efficient, Sustainable Service-for-all, provision of water supply and wastewater management systems should be seen as technology packages that must be designed in such a way that they fit the local physical, economic, institutional and social context. This is what is meant when we talk in this book of appropriate solutions.
Only to a limited extent and only in a limited number of projects, the "appropriateness" of the solutions was comprehensively assessed in a crosscutting way in relation to the local context as stressed in the above World Bank evaluation report.
This book promotes a holistic approach to water and wastewater management. Such subjects should be planned, designed and implemented so that the contextual setting is incorporated from the start to the end of the project. This implies that when deciding whether a project is appropriate, a number of aspects should be taken into consideration.
There is a need to educate engineers with a positive attitude to the importance of having the capacity for assessing all aspects of the appropriateness of water and sanitation solutions in developing countries. We are not advocating that engineering students should also become sociologists, economists or institutional planners. But engineering students aspiring to acquire the new professionalism should have the motivation and capacity to learn through multidisciplinary teamwork addressing all relevant issues in relation to ensuring appropriate and thus sustainable projects. With this background, they should learn to design solutions that do not add to the increasing herd of white elephants of non-functioning water and wastewater management projects in developing countries financed by multi- and bilateral aid money.
1.2 OBJECTIVE, SCOPE AND CONTENT
On the above background this book is basically written to "soften" hard-nosed engineers who need to learn how to design and implement more appropriate and thus sustainable water and wastewater management projects in developing countries in the tropics.
The objective of the book is that it will provide graduate environmental engineering students, and newly graduated environmental engineers, with the necessary conceptual understanding, framework and tools for assessing all aspects of appropriateness in relation to water and wastewater management projects in developing countries, covering rural as well as urban projects, and covering the domestic sector as well as the industrial sector. Based on the concepts, framework, and tools provided in the book, students should have the necessary background to be able to design and implement projects that will not increase the herd of white elephants that has "roamed" developing countries over the last 25 years. The new project concept, and the projects coming out of this concept, should consequently benefit the end users of the projects and provide healthy water and sanitary conditions in developing countries.
It is not the intention of this book to "convert" environmental engineers into economists, sociologists, or institutional planners. Consequently it is not an endeavour to replace these specialists, or avoid having these specialists working on water and wastewater management projects together with the engineers. On the contrary this book aims at strengthening the dialog between the different specialist groups by providing engineers with an understanding and a "language" enabling them to efficiently communicate with and benefit from the input offered by other specialists.
The main target group for this book is environmental engineers, and the main issue for this book is water and wastewater management projects in developing economies in the tropics. In line with this the book has been organised in two interconnected parts as given previously:
Part I. Project Planning and Management is the "management part" of the book. It gives a general overview of how to identify, formulate, select, organise, cost estimate, finance, implement and manage projects in order to ensure projects, which addresses all aspects of appropriateness in relation to water and wastewater management in developing countries.
Part II. Appropriate Water and Wastewater Management Projects is the "technical part" of the book describing and assessing the "nuts and bolts" of design, construction, and operation and maintenance of water and wastewater management projects in a tropical context in developing countries. In this connection the concept of appropriateness is addressed based on the lessons learned from specific cases worldwide.
CHAPTER 2
Project Identification and Formulation
Jens Lønholdt and Søren Lund
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The normal point-of-departure of the engineer working with water and wastewater management projects in developing countries is the technical and project implementation related part. The engineer does not frequently ask if this is the "right" project at the "right" place, at the "right" time and in the "right" organisational, socio-economic and cultural context. He/she normally prefers to focus and concentrate on the technical design and implementation and let others worry about the "rightness" of the projects in contexts other than the pure technical issue.
Naturally the technical side is a basic and very important part of professionalism in relation to designing and implementing projects anywhere and, of course, also in developing countries in the tropics.
If the projects are not technically "right" then the other kind of professionalism that we are going to elaborate on in this book is uninteresting as even the highest level of professionalism within these areas cannot "save" a technically inappropriate project. Consequently, it is very important to underline that the basic premises for launching the other needed professionalisms is a high level of technical professionalism enabling the engineers to identify, feasibility study, outline, design and implement technically appropriate projects.
Historically, technical professionalism in relation to water and wastewater management projects, in developed as well as developing countries and in tropical as well as in other contexts, is extremely well covered by overview books and specific books on different detailed topics in relation to projects in developing countries in the tropics. For reference see the relevant reference chapters in the second part of this book.
The other type of professionalism which is equally as important as the technical project implementation professionalism is the project selection professionalism. In short, this professionalism is addressing the issue of selecting the "right" project taking all considerations into account. As mentioned in the Introduction to this book this will cover appropriateness in relation to:
• Technically Appropriate, covering appropriate construction as well as appropriate operation and maintenance. Normally the problem is that the construction is appropriate but that the operation and maintenance is not appropriate as it may rely on spare parts which are difficult to get locally, and/or nationally.
• Financially Appropriate, covering construction costs as well as costs for operation and maintenance. Normally the problem is that the international financing and funding agencies will provide money for construction costs but not for operation and maintenance costs as they presume that this will be provided by the recipient country. Consequently this assumption is normally included in the Project Agreement. However, it is more than often difficult for the recipient country to find the money for operation and maintenance, and cost recovery is not widely applied in developing countries.
• Institutionally Appropriate, covering ensuring that the project, and especially the responsibility for operation and maintenance, is firmly embedded in a committed institution with relevant capacity and sufficient power.
• Socio-economically Appropriate, covering the ability and the willingness of the inhabitants in rural areas and residential areas and possible industries to pay for operation and maintenance based on the concept of cost recovery. The latter concept is new in developing countries. However, it is increasingly included as a precondition for provision of funds for construction costs from international financing agencies.
• Culturally Appropriate, meaning that the solution should be culturally acceptable to the people who are going to use it and the people who are going to be affected in some way or another by the construction of the facilities. Being culturally appropriate signifies that the system is designed to fit with local people's norms, value systems, and self-perceived identities.
In addition to this, the "political willingness" to implement projects should not be forgotten as this is more often than not decisive for actual implementation. This will cover National, Regional as well as Local political willingness. Cases have been seen where all the aspects of appropriateness as given above have been addressed in a qualified way ensuring a project mature for implementation, which however was never implemented due to lack of political willingness at one, two or three of the above political levels.
Previously a lot of focus has been on how to design and implement projects, when they have already been selected including all issues in relation to public participation, organisational development, institutional strengthening etc. Very little focus has been put on how to select the "right" project in the "right" way. It is more than often the case that the objections to projects stem more from that the selection process has not been carefully planned and implemented, and from the fact that the selection was not based on participatory approaches, characterised as being open processes taking all stakeholders into consideration, than from actual resistance to the project in question.
In this context there has been a peculiar separation in actual project work as well as in the literature between professionals dealing with planning and professionals dealing with project design and implementation. It tends to be two separate processes with only limited interaction which is a waste of man power resources and time and money for the institution in question. The outcome is often a "billboard" type of plan, which looks very nice, but which is doomed for non-implementation as it is not anchored in the project reality. On the other side, technically professional projects, which are not professionally selected in a strategic way, are either doomed for non-implementation or, if implemented, doomed as white elephants due amongst other things to a lack of institutional anchoring or lack of resources for operation and maintenance, or general lack of acceptance by either some important group of decision makers, or the users.
One of the main ideas behind this book is to bridge these two professionalisms and take the best from each and thus maximise the likelihood for sustainable implementation. The second part of this book deals with professionalism in relation to project design, implementation and operation and maintenance. This part of the book deals with professionalism in relation to selecting the right project, at the right place, at the right time, in the right socioeconomic context, in the right institutional framework, and in the right political context.
2.2 PROJECT IDENTIFICATION AND FORMULATION BASED ON A STRATEGIC AND PARTICIPATORY APPROACH
2.2.1 Introduction
Projects should be the executive arm of strategies that are themselves the implementation of objectives, goals and aims. Consequently, projects should be the end result of a comprehensive strategic process where objectives are articulated, strategies formulated and projects identified. For water and wastewater management projects in developing tropical countries this process is normally in place at least in the formal sense in terms of country plans/programmes, sector plans/programmes, regional plans/programmes etc. However, often the overall national and regional strategic process is bureaucratic and formal and to a large extent detached from the tactical and operational level where projects operate.
In practice, much of the problem lies in the limited co-operation between the executive agencies and the implementing agencies. The executive agencies are normally national level economic planning agencies, with very little professional capacity within water and wastewater management, and very little experience concerning practical implementation, whereas the implementing agencies normally are national, regional or provincial technically professional agencies.
It is not infrequent to observe that the said strategic process, and the identification of projects, has been conducted solely by the national economic planning agencies without or with very little consultation from the technically professional sister organisations on the national, regional or provincial level. The end result is that projects, including funding, and scope and content, are "handed over" to an implementation organisation, which due to very little involvement in the identification and formulation of the projects, could have very little incentive to implement this "foreign" project and where there may be very little need and capacity for it. It is a universal lesson that motivation presumes involvement.
In addition to this, the national agencies tend to overestimate, either due to lack of information, or due to political reasons, the capacity available in the implementation agency for in kind contribution to project performance especially in terms of the so called "counterpart capacity". That is staff in the implementing organisation allocated to support project implementation and receive capacity development in this connection. It is the experience of the authors of this book that the counterpart capacity allocated in the Government-to-Government Project Agreements for technical assistance projects funded by bilateral and multilateral sources is very seldom delivered according to the commitment given in the Project documents. This frequently creates project implementation problems but, more importantly than that, makes it difficult to anchor and sustain project results in the host organisation, which is a major aim with modern capacity development projects.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Water and Wastewater Management in the Tropics"
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Copyright © 2005 IWA Publishing.
Excerpted by permission of IWA Publishing.
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Table of Contents
Preface, xii,
1 INTRODUCTION, 1,
2 PROJECT IDENTIFICATION AND FORMULATION, 5,
3 PROJECT COSTING AND FINANCING, 51,
4 PROJECT SELECTION, 121,
5 PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION AND MANAGEMENT, 148,
6 RURAL WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION PROJECTS, 160,
7 URBAN WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION, 203,
8 INDUSTRIAL WATER AND WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT PROJECTS, 308,
Index, 365,