Sahana Singh*

SINGAPORE, Aug 30 2007 (IPS) – Government officials, sanitation experts, funding agencies and civil society representatives are unanimous that Asia s water delivery and sanitation problems should be tackled with the same urgency as disaster relief.
#39 #39People will not wait five to ten years for water. They will take it now, illegally if necessary. Time is of the essence, #39 #39 says K.E.Seetharam, water and urban development specialist at the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

A team of water experts who are working round the clock to prepare a forward-looking document called Asian Water and Development Outlook (AWDO), funded by the AsDB, met in Singapore for three days of consultations, last week. The document is expected to act as a guide for policy makers in the region.

The AWDO is expected to be released just prior to the first Asia-Pacific Water Summit to be held in Japan Dec. 3-4 this year. The document will articulate the overall directions for water and sanitation activities needed to be pursued in an integrated manner by national leaders.

Great strides have been made by India and Bangladesh in moving away from open defecation, thanks to concerted efforts by donors, local governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). It is important for governments to act now, when the momentum is there when a small effort can produce great results, argues Arthur McIntosh, a former senior AsDB water expert.

However, Asit Biswas, leader of the team drafting the AWDO and winner of Stockholm Water Prize in 2006, warned against a one-solution-fits-all approach. The problems are different across Asia and even within a country itself, he said. We have to look for appropriate solutions.
It should also be understood that water is not just a resource but a service, added Wouter Arriens, water resources specialist at AsDB.

Looking forward to the December summit Ravi Narayanan, vice-chair of the governing council of Asia Pacific Water Forum (APWF), asserts that the report prepared by the experts should be a dynamic document, not something that will be launched and then stashed away somewhere to be forgotten .

The forum, a recently established network, seeks to contribute to sustainable water management in order to achieve the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)set out by the United Nations in Asia and the Pacific.

In recent years, water and sanitation have been perceived as important constituents of human development. When access to water and sanitation improves, virtually everything follows health, education and economic advancement.

It has also been well recognised that poor governance is the root cause of all problems in developing countries. According to Biswas governance has been but empty rhetoric in most of Asia with only a few islands of excellence such as Singapore.

A case in point is urban India where poor quality of water supplied intermittently has been accepted as a way of life, said Biswas, who believes that contrary to media reports of an Asian water crisis, the real crisis is one of management of water resources, not a lack of it.

He argues that a lack of political will has particularly hampered the cause of water and sanitation, not so much an absence of financing or physical resources. The summit in Japan will seek to whip up this political will among leaders in the region.

Our key message is that the water problems of the region are solvable, said Biswas.

Indeed, there is no shortage of success stories and champions to illustrate this -from the community-driven toilet construction programme in Pune, India, to the private sector-led improvement of water supplies by the Manila Water Company in the Philippines.

The role of women as important managers of water has been well appreciated at the community level, points out Narayanan, who earlier helmed Britain-based NGO Water Aid. Women are also spearheading the movement for sanitation in many places in Asia. It has been documented that the availability of separate toilets for girls in many rural and peri-urban schools is dramatically lowering their drop-out rate, added Seetharam.

However, there are still not enough women who count as decision-makers at higher levels according to Erna Witoelar, the only woman in the governing council of APWF, who actively participated in the deliberations here.

Another challenge confronting water specialists in Asia is a lack of good quality field data. Whether it is the quality of river water or the number of water connections or details of underground pipes, experts are blindly groping for reliable data in Asia.

It is ridiculous that in this day and age, we do not have a centralised data bank from where we can access information, said McIntosh. Yet there is no dearth of data which is completely useless! exclaimed Biswas. So severe is the data problem that it has become difficult to carry out both inter-country and intra-country comparisons with regard to adequacy of water and sanitation facilities.

To overcome this problem to some extent, Indian water expert Bhanoji Rao has developed an Index for Drinking Water Adequacy for Asia. This index could be used by Asian planners as a tool for assessment, monitoring and benchmarking in the future, said Rao.

The clock is ticking and already the MDGs have received much flak from experts for only targeting half the population not served by water and sanitation.

When there are people without piped water or sanitation, you have a disaster at hand and you have to handle this on a war footing, asserts McIntosh. Old rules need to be put aside to get the job done quickly.

(*This story is being distributed by IPS Asia-Pacific under a communication agreement with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, in Singapore, which produced it.)