Our three extra meetings at Stockhom Water Week:

1.   Tuesday, from 14:30 to 15:30, Room M.19     Finance models

A special meeting for finance specialists (including from development partners) interested in the specific potential for smart financing approaches for, or within, booster platforms for upscaling access to safe water.

2.   Wednesday, 10:00 to 11:00 Help to compile the Yearbook

    A hands-on question-and-answer session on how you can help compile the sector-wide Yearbook on household and community water treatment and safe storage.

3.   Thursday, 10:00 to 11:00            Catch-all session on 300in6

A catch-all meeting for everyone keen to know more of the 300in6 communications platform. Our knowledge centre with its rich Yearbook, our principles and guidelines, our strategies for upscaling access to safe water with booster platform strategies…

Please confirm your attendance to your contact person at our stand EH05.38.

In response to partner feedback, and after analysing the flows of participants to and at events, we wish to be more accessible to more of our peers who could work with us on the many facets of scaling-up strategies for safe water in non-piped contexts. Our new format allows more one-on-ones, and cluster meetings, using our dedicated meeting space as well as our permanent expo space at EH05:38. The Monday seminar is no longer scheduled.

Our colleagues at the International Institute for the Environment and Development (IIED), an environmental establishment thinktank, have published a worthy briefing on urban backyard wells, used by 30% of the urban poor.

Entitled ‘Urban wells: a vital but ignored resource’, IIED says that this briefing reflects on an IIED project on water resource management. It showcases research revealing the immense significance of ‘invisible’ water to the urban poor.

Below we give the link to the original paper, plus our initial response.

Download the paper from http://pubs.iied.org/G03127.html?s=RA&b=d

Our response:

Can urban backyard wells provide safe water?

by Henk Holtslag and Paul Osborn, 300in6

The article ‘Urban wells: a vital but ignored resource’ in the Reflect and Act series of July 2011 indeed adds a welcome new dimension to the agenda of water resource managers, and creates a new link with the community of water quality professionals.

Above all, it is right to emphasise that some 30% per cent of the urban poor in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa rely on groundwater from backyard wells – even though the article presents it almost as a new revelation and not as the cruel fact-of-life that it is! In rural areas, this percentage is 50% or higher. We therefore applaud the common sense of the authors in urging governments, NGOs and water specialists to support the sound use of family wells rather than ignoring or, even worse, blocking them.

The reality is that in most cities in developing countries, the poor are not reached with piped water systems for technical or financial reasons. Where technically possible, rainwater harvesting and family wells can be an intermediate solution – we stress the hope that it is a transit point on the long oath to reliable safe water supply.

One of the reasons given for ignoring family wells is the problem in guaranteeing good water quality. This is a very real concern since nearby latrines can easily contaminate the groundwater. However, as mentioned in the article, having water nearby stimulates using more water which has a positive effect on hygiene and income. The part that is used for drinking can be bought at water kiosks or treated at the point of use with options in household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS). Conventional options are boiling or using chlorine. Nowadays, there is a regular flow of new options which are cheaper, more effective and more attractive. These include solar disinfection (also known as SODIS), chlorine tablets with a spearmint taste, locally-produced chlorine and silver products. New water filters treat 5,000 -15,000 litres at a filtration speed of 50 to 100 litres/day and produce water that is free of bacteria and turbidity. The costs of new disinfection options start at 20 dollar cents/ person/year while the entry? investment?  costs for new filter options start at USD 10.

The challenge now is in scaling-up. This can be done through a combination of a wide-scale hygiene education (and social marketing) with building up commercial supply chains with new user-friendly HWTS products.

As the authors point out, investment in safe water at the point-of-use can drastically reduce health-related costs at both the family and government level — it should be recalled that the WHO, in 2004, reported cost-benefits up to 60 times on investments. Another dramatic figure is that more than 50% of all hospital beds worldwide are occupied with patients with water-borne diseases.

We support the authors of the article and urge donors, financial partners and governments in developing countries to increase access to safe drinking water by hygiene campaigns and promotion of the sound and sustainable use of urban, as well as rural, family wells.

More information:

Our website www.300in6.org features a wide overview of HWTS options and approaches, including the renewed popular primer with detailed case studies ‘Safe Water at the Base of the Pyramid’.

The International Network on Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage systems is at www.who.int/household_water

[ end of response ]

By popular demand, our primer on the scaling-up potentials of water treatment technologies is now in a clearer format. The concise reader examines how an elusive development paradigm – safe water – is being achieved and can be scaled up in a market-based approach. Its 10 fascinating case studies show just how far promise and potential can travel when energised by being run as a business. They were the precursors to the broader study described in our story of 30 June 2011.
20 p, 1.5 Mb. A4 format – we suggest you print double pages on A3. Safe Water at the Base of the Pyramid – Improved Format Aug 2011 – screen version

Now armed with the explanatory ‘Scaling up access to safe water’ to our name, and with much-boosted funding from official Swiss and Dutch sources, the 300in6 Initiative will be much in evidence at World Water Week.

Our overall goal throughout the week is to share with our peers the widest possible range of experience and plans on upscaling  water treatment and safe storage at household and the community level’. This includes updates on trends with a) filters, flasks and tabs and b) community water points and retail outlets such as kiosks. We shall also track, and advance, the emerging policy framework of national scaling-up platforms.

Expo stand EH05:38 is where we shall welcome visitors in the exhibit area, as well as in our closed space for special meetings nearby — including sessions on our Yearbook and other concerns of the International Network on Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage. Our stand, facilitated by Acacia 3R,  has news on our progress since 2010 and our refreshed publications and website, and space to discuss our plans with you.
Key on the agenda here is the forthcoming Yearbook on HWTS and Community off-grid WTS, and your participation.
The 300in6 delegation in Stockholm is planned to comprise Sjef Ernes, Urs Heierli, Henk Holtslag, Paul Osborn and Christian Vousvouras.
Details and contact: Christian.Vousvouras[ (at) ]300in6.org and soon on the refreshed site www.300in6.org

Have you produced, are you producing, a quality film or series of films on water issues? The International Water and Film Events (IWFE) group — at the International Secretariat for Water (ISW) — have opened their third competition, with winners to be announced and screened at World Water Forum 6 in Marseille in March 2012. As well as screenings in and during the Forum, there will be video and film events held throughout the region, in neighbouring cities such as Aix and Avignon.

“The IWFE have proven to be a cross-cutting tool that calls on our imagination, our emotions and our creativity, helping to find ever more appropriate solutions for water management and use” explained Maggie White, Associate General Secretary of ISW.

There are five categories for this new competition: films produced by young people between 11 and16; the VideEau short clips clips by producers younger than 30; local agency stories; popular science and broadcast or cinema quality.

Register before 30 November 2011. Submit your entry/ies before 31 December 2012.  For films which are completed after that date, there may be a possibility of screening at the Forum and related public events.

<a title=”Link to IWFE Film competition Call” href=”http://www.riec-iwfe.org/en/marseille-2012/call-for-proposal” target=”_blank”>Details, call for entries </a>

The general findings of a path-breaking market study on access to safe water at the so-called Base of the Pyramid (BoP) were presented to a packed meeting of the Dutch safe water community on June 24. The study was a joint undertaking of the French consultancy Hystra, the Dutch consultancy BoP Information Centre and the Dutch water aid and leverage foundation Aqua for All. The latter agency is a founder of the 300in6 Initiative and formally hosts its management and secretariat.

The study was conducted from mid-2010 onwards, and in many ways sees its work as building upon the 300in6 study known as ‘Safe Water at the Base of the Pyramid: How to involve private initiatives in safe water solutions’. That study was supported by Aqua for All, Connect International, Safe Water International and SDC, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. It is acclaimed as one of the first works on potential business models for appropriate solutions for rural and urban situations where there is no (safe) pipe.

Smart to the yard

The study led by Hystra catalogued a rich number of case studies of proven concepts and best business cases – some 200 in all – and recommendations for a market-based approach involving household filters, wells and pumps, water retail outlets and small-scale networks with yard and home connections. It examines how scaling-up and greater penetration of safe water supply can be achieved and the role of the private sector. It also looks at the imperative of mobilising social venture capital, of applying ‘smart’ start-up and capacity-building grants.

With cooperation in their lifeblood, they welcomed the opportunity to steer away from fragmented, niche-rooted skills-sets, costly quality and mutual competition.

Instead, they were impressed by the thinking of the study in an integrated approach of new business models which the international water legacy titans do not, or cannot, offer.

How useful is a BoP utility?

Two clear ideas emerging from the study are the establishment of a BoP water utility company as model, and the creation of a water sector scale-up platform in developing countries. This would be warmly welcomed by both private sector and public sector bodies. The Dutch private sector representatives at the meeting were quick to see a potential role in such models. So too, with at least the same alacrity, were the government representatives from the recently re-structured Ministry for economic affairs, agriculture and innovation, and the development arm of foreign affairs. The recommendations have a great deal in common with the sector’s own preoccupations, and recent policy initiatives by foreign affairs on public-private partnerships and the sector’s Water Mondiaal plans. Similarly, the pronouncement of water as a strategically-vital focus (one of nine) of Netherlands’ future place in the world provides another close-fitting link to the study.

Aqua for All and the BoPInC are now using the recommendations as the basis for an action plan, together with key sector representatives. The nature of the detailed report to be published was set to be finalised in early July.

The meeting was hosted by DHV, a consultancy, in their Amersfoort headquarters in the Netherlands.

The above text is derived from the article ‘Presentatie bevindingen en aanbevelingen uit de Hystra studie’, published in the July 2011 issue of the Dutch-language eNewsletter ‘News for All’ circulated by Aqua for All.

Photo: J Beadsley/Oxfam, with thanks

The programme to upscale the 300in6 website is unfolding as  planned. The first phase – a refresh – is almost completed, and will be followed in several months by a thorough, user-driven, remodelling.

The refresh will re-present existing information in crisper and more accessible formats: by product, technology, context and process. New sections will encourage user input and news. There will be relatively less emphasis on the by now, too well-known reasons for safe water upscaling, in a shift from pulpit to platform. This will allow for the transition of the site to an inter-active knowledge exchange centre for the scaling-up of access to safe water at household and community levels of treatment and delivery, in non-piped interventions.

Special account is being paid to the recognition that the scaling-up of the safe water sector requires not only the commitment of the water community but also crossing the cusp to the professions of scaling-up, including the dimensions of human resources, finance and legislation.

Thanks to all those who have made their input to the refresh process: the fruits of your comments thus far will be soon visible.  And they are always welcome.

2011 Suite of bridge-building and presentations

During 2011, 300in6 is holding a series of bridge-building events to strengthen contacts between the stakeholders involved in scaling-up access to safe water. Among the partners are practitioners, producers, users, consumers, traders and social capital investors. They represent a full cross-section of our partnership constituency, from the wave of ‘new water utilities’ in decentralised delivery systems to the more conventional household water treatment and storage systems.

The emphasis of these events is on sharing successful business models, and enabling new partnerships to develop them further.

Among the events are the July WEDC Conference in Loughborough (UK); World Water Week in Stockholm (SE) in August; the Water and Health moot at Water Institute – University of North Carolina (US) in October; the annual meeting of the International Network on Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage systems, hosted at the same time by the Water Institute; and the November session of the Rural Water Supply Network in Kampala (UG).

The events include papers, presentations, B2B sessions and the enhanced 300in6 exhibition.

A positive surge of energy is running through the field of household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS), with new solutions and systems for disinfection, storage and filters – and signs of growing uptake.

At our general meeting on 24 October (see previous post), members of the International Network for HWTS – including 300in6 – shared news of their progress in monitoring, research and outreach. The plans for WHO to henceforth co-host the network secretariat with UNICEF were welcomed, with news of enhanced communication services provided by the Water Institute of the University of North Carolina who hosted the session.

Among the presentations at the meeting were the views of 300in6 on the “massive scaling-up of safe water solutions”, followed by a lively discussion of how we shall work within HWTS to achieve this. See: 300in6 at HWTS 241010 v5 Standard

See also: http://www.who.int/household_water/en/