Maglana: Bakit the Bucket Challenge: Part 2
LAST week’s column tackled the now viral Ice Bucket Challenge, criticisms hurled at it as a fundraising event that, while endeavoring to raise awareness and resources for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS research, nevertheless could result in massive wastage in energy and water, and the realities concerning water, sanitation and hygiene or WaSH in the Bangsamoro.
The Ice Bucket Challenge has spawned others, to name a few: the Blood Bucket Challenge, the Rice Bucket Challenge, the Water Bucket Challenge, and the obviously tongue-in-cheek Boiling Water Challenge, apparently reserved for enemies.
The Water Bucket Challenge entails walking some distances to a water source (certainly more than 250 meters), filling a bucket with whatever water is available, hoisting the bucket on top of one’s head, and walking back -- with no assurance that the water that one has collected is safe for human use.
Unfortunately, this is not just a proposed event but is actually a lived daily reality for many people around the world, majority of whom are women and girls.
As far as water, sanitation and hygiene-related (WaSH) challenges go, I think the real challenge is in revisiting our assumptions and approaches to ensure that people’s health and wellbeing everywhere are not put at risk by WaSH constraints.
Why bother to review perspectives about WaSH? Because the perspectives invariably underpin understanding of the problem and as well shape the proposed solutions. Unfounded and inappropriate perspectives would only undermine the best intentioned of responses. In marginalized areas such perspectives particularly plague WaSH: fragmentation, the project treatment, and the tendency to isolate WaSH from governance processes.
From the perspective of the A Single Drop for Safe Water (ASDSW) water, sanitation and hygiene are inter-related—water can be contaminated by poor sanitation and hygiene, and sanitation and hygiene will not work without water -- and have to be approached in an integrated manner. But WaSH initiatives generally speaking have been fragmented, with public spending mostly going to water supply projects. In many poor communities for instance, water sources are set up without due consideration of adjoining sanitation facilities or hazardous events like floods that have contaminating effects. Toilets in public settings such as markets and schools were established even if far from reliable water sources, and thus end up being underutilized and unmaintained.
The project paradigm has had the unfortunate effect of reducing WaSH to projects that have a start date and finish date (that is, the turnover ceremony), and with a defined set of objectives, activities and beneficiaries. The tendency then is to concentrate on the construction of water facilities that can be turned over to beneficiary communities, instead of viewing water as a service that has to continue and even expand to meet new and growing needs. Treating water as a service would mean that it has to be accessible continuously and without disruption, which would require proper operations and maintenance.
The project mentality has also been tainted to the point where projects, usually funded by grant money, are equated with “free” support, thus conditioning communities to resist contributing the necessary amounts for the operations, upkeep and repairs of WaSH facilities. But while water is “free” in that it can be found in the atmosphere as rain and in sources like surface water (lakes, springs, and streams) and ground water (aquifers), reliable access to safe water has to be arranged, which requires investments.
Communities where water sources abound (and many of these are in rural areas) consider it paradoxical that water which is a free resource in its natural state is costed, and that they have to pay for it once it flows out of a tap. Perhaps the task is to dialog with such communities towards developing an understanding that while water is “free”, availing of water that is safe (because treated and tested), accessible (because within easy reach), and reliable (because available 24/7) will require some commitments on their part. Let it be stressed though that getting users to value water by allocating realistic amounts to ensure that water is sourced, treated and delivered to those who use it day in and day out is not the same as privatizing water.
Because WaSH is vital to human wellbeing, it cannot but be a public, and thus government, concern. Government bodies, particularly local government units -- and looking ahead, political entities like the Bangsamoro now that the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law has been transmitted to the Philippine Congress—have to include WaSH among the concerns for which they plan and program, about which they set and enforce policies, as well as on which they monitor, evaluate and report. WaSH is too fundamental to public health to leave exclusively to market forces, and to be a matter of user preference.
However, a governance-oriented approach to WaSH, according to ASDSW, is more than just the inclusion and integration of WaSH in governance processes. It also means recognizing that different stakeholders like communities, the private sector, civil society groups, the academe, media and the religious sector have contributions to make and roles to play towards ensuring that WaSH standards are met. Engaging, mobilizing and sustaining the diverse involvements of these stakeholders require effective governance arrangements.
If I am allowed to coin the tagline, the WaSH Bucket Challenge for local governments and political entities like the Bangsamoro then at this stage is to overcome the tendencies to fragmentize WaSH, treat it as mere project, and regard it outside of governance.
Why this, the WaSH Bucket Challenge for local governments and political entities? Because if fragmentation, the project mentality, and WaSH as private concerns are unaddressed, any WaSH initiative could inadvertently end up as a waste of effort and resource, without meeting the objective: ensuring that all communities have safe, continuous, affordable, quality drinking water, and available, accessible, affordable, acceptable and adaptable sanitation and hygiene. This unfortunate situation would be comparable to the massive energy wastage and water loss charge levied at the Ice Bucket Challenge.
The hope is that this -- the WaSH Bucket Challenge for local governments and political entities -- is one that quickly goes viral, gains many adherents, and does not lose momentum over time.
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