Srinivas Chary, a member of IWA’s Inclusive Urban Sanitation Task Force, and co-chair of the subgroup on capacity building and training, discusses the drive to increase capacity for urban sanitation and the initiatives that the Task Force has established to facilitate this. By Erika Yarrow-Soden.
As a centre director of the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), a premier institution for India’s public policy and capacity development, where he leads the Centre for Environment, Urban Governance and Infrastructure Development, Srinivas Chary has a wealth of expertise in the delivery of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services.
Understanding the immense challenge of capacity building that is required to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 – access to water and sanitation for all – he welcomes IWA’s groundbreaking approach to Inclusive Urban Sanitation (IUS).
“This whole programme on inclusive sanitation is something new to the global community, especially the Global South,” he says. “I am aware of both the challenges of inclusivity and the challenges of safe sanitation. IWA’s goal is to mainstream inclusivity into policy, informing policy as well as practice.”
A new approach to sanitation
IWA’s IUS initiative aims to reshape the global agenda on urban sanitation over the coming years, as an important part of its work to promote inclusive, resilient, water-wise and sanitation-secure cities.
With far too many people in towns and cities around the world still lacking access to safely managed sanitation, there is a pressing need for an accelerated and inclusive approach to expanding safe sanitation service coverage. This means looking beyond technology and the usual focus on building infrastructure, and adopting a holistic approach that tackles wider issues, especially the factors that allow sanitation services of all kinds to be accessed, managed, and delivered sustainably over time.
“This whole programme on inclusive sanitation is something new to the global community”
“The role of the Task Force is to steer the programme and also to brand the concept of inclusive sanitation in different geographies to cross-pollinate ideas,” says Chary.
“Inclusive sanitation is considered differently by different thought leaders. By bringing people together from different backgrounds, we can draw together a common understanding and build a common template to not only define what inclusive sanitation is, but also implement a framework structured around the SDGs.”
Tools for success
Actions to support development of this framework involve assessing existing tools and frameworks, securing worldwide endorsement to advance IUS, and building skills, particularly in the public sector organisations responsible for creating an enabling environment for the delivery of safe sanitation.
“Designing tools based on global examples is very important to us,” says Chary.
Another central goal of IWA’s initiative is to engage a wide range of stakeholders, not least the public sector, operators, academics, regulators and other key actors.
“The Task Force’s subgroup is carefully constructed to include academics and practitioners, with the intention and hope that they will take knowledge back to real life situations,” says Chary.
“Much more needs to be done at country level, but this is giving us an opportunity to listen to different points of view. I believe the way we construct these groups should also be done at country level to create a network of networks. The way to bridge the gap between academic learning, and education and practice on the ground, is to follow an educational style where academics work on the contemporary problems confronting cities today.”
Human capacity
Different regions of the world have different levels of capacity, financial resources and human resources. While there may be political will, progress has been limited in multiple geographies, including India. Chary says human capacity is an important factor in this.
“Human capacity cannot be an afterthought,” he says. “This needs to be addressed before finances come to the table – before we start making investments and planning. When we think about capacity building, we need to think about our target groups. How do we want to build human capacity? Are we thinking about city-to-city learning? This is a low cost, high impact way of building capacity and investing in the sector, compared to infrastructure for example.”
Outlining the priorities necessary for successful programme implementation, Chary says the first thing is to build capacity. Second, resourcing is required to build and privatise capacity initiatives. Third, consideration must be given to the skills sets required to build capacity.
“While there may be political will, progress has been limited in multiple geographies”
“You need specialists, environmental engineers, experts in behaviour communication,” says Chary, explaining that this is something the IUS subgroup is trying to inform across countries.
“Capacity building is important to me,” says Chary. “Especially with regards to India, where inclusive sanitation is becoming mainstream. As a member of the Task Force, I want to draw on global lessons and keep informing programmes.
“In India there is a capacity building framework at national level. The government of India has brought out a capacity building programme, concurrently with the allocation of financing.”
Recognising sanitation as a human right
Chary explains that back in the 1980s and 1990s, capacity was viewed in India as an infrastructure problem. This began to change around 2008, when the idea of inclusion was touched upon in conversations about sanitation capacity. However, the real sea change came in 2014, when India’s Prime Minister – announcing a new sanitation programme – described women and children as victims of poor sanitation and established sanitation as a human rights issue.
“One of the challenges is about creating a new mindset”
“In his speech, the Prime Minister implied that sanitation was not only a matter of human health, but a matter of human dignity,” says Chary. “While the intent was there, the question was then, how do you build in inclusion? The journey has been positive. There is continual improvement and inclusivity now has an important role in the IUS framework.
“The concept of inclusion is not just about gender; it is about broader inclusion. It could be children, vulnerable people, intersectionality of vulnerabilities, and acknowledgement of the requirements necessary to provide for these different groups.”
The timing of IWA’s IUS initiative is particularly crucial, with the sanitation ramp-up required to meet SDG 6 by the 2030 deadline, which has prompted a rush to build infrastructure.
“National programmes are framed as missions,” explains Chary. “Everyone is in a hurry to achieve goals and targets. You can’t have perennial programmes, because there is a human rights and dignity agenda. So, you have to have a timed approached, be they 2030 targets or national targets. In this process, implementation becomes very aggressive – people want to meet targets and spend money – but often do so without realising that this is really all about human beings. Globally, the whole concept of human capacity is not very well thought through. One of the challenges is about creating a new mindset.”
Chary explains that one of the crucial roles of the IUS Task Force is to provide the opportunity to pause and reflect, rather than rushing into projects that may not take into account what is best for the communities they serve.
“Things are changing,” says Chary. “Governments are establishing capacity frameworks and working with knowledge partners and institutions.”
ASCI has formed a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish a capacity building programme to cross-pollinate ideas and take lessons from India. Introduced during the pandemic, the resulting Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) online course has reached participants from 14 countries. To date, five cohorts have been completed, with the initiative touching around 600 practitioners across 250 cities, reaching out to city leaders to inform sanitation capacity building.
“CWIS is a communication tool,” says Chary. “Infrastructure is continuously evolving. Cities are growing upwards and horizontally. CWIS provides a living plan, helping professionals to meet the challenge of this incredible growth.”
While the pandemic required knowledge to be “liberated through digitalisation” (to coin Chary’s term), the ability to travel has provided a new element to the CWIS learning programme. A new hybrid model has been established, which allows participants to learn online, but also visit cities that demonstrate great examples of CWIS.
“This development recognises the human condition, and that for people, seeing is believing,” says Chary. “The response has been phenomenal. •
Information
To find out more about IWA’s IUS Task Force visit: https://iwa-network.org/projects/inclusive-sanitation/
