Reflections and learnings: WASH sustainability for climate resilience

This 'Dive deeper' series give readers a chance to learn more from Water for Women's experience and should be read in conjunction with our more detailed Impact Report.

Country-level case studies

Project evaluations considered sustainability from the perspectives of communities, local and sub-national governments, national governments and other relevant institutions. Elements of sustainability were more evident in some domains than others. A consistent theme was that sustainability weaknesses in one domain can affect others. To show how sustainability depends on intersecting support across levels, this article focuses on 3 countries – Nepal, Cambodia and PNG.

Nepal has made significant progress in meeting national WASH needs and achieved ODF status in 2019. The government has demonstrated a strong commitment to further improvements in rural WASH. WfW’s project in Nepal with SNV focused on climate-resilient inclusive rural water supply, because this was identified as the main need. The project supported 2 rural municipalities to develop processes for community-level climate-resilient inclusive water system management. Water systems in the municipalities were assessed for climate resilience, and systems scoring low on a resilience scale (source protection, landslide risk, etc.) were selected for upgrading. The municipalities oversaw the process with technical and some financial support from SNV. SNV’s share of the financial cost was around 50% early in the project, but shrank to 15%, with the remainder coming from the municipalities and the community.

Disability inclusion was a priority in the project, and a key contribution was establishing disability help desks at the municipality level to increase participation of people with a disability and enable their needs to be met. The final independent evaluation of the SNV Nepal project found that it supported changes in the management of rural water supplies that were likely to deliver lasting improvements in the sustainability of water service provision. The evaluation also observed that although these changes were relatively recent, there were early indications that these were mainstreamed in local institutions and likely to continue. 

SNV Nepal engaged at the national level to try to influence WASH policies and guidelines on a national scale, drawing on lessons from supporting local government in integrating climate resilience and disability inclusion into rural water supply management. The evaluation identified 2 important examples of SNV’s influence on national climate-resilient inclusive WASH sustainability:

• SNV worked with the Department of Water and Sewerage Management to explore the data in the national WASH management information system and extract information to help municipalities develop more practical WASH plans, clearly identifying investment needs. This experience is now being used to suggest improvements to the management information system itself, which will benefit the whole country
• SNV contributed to the national compendium of best practices on climate-resilient WASH. This will enable lessons from the project – for example, on climate risk assessments or costing climate-resilient enhancements to water supply schemes – to be taken up more widely.

Cambodia has made significant progress in meeting WASH needs, and the government had a target of achieving national ODF status in 2025. One of WfW’s projects in Cambodia, implemented by Thrive/EMW, strengthened planning and coordination at the sub-national level (district and province). It also used participatory processes of identifying climate risks and vulnerabilities with commune officials and community volunteers to meet WASH needs in climate-resilient and inclusive ways.

The project took a capacity-to-pay approach that involved targeted subsidies to low-income and vulnerable households. The project and the commune shared the cost of subsidies (the report does not give the proportions). The final evaluation found that the project had been very effective in meeting WASH needs at the community level and building the capacity of commune officials to implement climate-resilient inclusive WASH.  However, interviews with government officials identified ongoing sustainability challenges, such as lack of funds and staff to train community members, construct climate-resilient WASH infrastructure, and develop water safety plans.

The evaluation highlighted that sustainability of outcomes could be improved by long-term reengagement and community education workshops about climate-resilient inclusive WASH. However, lack of financial and technical capacity in sub-national government is a systemic problem that cannot be solved at community level. The evaluation highlighted a lack of alignment between community-level actions and national policy frameworks, and that future iterations of the project would need stronger vertical integration between community-level actions and national policy frameworks. Improving sustainability would require national policy to include technical and financial resourcing for sub-national government to implement climate-resilient inclusive water safety plans.

The other WfW project in Cambodia, implemented by iDE, worked through the private sector with a sanitation marketing approach. Its main sustainability outcome was strengthened financial management and technical capacity of businesses to deliver affordable, climate-resilient sanitation products. The iDE approach was very effective in increasing sanitation coverage, but reaching ‘last mile’ households is expensive and impossible without subsidies.

Papua New Guinea has made little progress in meeting rural WASH needs over the past 20 years. Accordingly, WfW made its largest financial investment in PNG. Development in PNG is difficult due to remote, hard-to-reach communities, frequent shocks and major ongoing governance problems. Despite this, evaluations of WfW projects identified significant achievements, but sustainability challenges were a constant theme. 

Water Aid, Plan International and World Vision International worked at the local level to improve WASH services in communities, schools and healthcare facilities. Then, as a consortium, they collaborated on local-level WASH services and system strengthening at the national level. Sub-national system strengthening was the main focus of the WaterAid project and a significant focus of the World Vision project. 

At the community level, evaluators identified some common sustainability challenges:

• declines in handwashing facilities and a need for support to replace or upgrade toilets to avoid slipping back to open defecation (WaterAid and World Vision)
• committees have been established to direct minor operation and maintenance (O&M) of water systems but appear to be lacking in functional processes and capacity to solve more major O&M issues (World Vision, WaterAid and Plan).

Effective O&M is critical for sustainability; larger O&M issues are meant to be referred to sub-national WASH authorities. This was WaterAid’s primary focus in supporting the Wewak District to develop a District WASH Plan. The evaluator noted that the Wewak District WASH Coordination Body had increased its capacity and awareness related to climate-resilient inclusive WASH, and produced a revised District WASH Plan that incorporated climate resilience and GEDSI considerations. World Vision followed a similar process in developing the South Fly District WASH Plan and its revision in the Extension Phase. These plans were supposed to guide the districts in supporting communities to implement and maintain climate-resilient inclusive WASH infrastructure. Evaluations at the end of Phase 1 in 2022 highlighted the sustainability risks if these plans are not funded. In 2024, the same risks to sustainability were still being highlighted in evaluation reports.

There is hope that the South Fly District WASH Plan will begin to be resourced in the coming phase and start to be implemented, but there is also a significant likelihood that very little progress will be made and there will be a need to be a re-visiting of the plan within 3–5 years. (World Vision PNG evaluation)

While the foundations are there for sustainability, the key factor that will ultimately determine the sustainability of the approach is whether [Wewak] district can source sufficient funding to implement some of the priority projects in the WASH Plan. It remains to be seen whether this critical transition to public funding will eventuate given significant district and national budget pressures. (WaterAid PNG evaluation)

The ongoing lack of capacity to plan and finance rural WASH was a key reason additional funding was made available for the consortium. Significant progress has been made on the planning aspect, but the finance side is lagging. The evaluator of the consortium described the situation well:

The consortium worked with government bodies at national and sub-national levels, advising on WASH policy, standards, guidelines and plans. It increased the visibility of the WASH sector across PNG by inviting government representatives to participate in [technical working groups]. Government approval of the WASH in Healthcare Facilities Guidelines and Roadmap, and the revised WASH in Schools Policy and Standards, provided direction for environmental health officers, school inspectors, and healthcare staff and teachers working with WASH programs in schools and healthcare centres. The forthcoming National WASH Plan is expected to provide similar certainty within community development departments. At the district and provincial levels, WASH is beginning to be embedded into governance structures, where five-year plans are being actively developed and funding pursued to make these possible. The consortium’s work across government agencies has enabled stakeholders to see how WASH links across sectors and develop a common language and vision. Unfortunately, no national investment planning for WASH is apparent, and the sector is likely to remain dependent on donor funding for the near future.

These 3 short case studies demonstrate the spectrum of sustainability challenges across the countries in WfW. Most countries in WfW fall between Nepal and PNG on this spectrum. The key to sustainability is government commitment to provide the technical and financial resources to plan, implement and maintain WASH services. The lack of funding for basic human services in PNG is an ongoing problem not confined to the WASH sector. The main Australian Government-funded health sector support program in PNG encountered similar challenges:

consistent with the WfW program experience, the Australian Government funded PNG Australia Transition to Health [PATH] continues to experience health system services barriers including consistent and sustainable funding in achieving the aims of the program.^[1]

Continued support for WASH system strengthening in PNG could be described as the triumph of hope over experience, but there is a strong humanitarian argument to continue to support WASH service provision in some form. The most effective, impactful and sustainable way to do that is unclear.

Sustainability challenge - faecal sludge management (FSM)

If faecal sludge is not managed safely in urban settings, health catastrophes can emerge very quickly. In many rural contexts, FSM is not seen as a priority. Independent evaluations of WfW projects in Cambodia and Bhutan in Phase 1 identified FSM as an emerging issue in rural areas as more households upgraded their sanitation infrastructure. iDE in Cambodia gave more attention to this issue in the Extension Phase, including developing an alternating dual pit latrine designed to facilitate FSM.

In a detailed assessment, iDE found that only 14% of alternating dual pit latrine owners followed pit emptying instructions (add lime and let the pit sit for 2 years prior to emptying). The remainder followed unsafe practices, including 31% piercing of  full pits and letting the contents flood out into the surrounding environment; an extremely unsafe practice. Based on these findings, iDE placed greater emphasis on accompanying sanitation market development interventions with household and community-level behaviour change. This included training local authorities to educate households to avoid unsafe latrine pit discharge, including safe pit emptying and not piercing their latrine pits or letting their systems wash out in seasonally flooded areas.

iDE studies identified that conventional pit emptying services by truck were not widely available in rural areas of Cambodia and were neither affordable nor following safe disposal practices. In response, iDE trialled an on-site pit treatment/emptying service, involving local contractors treating the contents of the full pit with lime mixed in with an agitator, then burying the treated waste in an adjacent pit. The trial showed that emptying pits and disposing of waste onsite through burying can be done safely, and households are willing to pay for it. This study could be drawn on to inform safe and affordable FSM in other locations.

The evaluation of Plan’s project in Indonesia noted that Sumbawa and Manggarai districts had budgeted for development of FSM plans. However, the evaluator did not clarify Plan’s influence.

Sustainability challenge - water resource management

The Independent evaluation of SNV’s project in Lao PDR reported that:

more progress needs to be made on understanding how to effectively address larger climate risks. There is a particularly pressing need for understanding the sustainability of the water resources feeding the springs which are sources for many rural water schemes.

In Sarlahi district in Nepal, SNV pivoted to meeting acute water needs during a severe drought. Shallow wells had run dry, and SNV assisted the local government to access groundwater from deep boreholes. The evaluation gave no information on the sustainability of the water source or the potential impact of future climate trends. The evaluator made the following observation, which would apply in many other contexts where the sustainability of water resources is not known:

developing a detailed understanding of the risks to drinking water sources is necessary to understand what climate resilience actions may be needed, and to make progress to water security in the broadest term. Progress on this will require significant technical expertise in surface and groundwater resources – expertise which is limited in Nepal where there are no government water resources agencies.

The criticality of operation and maintenance

As in most areas of development, O&M is a longstanding problem in the WASH sector. This is especially so in rural areas where government investment is often poor and communities are expected to maintain their own systems. Poor O&M affects all aspects of WASH in both household and institutional settings.

Water for Women projects generally targeted the least-served communities where government investment was lowest. Project reports and monitoring visits detailed widespread poor maintenance of WASH facilities. There were examples of poor O&M in every project context, particularly in government-operated facilities such as schools and healthcare facilities and where communities are relied upon for maintenance.

Sustainability as a characteristic of climate resilience. Badly sustained WASH services cannot be considered climate resilient. Clearly, a service that operates poorly in the face of existing risks will perform even worse when climate change amplifies hazards. Conversely, well-maintained WASH services increase resilience. When water is scarce, a well-maintained system means more water reaches users and less is wasted. When extreme weather strikes, well-maintained toilets suffer less damage or can be returned to service more quickly. In this sense, sustainability can be viewed as a characteristic of climate resilience, and climate change as an added incentive to solve the longstanding problem of poor sustainability that confronts the WASH sector.

Sustainability as a strategy for climate resilience in partner projects. Partner reporting makes some reference to sustainability of WASH services. IWMI’s research project in Nepal (CR05) developed a model to assess the climate resilience of 200 water systems in 2 rural municipalities. The results highlighted that weak management – including O&M – presents the greatest risks to resilience:

Of the surveyed systems, 29 of the systems fall under the very low category of resilience. Lack of effective management, exemplified by irregularity in monthly water tariff collections and meetings of water user committees.²

IWC’s research on rural water systems in the Pacific (PaCWaM+), which spanned both phases of WfW, is primarily focused on improving community management. The research initially explored factors of poor sustainability and confirmed weaknesses in community management approaches, including a lack of external support. IWC’s work in this area during the Extension Phase recognised that improving the quality of management, and hence sustainability of existing infrastructure, is critical for enhancing climate resilience.

During monitoring visits at the outset of the Extension Phase, the FC saw signs of sustainability in several settings:

• a remote community in the Solomon Islands was fully ODF and maintaining its toilets diligently
• in Dailekh, a community water supply scheme with metered household connections was being well managed
• in Western Province in PNG, several rural communities had responded enthusiastically to the Health Islands Concept and had taken charge of maintaining their WASH services independent of any government support.

These examples illustrate how O&M and climate resilience are closely related. CSO reporting, however, was somewhat muted on O&M and sustainability in general.

There were many competing demands in the Extension Phase for the resources available, and partners did not prioritise monitoring of Phase 1 outcomes (or those from the CSWASH Fund). Most partners asserted their expectations for sustainability without monitoring it in their project areas. The use of a systems strengthening approach was asserted to be a driver of sustainability, but whether stronger systems delivered more sustainable WASH services was not tested. In Cambodia, iDE’s post-sales monitoring found a very low rate of abandoned toilets, but also a high rate of pit piercing to manage full pits. WATL included an O&M component in its project that provided small grants to rural communities to demonstrate how maintenance problems could be solved, but it was unclear whether the O&M mechanism was sustainable.

IWC’s work in the Solomon Islands with faith-based organisations to improve community management of WASH systems led to reinvigorated WASH committees, increased maintenance and renewed tariff collection. It suggests strong potential in the Pacific to engage faith leaders to help make WASH services more climate resilient.

Sustainability in the Extension Phase design. CSO projects may have taken a stronger action on O&M and sustainability if there had been a better understanding at the outset of the Extension Phase of how these concepts linked to climate resilience. An unintended consequence from the Extension Phase’s initial emphasis on 100% climate finance was that there was little incentive for partners to promote O&M for climate resilience. O&M, being a core existing aspect of WASH, lacked the ‘additionality’ required to make it climate financeable. As an example of how this affected programming, WaterAid Timor-Leste’s initial project design made an explicit link between O&M and climate resilience and included a specific O&M component. In modifying the descriptions of outcomes to make climate risks more explicit and hence meet the additionality aspect of the Rio Markers, this link was not evident.   

Monitoring sustainability. The WASH sector can improve monitoring of O&M and sustainability to highlight their role in strengthening climate resilience. The WfW MELF did not include indicators for WASH service sustainability, and individual projects did not monitor it.  This would be a useful addition for future programs.  It is feasible to monitor the sustainability of water supply systems – the extent to which they remain functional throughout their operating life – but it does take dedicated resources. Demonstration that systems are increasingly functional would indicate that their resilience to climate risk is also increasing.

From an O&M perspective, sustainability (like climate resilience) is a process more than an endpoint. It is less about building robust infrastructure than ensuring there is capacity to sustain whatever infrastructure exists. Where MEL data demonstrates that projects have built the capacity to manage services effectively, and that services are sustained, there is a strong argument that climate resilience in those communities has increased.

Climate resilience can increase the complexity of O&M. WfW CSO projects highlighted an important tension regarding technology and climate resilience. Some climate-resilient WASH options promoted by partners increase the technical complexity of WASH services. These include the application of pumped systems to access groundwater, such as photovoltaic pumps being promoted by projects in PNG. The sustainability of these systems requires ongoing maintenance of both the pumps and photovoltaics, which is generally very difficult to arrange in PNG. Similarly, iDE’s all-seasons upgrade toilet, which is designed to operate effectively in areas where the water table is high or soils have low permeability, is more complicated to build than a standard dual pit toilet and requires additional monitoring by user households. In these situations, increasing climate resilience also increases the complexity and importance of good O&M. WaterAid PNG highlights that climate-resilient service can be more complex to manage:

Operations and Maintenance is critical for climate resilient technologies: the shift to more complex water supply infrastructure to align with the growing impacts of climate change requires much more focus on public sector approaches to O&M. Climate resilient technologies such as deep boreholes with solar pumps require ongoing maintenance.

The WASH sector needs to assess the trade-off between technological complexity and sustainability and demonstrate that solutions are effective. Systems that are not sustained do not deliver climate resilience.