2011 was the year when the UN Human Rights Council took the human right to water and sanitation one step further, with recommendations on how to realize it. Does it mean that in 2012 the battle is over and that it is now "only" up to authorities to start realizing this right? Or, should I say rights? In fact, the distinction between whether this is one or two rights shows that there are still important debates to be held at the global level.

The UN special rapporteur Catarina de Albuquerque has since her appointment constantly highlighted the right to sanitation, attempting to lift it out of the shadow of the water issue. International organizations and UN agencies have campaigned successfully since the 2008 International Year of Sanitation to break the taboo of sanitation issues so that we can talk frankly of the vital need to have a safe place to pee and poo. But in a legal sense, the right to water and sanitation has often been treated as one combined right. The UN human rights resolution from 2011 (A/HRC/RES/18/1), talks of "the right to safe drinking water and sanitation" - in singular.

Amnesty international however emphasizes that while the Human Rights Council appears to be treating water and sanitation as a single combined right, Amnesty International's view is that water and sanitation are two linked human rights. Amnesty's research from Nairobi's slum areas shows that women have to choose between not using a toilet at night or going to a public toilet and risking sexual violence - thereby pointing to specific problems related to a lack of sanitation and claiming it should be recognized as a distinct right.

Indeed it can be misleading to automatically connect sanitation rights with a right to water, for example there are many forms of dry sanitation that do not and should not require water. But perhaps what defines sanitation more than many other human rights issues, is the concept of human dignity that it evokes. For half of the world’s population, sanitation issues also include how to safely and hygienically manage menstruation. Within the sanitation field, this subject has so far been quite invisible and, in many countries, a taboo within the taboo as it were.

Menstruation management - the new taboo to break
Sanitation is crucial for the health and survival of men, women and children. But some of the most serious aspects of sanitation are more relevant to women and girls, and menstruation management is one of them. Menstruation is taboo in many countries, but the difficulty to manage it under poor living conditions have serious impacts on a woman's health as well as her social and economic conditions. Because access to separate toilets is lacking, approximately 30% of girls from poorer communities in South Africa do not attend school during menstruation. So not only do separate toilets at school enable girls to attend school in the first place, but more girls are likely to stay after puberty and during menstruation periods to complete their education.

Ms. de Albuquerque stresses, however, that "better sanitation conditions will not be achieved simply by building latrines and sanitary tanks". In her view, real changes in hygiene standards are only possible if the population is fully sensitized about improved hygiene practices. To this end, the South African Water Research Commission (WRC) in 2011 arranged a dialogue on menstrual management in support of the Sanitary Dignity Campaign for Women and Girls. In a report made together with The Department for Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Stockholm Environment Institute and the Water Information Network South Africa, the commission shows that 60% of women and girls in South Africa do not have access to traditional sanitary ware (pads and tampons). Forced to use "alternatives" such as rags, toilet paper, newspaper, leaves, "recycled" tampons / pads and disposable nappies. This has dire consequences for women's and girls' health and hygiene, productivity, as well as dignity - and, as the report concludes, confidence to be active members of a society.

Future steps within this field will be for the UN system to clearly define whether the right to sanitation should be singled out s a right on its own. Another challenge for the UN as well as for development partners will be to continue lifting menstruation management out of the shadows and integrating appropriate measures in development programming.

References

• Women and girls and their right to sanitation - press release by UN special rapporteur
• World Toilet Day - press release by UN special rapporteur
• Report of the UN special rapporteur Ms. De Albuquerque on sanitation
• Menstrual hygiene management report, Water Research Commission

Since the 90ies, the World Water Week in Stockholm has been the leading yearly event on global water issues, providing the perfect platform through which we have been able to bridge sectors and find solutions to water-related challenges and their impact on the world’s environment, health, climate, economic and poverty reduction agendas.

This year’s Week will focus on water and food security and, we now call for your contribution to uncovering the untapped synergies of food and water and explore how these fundamental resources can be managed in a new, green economy. Interested individuals or organsations have until the 15 of February 2012 to submit event proposals or abstracts. Not only established professionals are welcome - I would also like to see more young professionals getting involved.

Over the last decade we have seen multiple organisations developing initiatives that have been helping young (water) professionals to develop their career, gain visibility within their working community and, at the same time, build valuable networks that will accompany them throughout their career. Whilst I believe that all this efforts are both very much needed and admirable, I also believe that young professionals should not be shy and they should claim their space. There are multiple ways in which this can be done and, certainly, presenting one's work in a prestigious conference such as the World Water Week in Stockholm is one of them.

So do not be shy, get your brains and pens to work. We are looking forward to receiving all your contributions, from young and established professionals alike!

For more information on the submission procedure, visit http://www.worldwaterweek.org

Investments for improving sanitation can mean big money. Within the past monthin Romania, a US$70 million sewerage treatment plant in Braila was opened and anotherUS$47 million projectlaunched to build a large wastewatertreatment station in Constanta County. The sewage treatment plant in Fallujah, Iraq has so far cost US$108 million and is due for completion in 2014.In Africa, a World Bank sanitation project for $30 million was approved for Cameroon in June 2011.

While this may sound like lots of money, it is important to keep everything in perspective. Spending on sanitation is generally a fraction of 1% of national budgets and barely registers on many donor budgets. Yet, lack of sanitation is one of the most wide spread health problems of our time (in addition to causing environmental degradation). Every year, 1.8 million people die from diarrheal diseases related to poor sanitation. In terms of illness, fecal-borne diseases result in the loss of 82 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per year. In sub-Saharan Africa, half the hospital beds on average are occupied by people with fecal-borne disease, which consumes 12% of national health budgets. The WaterAid report "Fatal Neglect - How Health Systems are Failing to Comprehensively Address Child Mortality" (2009) potently showed how both HIV/AIDS and malaria receive significantly more funding even though they cause fewer deaths (see figure below).

Yet, at the same time we know that sanitation is important and economically viable. A recent poll conducted by the British Medical Journal voted sanitation the greatestmedical advance of the past 166 years. A number of studies have shown that investments in sustainable sanitation bring an average return of US$ 8.1 for every US$1 invested. So, why this neglect of sanitation by municipal, national and international decision-makers?

Research by the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program that came out this year (The Political Economy of Sanitation) suggest that the current limited focus on sanitation is driven largely by political motivation in the context of competing demands for resources, and to a lesser extent by technical or economic considerations.In some ways this is good news. Political motivation is something that can be influenced. We as global citizens can stop considering sanitation as a taboo subject and raise the issue as a serious debate. We as tax-payers, donors, social activists and individuals can put sanitation on the table by lifting the issue in our daily conversations, our votes, and our donations. Increasing awareness increases the chances that priorities will shift and the needed investments will be made.

Transboundary water management (TWM) is a relatively new scientific field and does as such receive much attention - including a need to learn across basin borders. In other words, it is common to make use of case studies, undertake study tours and make thematic reviews of transboundary basins. This type of learning carries a positive notch of working together and adds on to our global knowledge. But does it actually work? Can lessons learned in e.g. the Mekong be transferred to the Nile and the La Plata and still make sense?     

There are many organisations that offer extensively described and analysed cases of water management from around the world. For example, the Global Water Partnership has its Toolbox on water management, the World Water Assessment Program provides a huge number of case studies on www.unesco.org/water/wwap, private sector Veolia Water contributes on www.veoliawater.com/solutions/case-studies, and Twin2Go offers its “best guidelines” on www.twin2go.eu. An objective of the latter is to “draw context-sensitive but transferable approaches for improving adaptive water resources management”. 

I have in recent months been involved in two cases where far away river basins and their water management have been studied and attempts have been made to transfer their lessons learned to basins in the Middle East and North Africa. First, as part of an assignment for the Nile Basin Initiative, a review was undertaken of international river basin organizations and their agriculture agendas, either as desk reviews or by actually visiting the areas. But to collect information that was both transferable and made sense to the Nile basin context was not easy… What we collected was sometimes not adequately focused and so context-specific that the lessons learned were difficult to share. It helped to visit the basins, to get a better in-depth understanding of the issues, but that required much time, efforts and money.

The second case is the Sida supported and Ramboll-SIWI implemented training programmes on international water management (www.rambollnatura.se / www.siwi.org). Some of these programmes have focused on the Middle East and we have made extensive use of case studies - e.g. on the Nile, Mekong, Baltic Sea, Danube and Orange - with the purpose of transferring lessons learned to the Middle East and rivers like the Euphrates, Tigris and Jordan. But again, what is being transferred? It is always interesting for a group of water professionals to listen to well-presented cases from faraway places. But are the things they learn applicable back home? As quoted above, is it possible to transfer “context-sensitive” approaches?

I believe it is difficult but not impossible to do so. But it requires a carefully planned process, with high levels of engagement and well-defined issues. It is a four-folded process: to make a thorough analysis of the original basin context; to review the relevant water management issues existing; to define the unique relationship that exists between context and issues; and to transfer and carefully adapt the issues of value into the new context. The adaptation is only (?) possible when the original relationship between context and issues is well understood. This is the approach that we have followed in the Sida supported training programmes. We have used a specifically appointed facilitator - knowing both transboundary water management and the region into which the lessons learned are applied - to guide the participants through the presented case studies.

Another reportedly successful exercise of transferring knowledge can be exemplified by the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority in Cambodia, which at the onset of its now well-renowned restructuring went on a study tour of other water utilities in Asia. The team from Phnom Penh worked hard and meticulously analysed what they saw and what they could bring home, and - most importantly - how to adapt it to their local situation. Inspired by this, the knowledge management plan implemented by the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI for MDG-F supported initiatives uses basically three questions in picking up lessons from case studies and transferring between programmes: what can we learn from this?, what do we bring home?, and how do we adapt this to our home situation?

As a conclusion, as long as we are aware of and respect the difficulties involved in learning from cases located far away, and base the transfer of knowledge on an appropriate and carefully designed process, we should certainly cross boundaries to learn from others. 
 

During the recently concluded UNFCCC COP17 meeting in Durban, water was, partly as a result of intensive and excellent work by the Water and Climate Coalition and several other groups, included as part of the Nairobi Work Programme (NWP). In November 2011, at the request of parties, the UNFCCC Secretariat produced a technical paper on water and climate change impacts and adaptation strategies, to support the integration of water into adaptation action under the NWP. This paper served as a background document to the deliberations. Climate and Water issues were dealt with at two different official sessions: on December 1st at the Joint SBSTA/SBI (the Subsidiary Body for Implementation) workshop to "consider the outcomes of the Nairobi work programme, to highlight the scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change most relevant to the SBI" (FCCC/SBSTA/2011/CRP.1), and at the SBSTA session December 3rd when the Agenda item3, the Nairobi work programme was deliberated (FCCC/SBSTA/2011/L.26/Add.1).

At the SBSTA/SBI workshop parties highlighted both the importance of focusing on "sectoral approaches" where water, health and food security were specifically mentioned, and also the need for guidance "to consider trade-offs between sectors in the light of scarce resources" where allocation of water was specifically mentioned. The SBSTA, responding to the proposals and contributions made by parties, including written contributions¹, requested the secretariat to organize in cooperation with other relevant organizations, a technical workshop, before the thirty-seventh session of SBSTA on water and climate change impacts and adaptation strategies.

Among the most important Side events from a water and climate perspective was of course the Water, Climate and Development Day on December 3rd. The African Ministers Council on Water, AMCOW, in conjunction with the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank, AfDB, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, UNECA, the Department of Water Affairs,  DWA South Africa, the Global Water Partnership, GWP, and the Water and Climate Coalition (WCC) organised the Water, Climate and Development Day as well as the High Level session that presented the key findings of the day to ministers and dignitaries to take into the Conference of the Parties’ High-Level segment.

The Water, Climate and Development Day that dealt with issues such as "Global Policy Solutions for Adaptation and Mitigation", "Infrastructure, Technical and Ecosystem Solutions", "Climate Change Information for Water Resources", and "Financial and Institutional Solutions", delivered during the day and at the High Level segment several key messages. Among these are the following action oriented messages of particular importance to the continuous intergovernmental UNFCCC-process:
 

• "Water knowledge expertise needs to inform the Adaptation Committee to ensure linkages between Nairobi Work Programme and the Cancun Agreement, emphasising importance of water as a key medium for adaptation. Qualified water resource management knowledge should be represented amongst the members of the Adaptation Committee. In addition links should be established between the Adaptation Committee and water institutions and organisation.
• We welcome the SBSTA draft decision to organise a technical workshop on water. This can be further strengthened by establishing a thematic focus under the Nairobi Work Programme, ensuring that climate interventions involving water resources are properly addressed.
• Establish water as a priority under the Green Climate Fund with a sub thematic funding window for water resources management.
• The Africa Green fund should include a dedicated thematic funding window for water resources and to be utilised for projects related to water management and climate change adaptation and mitigation."

Reference:
1. Such as the "Opinion of Republic of Uzbekistan on the research and systematic observations" in which they mention "assessment of performance of measures of the rational water use in irrigated farming and correction of irrigated norms" as one of the priority-driven tasks for implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures.

The Horn of Africa 2011 drought disaster - labeled by many agencies, as one of the most serious drought disasters in modern time - continues to unfold. Yet now, the appearance of the disaster has changed. With the recent rains that commenced early December ago, the drought has ended, but the crisis prevails. In some regions, notably in Kenya, the rains are furthermore the worst that some communities have experienced in 20 years.

While the scale of the drought could not be known, it was predicted more than a year earlier, October 2010, with first and foremost the anticipated impact from the La Nina. So while enough time was given to alert the response mechanisms put in place, the information spurred limited action with a traditional emergency scenario emerging as a consequence.
   
As the immediate effects of the drought have now come to an end, its full impact is yet to be calculated. It is meanwhile remarkable that relevant to the scale and depth of the drought, mortality levels were kept very modest. Yet, hundreds of thousands of people people have had to live well below subsistence levels, with severe levels of acute malnutrition as evidence of the severity of the situation. It is further known that large numbers in livestock have perished, in some areas more than fifty percent, and crops have failed across large areas, resulting in that it will take at least six months of support for agriculturalists to return to pre-disaster levels, and multiple years for pastoralists to achieve the same (IFRC, 2011).

It is hoped that the aftermath of the disaster will amongst other generate much discussion on:

1. that scale of disasers is not mesured in levels of morbidity but quality of living
2. Early Warning messages is better made use of
3. climate change adaptation is a continued part of the agricultural dialogue to secure livelihoods and
4. the approach to rural and agricultural development is aligned with sustainability and endurance of livelihood systems as a means to protect and save lives.

The latter in light of the last decades where attention has shifted away from agriculture among various large actors. For instance, The World Bank lent 26 and 10 percent respectively during the 1980's and 2000 to agriculture from its total budget (Millstone and Lang, 2003).

The water community has taken significant steps in the right direction at COP 17 in Durban. Despite a very small team, the Water and Climate Coalition was able to follow the discussions of our key issues; the continuation of the Nairobi Work Programme, the negotiations on the Adaptation Committee and the Green Climate Fund. We have had great help and support by members from FAN, CI and Green Cross and a very good collaboration with our partners GWP and CONAGUA. We have been able to support a major push by a number of parties, and we will most likely see Mexico, LDCs and African countries speak up for the cause of water.

On December 3rd and December 6th WCC, African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), African Union Commission (AUC), African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Department of Water Affairs, (DWA) South Africa and Global Water Partnership (GWP) arranged Water, Climate and Development Day events. December 3rd was an all-day event and December 6th was a high level panel where key messages from the 3rd were highlighted and discussed. Both meetings took place in the Africa Pavilion at COP 17 in Durban.

Africa Pavilion, December 3rd

Both events were well attended, with over 100-140 persons in the audience, and we received numerous positive and spontaneous comments regarding the content and the value of the topic and discussions.

Water, and its interconnectedness with Climate Change and how this is addressed and managed on the development and funding agendas, is a theme which clearly is on the rise. The concluding statements of the dignitaries sent us off knowing that we had addressed the key questions that make waters case in the climate context AND that the collaboration between WCC and numerous African and international institutions had successfully ensured and, established, the issue of water on the climate agenda.

Igår kväll samlades ett femtiotal personer på ABF-huset i Stockholm för att diskutera om det är möjligt och önskvärt att handla vattenvänligt. I dagsläget är det svårt för konsumenter att veta hur produktionen av kaffet vi dricker och kläderna vi köper påverkar vattenresurser i de länder där varorna produceras.

Lovisa Selander, Stockholm International Water Institute, förklarade att framställningen av mat och andra jordbruksprodukter står för den allra största delen av allt vatten som en svensk är beroende av varje år, medan det vatten vi använder till att diska och laga mat med bara utgör några få procent av den totala mängden. Frågan var alltså om och hur konsumenter ska kunna ta ett ansvar när det gäller att hushålla med de vattenresurser som används för produktion av varor. Seminariet arrangerades gemensamt av Konsumentföreningen Stockholm (KfS) och Swedish Water House.

En av kvällens huvudfrågor var om man vill se en produktmärkning för vattensnåla produkter.
-    Ja, svarade drygt 30 % av konsumenterna i KfS medlemsenkät, som skickats ut speciellt inför seminariet.
-    Nej, hellre en märkning som samtidigt tar hänsyn till många miljöfrågor svarade ca 60 % av de tillfrågade konsumenterna.
-    Jo, gärna en vattenmärkning svarade Magnus Boström, docent i sociologi och lektor i miljövetenskap på Södertörns högskola. Om man slår ihop alla miljöfrågor i en märkning blir det lätt konflikter mellan olika mål. Har man istället olika märkningar kan det bli en tävlan mellan dem som kan stimulera dem att bli bättre.
-    Nej, om man bara fokuserar på en fråga i en märkning så glöms de andra bort, svarade Henrik Lampa, CSR-manager, H&M. Vi måste göra det enkelt för konsumenterna och ha färre antal märkningar. Detta höll också Per Rosengren, hållbarhetschef, COOP, med om.

Även om det rådde delade meningar just i denna fråga så var dock de flesta i panelen överens med konsumenterna om att vi vill kunna handla vattenvänligt och att det ska vara enkelt för konsumenter att göra det.
-    Företagen har ett stort ansvar att sälja miljövänliga produkter, sa Louise Ungerth, KfS. Vi konsumenter kan inte hålla reda på alla olika typer av miljöpåverkan, från fosforekvivalenter till vattenvolym som gått åt.

De råd som panelen i slutändan gav till konsumenter som redan nu vill handla vattenvänligt var att slänga mindre mat, äta mindre kött, och engagera sig i någon miljöorganisation eller på något annat sätt läsa på mer om vattenfrågor.


Lovisa Selander tolkad av tecknaren Per Lublin som satt i seminariepubliken.

The 3rd International Interdisciplinary conference on "Predictions for Hydrology, Ecology and Water Resources Management: Water Resources and Changing Global Environment" will take place on 24-27 September 2012 in Vienna, Austria. The deadline for abstract submission is 1 February 2012.

The conference will bring together professionals, scientists and members of governmental institutions dealing with water resources management. Representatives of natural, social and engineering sciences will meet together to exchange experience and present the current views on the adaptation and mitigation of adverse effects of global change on water resources systems.

The Swedish Water House is part of the board of the Swedish International Hydrological Programme (IHP) Committee.