Opportunities and Challenges for the Water and Sanitation Sector in a Decentralised Context

The 23rd AGUASAN workshop explored how shifting of power, competen­cies, responsibilities and resources from the central government to local levels particularly affects the way water supply and sanitation (W&S) issues are dealt with, as their scope fits the level of local government responsibility and management (unlike e.g. for the health and education sectors). The impulse behind decentralisation is the vision that decision-making is pushed to the lowest possible level (subsidiarity principle), where peer monitoring can take place and people have a more direct control. It should therefore enable more flexible and innovative W&S services, which respond to concrete needs and the demand of the people. The key questions which were addressed in the workshop were:

• How do roles and responsibilities of the main sector stakeholders (state, private sector, civil society, communities) shift in different “decentralisation contexts”?
• What supports do these stakeholders, and mainly those at local level, need in order to fulfil their rights and duties (i.e. capacity building for implementing and managing efficiently and effectively municipal W&S service delivery models)?
• What are the opportunities and limitations of W&S interventions to foster decentralised approaches and good local water governance practices?
• What changes are required in how W&S interventions are set up to handle the capacity build­ing focus/contents and to contribute to decentralisation processes?

Looking at four topic cases dealing with decentralised models for service delivery and an analy­sis by the concept working group, the workshop brought up several findings: It shows that sustainable and effective decentralised W&S services need not only institutional, organisational and human resources capacity building at local level, but also a functional financial mechanism, and a clear and appropriate allocation of roles and responsibilities.

Furthermore, decentralisation is a dynamic process, which includes a lobbying and negotiation process amongst the players. There is no ‘blue-print’ solution for a decentralised W&S sector. Therefore, the W&S sector needs to be sufficiently flexible to respond to the dynamic decen­tralisation process and to find its niche. Political, administrative and fiscal decentralisation should go hand in hand. That means that decision-making power, institutional capacity, fiscal and technical resources for services delivery and their management have to be devolved in an adequate way. In addition, roles and responsibilities in the W&S sector should be devolved to the lowest appropriate and competent (political/administrative) level.

And finally, an effective decentralisation process should be part of a broader governance and democratisation reform, and neither an isolated nor a universal remedy to W&S sector needs.