I attended the World Water Week in Stockholm last week – this is one of the main events of the year for all water stakeholders, and around 3,000 delegates were present this year. For MECS, our goal was to network and better understand the context of how private and public parties leverage mobile technologies to improve water access, water management, and aid transparency.
In the context of 2013 being declared as “International Year of Water Cooperation”, the theme of the conference was “Water cooperation and building partnerships”. The questions to be addressed in 2013 included: why do we need to cooperate, on what, for what aim, at what level, and with whom?
Beyond MDGs
As 2015 has been set as the year of achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, the process of developing a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has already been initiated and a lot of talks were happening on this theme. As a reminder, the Rio+20 outcome document (June 2012) clearly states water as one key area for achieving sustainable development and thus on important part of the upcoming SGDs and post-2015 development framework.
On this purpose, the Stockholm International Water Insititute (SIWI) submitted a “Call for a Sustainable Development Goal on Water” to the UN that by the year 2030, the following should have been achieved:
- A doubling of global water productivity
- Human Right for safe drinking water and sanitation access
- Increased resilience to water related disasters
Spotlight on Sanitation
During the week, there was a universal agreement that sanitation needs a higher profile on the development agenda, as sanitation access is one of the most off target MDGs to date. As stated by the UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson: “We must break taboos. As was the case for the word ‘toilets’ a few years ago, it is time to incorporate ‘open defecation’ in the political language and in the diplomatic discourse.”
Experts called for increased innovation, financing and leadership in this sector to deliver services to everyone in an equitable way. Related to this came the announcement of a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to expand and accelerate access to sanitation through the creation of a Sanitation Trust Fund in Asia. The fund will pilot innovations in sanitation and septage management, provide grant funds for innovations in ADB’s sanitation projects, and support polices on septage management and sludge treatment.
Mobile technologies could act as another building block to strengthen sustainability of toilet units, by using for example mobile platforms and/or GSM remote monitoring systems to receive regular information about toilet management, but also use simple SMS communication to reach communities and raise awareness on best sanitation practices.
The Role of ICT and Mobile
One session was dedicated to “ICT to Improve Water Governance” which presented the role of ICT and especially mobile as a low cost solution to increase transparency, support service delivery and engage with communities. One of the key takeaways from the session was from Akvo‘s Thomas Bjelkeman-Petterson, who explained “Open and ‘big’ data will be transformative in development cooperation starting in 2014.”
Mobile can have a huge impact on water governance and instantly connect citizens to their water service providers, cities and governments. Leveraging the ubiquity of mobile handsets and increased affordability of these mobile devices (even smartphones equipped with camera, GPS and internet connectivity), accurate and timely information can be channelled to improve decision making and increase resilience of water services, in underserved peri-urban and rural areas.
Developing open data frameworks would also increase aid transparency and the access to real time information on water projects by anyone at any time (an example is through the Akvo Openaid platform).
Fundamentally, cooperation will be key to ensure projects are built to last and mobile can be a smart tool to solve current lack of finance or lack of information challenges when servicing poor customers. Part of a session on “Cooperation for Sustainable Benefits and Financing of Water Programmes”, Patrick Mwangi from the World Bank in Kenya presented a study on the collaboration of banks, utilities, mobile operators and development agencies to improve water access in peri-urban zones. Targeting the 90,000 residents living in the Kayole Soweto slum in Nairobi, the concept of this project was to put in place a micro-credit scheme to make water and sanitation services affordable to low income households through the access to subsidised micro-loans and repayment through consumption bills. Both payments could be made through the mobile money channel and consumers were able to send water meter readings through a simple dial code. Results were clearly encouraging other cities to set up this type of collaborative platform.
Overall, the people met and the things learned at the World Water Week have strengthened the role we think as GSMA the mobile industry has to play in the water and sanitation sector and in upcoming months we will further research how the following mobile channels can improve access to these basic services:
- Give access to a clean energy source to power water filtration units, water pumps or irrigation pumps in off grid environments, through the mobile tower excess power or micro-grid systems using the telecom tower as an anchor tenant
- Increase sustainability and maintenance of water systems through the use of GSM M2M connectivity to remotely detect and prevent any malfunction of water systems
- Enhance sustainability through the use of innovative payment schemes to allow communities to prepay for water services or build savings based on the mobile money channel
- Leverage mobile phone penetration in rural locations & use mobile platforms and services to report for water systems malfunctions, water quality and enhance service provider and customer feedback systems
Photo: A marching band plays during World Water Week in Stockholm. Courtesy of the author.