Participation in water and sanitation

Noting that agencies in the Water and Sanitation (W&S) sector are still failing to reach more than a billion of the poorest people in developing countries, this paper, one of a series written for the World Bank's Participation Sourcebook, advocates the participation of users in designing and implementing projects and in managing W&S services. It stresses that participation is now being built into Bank funded projects to meet the challenges of increasing responsiveness to user needs, improving cost recovery and service management, and incorporating financial, environmental, and social concerns into project design and management. Stressing the need for a learning approach in promoting stakeholder participation, the circumstances under which this approach would be appropriate are discussed. Methods for cultivating national level support for participation in W&S, and strategies to deal with cases where the sector agency is not qualified or interested in involving primary stakeholder participation are also outlined. The challenge of convincing engineers trained in applying industrial country standards to consider alternative technologies and the need to train staff in community participation are dealt with. The paper also discusses factors crucial to designing effective stakeholder participation such as flexibility, having sufficient information about options to encourage informed decision-making, and the need for accountable community leaders. It then concludes by summarizing factors such as the increased financial resources and staff time, and the new procedures for implementation that task managers must consider at this learning stage for Bank and borrower countries in the preparation and supervision of participatory W&S projects. Boxes reviewing demand-driven projects and references are included.