Introduction
Aid effectiveness is about improving the quality of aid and its impact on development and as such on the socio‐economic, political and environmental living conditions of people and their well‐being.
The purpose of this Thematic Overview Paper (TOP) is to present the latest thinking on aid effectiveness in the water and sanitation sector and the context in which this has taken place.
Increasing the effectiveness of aid is a relevant challenge within the water and sanitation sector.
Despite increased nationally generated income in many developing countries, the sector remains very much dependent on donor funds. Today 900 million people still lack access to drinking water and 2.5 billion people lack access to basic sanitation (JMP, 2010). Donors have been trying to support countries by increasing the effectiveness of their disbursements through better coordination and targeting of their actions with recipient countries. However, in the last decade, both donors and recipients of aid recognise that creating greater access to drinking water and basic sanitation is not just about increasing funding for the sector. It is also about increasing the effectiveness of aid.
Aid effectiveness has been on the international development agenda since the 1990s. The disappointing development results of past decades sparked an intense debate on the effectiveness of aid in development in general, but also within the water and sanitation sector. In recent years, while the official aid volume for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector has been increasing, public and political support for development assistance is under pressure. The start of the global financial crisis and economic recession in 2008 increased pressure to improve aid effectiveness and deliver results. This is essential to justify aid and sustain public and political support for the international development agenda.
Aid effectiveness is also very much on the agenda in the water and sanitation sector. Initiatives to make aid more effective include the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) global partnership and the EU Water Initiative (EUWI). At regional level efforts are being made to contribute to more effective aid. Examples are the efforts of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) and the Council of Central American and Dominican Republic Health Ministers (FOCARD). At country level in recent years many governments, together with their development partners, have increasingly been addressing ways of improving the effectiveness of aid and optimising available resources to increase the world population’s access to sustainable WASH services. These efforts have brought to the fore the need for sector coordination and harmonisation through mechanisms such as the development and/or adoption of a Sector Wide Approach (SWAp). Countries such as Uganda, South Africa and Mozambique are good examples of these concerted efforts. However, current debate and discussions seem to have reached a consensus that a new paradigm is needed with a shift from aid effectiveness to development effectiveness.
This TOP explores current policies, practices and perspectives on aid effectiveness in the water and sanitation sector. The first part discusses the international policy framework to increase aid effectiveness; it defines the concept and the main drivers for the debate. The second chapter focuses on the current status and challenges of aid effectiveness in the water and sanitation sector and provides an overview of on‐going initiatives to improve the effectiveness of aid at international, regional and country levels. The paper concludes with different perspectives on the future of aid effectiveness in the sector.