Cross-sector learning: Stimulating dialogue among technological, natural and social sciences

Pond in Ethiopia. Image: Water Witness

Engineering, natural sciences and economics have, to date, dominated the research, design, planning, budgeting, execution and review of projects in the water sector.  No doubt, science and technology have triggered considerable advances towards solving the basic water, sanitation and economic needs of millions of people around the world, especially in poor and developing countries. Indeed, given that the world will be experiencing increasingly variable rainfall in the future, water harvesting, storage, treatment, recycling and efficient utilisation technologies will be sought more than any time before.

Nonetheless, the results have not matched the efforts expended, and WASH in particular remains a critical concern to be resolved if national and global targets, particularly SDG 6, are going to be met. It is high time that the global development and research communities understand that technological and engineering solutions are necessary but not sufficient to address the problem of water insecurity in the world, particularly in low-income countries. 

Part of the failure of the techno-managerial approach is that a considerable proportion of water and sanitation facilities fail before their design period. Irrigation infrastructures face management and technical problems resulting in breakage, water use inefficiency and sometimes overuse and loss of scarce water resource. 

Industrial growth and economic expansion have created employment and foreign currency earning capacity, yet this has been generated at a high social and ecological cost, polluting water and damaging local ecologies. This has most affected marginalised communities, such as those in informal settlements or engaged in precarious and informal employment, exposing them to health risks and forcing them to incur unnecessary health expenses. 

According to a UNICEF study (2015), 30 to 50% of WASH projects fail between 2 to 5 years of their completion. Different studies reveal in Ethiopia that from 25 to 40% of water facilities are non-functional at any given time (e.g. 2013 National WASH Inventory).

Technologies that are not robust and sustainable but are cheap and provide short-term services are less resilient in the face of climate change, affecting water sustainability. This entails hidden costs for repetitive operation & maintenance work as well as scaling up or replacing facilities which could be more expensive than if robust, longer-term and relatively costly technologies were employed at the beginning. 

Over recent years, there is increasing consensus that lack of transparency, accountability, participation and anti-corruption are at the centre of this problem, further exposing the inadequacy of techno-managerial solutions.  However, this consensus needs genuine actions to make sure that such interventions create community buy-in and ownership so that there are real benefits that are equally and equitably shared.  

As global actors, Water Witness, PASGR, IDS and others in the Global Water Accountability Consortium intend not only to uphold accountability for water through research and outreach, but also through a strategy that would contribute towards breaking with the tradition of research for policy and decision-making in the water sector. 

This programme is finalising research plans of 14 Professional Research Fellows in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.  These cover a variety of themes across resilient WASH, waste management, civil society and community engagement, water regulation, inclusiveness, sustainability, financing and gender issues.

The candidates come from different backgrounds such as water engineering, chemistry, education, public health, biology, environmental planning and management, anthropology, sociology and political science, economics and other disciplines from the larger spectrum to carry out a research and outreach programme for an 18-month period as of 1 June 2021. 

Apart from generating useful knowledge, understanding and insights to improve policy and practice in the sector, the programme is innovative in that it draws on the expertise and experiences of PRFs as well as researchers of different background from WWI, PASGR, IDS and others from within the Global Accountability for Water Consortium. 

Looking at sector issues from the angles of these different disciplines will enable dialogue among different, traditionally divorced disciplines, the synthesis and distilling of issues to arrive at (more) practical solutions at the policy and intervention levels, also enhancing true cross-pollination of ideas, co-learning and knowledge sharing, through a participatory research and outreach that will also involve citizen science. 

Such bold questions and strategies are essential to advance policy and practice in the water sector. We envisage a truly trans-disciplinary research, aiming to bring about change not only through ends result but also the process, opening space for future partnerships.

• Mulugeta Gashaw, Ethiopia National Research Coordinator, Water Witness