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Citation: Ongley, E.D. Water quality management: design, financing and sustainability considerations. In Proceedings of the African Water Resources Policy Conference, Nairobi, May 26-28, 1999. The World Bank (in press).Water Quality Management: Design, Financing and Sustainability Considerations
Edwin D. Ongley, PhD, Consultant and Senior Advisor to United Nations GEMS/Water Programme, 3486 Hannibal Road, Burlington, Ontario L7M 1Z6, Canada; eongley@ibm.netAbstract
High rates of mortality and morbidity from water-borne diseases is well known. The 1997 United Nations report on freshwater also found that serious degradation of water quality in large parts of the world contributes to water scarcity through loss of beneficial use. Although freshwater contamination by toxic chemicals from municipal and industrial wastes is not wide-spread at this time in Africa, future industrialization and associated effluents, and potential expansion of use of agro-chemicals to achieve food security, are likely to have serious future consequences for water quality, both for public and environmental health, and for increased toxic contamination of the coastal and marine environment.
The sustainable management of water quality has policy, technical, institutional and financial components. In Africa, restricted funding is usually combined with fragile or unstable institutions and limited technical capabilities to deal with an expanding range of water quality problems. Therefore, there needs to be a priority on establishing a coherent and realistic national policy response to water quality management so that limited funds and strengthening of capacity are strategically focused on essential issues. For example, the present state of many national data programmes, for which there are no clear data objectives and no defined users of the data, represents an expensive failure of national policy.
At the technical level, there has been great progress in developing more cost-effective monitoring and analytical protocols, especially in the development of field kits and in the use of toxicologically based approaches for determining public health and environmental health impacts. Technical advances will be more or less applicable depending on the degree of national development and institutional stability. Decentralization of some of the basic health-related monitoring to the community level together with simple testing procedures for health-related measurements may have significant advantages over centralized national agencies that cannot respond in a timely manner to local needs for data .
Financial sustainability is a vexed issue in the African context. It requires, in the first-instance, a well-defined and targeted programme that meets specific management needs. It includes potential for cost-reduction as well as cost-recovery and income generation. It also depends on management and business skills at the laboratory level and on fiscal policies and accountabilities at the state level that permit earnings retention and reinvestment. Experience suggests that redesign of national data programmes, including technical, institutional and legal components, is an effective first step to achieving cost-efficiency.
This paper is available in an electronic format. to receive a single copy for personal use, please contact: GEMS@cciw.ca
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