patrickmoriarty

By Patrick Moriarty  –  

It’s always difficult call these things, but I think (and hope) that the last couple of weeks may, in retrospect, come to be seen as a watershed on the long and painful road to achieving universal access to water and sanitation services worthy of the name.

The potential game changer is the decision of the Dutch government and its development agency, DGIS, to start requiring recipients of finance for WASH service provision to explicitly commit to service delivery: at an agreed level over an agreed time-frame (10 years) – something that they are calling a sustainability clause.