 Carlos Linares,
United Nations Development Programme |
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Carlos Linares has 30 years’ experience in international development and environmental management. The managing of water resources has been a “common thread” in both fields. He is now the Senior Water Policy Adviser of the Energy and Environment Group, Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP Headquarters in New York, where his responsibilities include overseeing the water programmes of UNDP on transboundary issues, on water-resource management and on water supply and sanitation at the community level.
QUESTION: The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were adopted by 189 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, include a target of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015. Do you believe that can be achieved?
ANSWER: What one needs to understand is that even if the MDGs are met in 2015, there will still be about 900 million people without access to water and about 1.6 billion without access to sanitation, because of population growth. Even if the world meets the target, there will still be a deficit in coverage of water and sanitation around the world. Having said this, every expert will tell you that sub-Saharan Africa is falling behind and there are at least 20 countries that will not meet the MDGs. However, if you look at remote regions of Peru, you will see the indicators for access to water and sanitation are very similar to those of sub-Saharan Africa.
We have a problem of measurement in terms of the MDGs. Reporting is not uniform or standardised, and different countries are using different units of measure to indicate coverage. The international agencies are having a very difficult time figuring out the data for each country. Remember also that the MDGs report on national averages. Disparities between regions within each country will not be reflected in achieving the MDGs. The problem of measurement is a real constraint for knowing whether we have achieved the MDGs or not.
Q: Do you feel they are realistic targets, or are they something to aspire to?
A: They are aspirational, and they are motivational. They have been motivational for donors to increase their funding for water and sanitation. In that respect, the sector - and the population of the world - has benefited, because we are seeing increases since Johannesburg in levels of funding and ODA [overseas development assistance] for the sector. That is certainly a positive development, whether we achieve the MDGs or not.
Q: Water is obviously a necessity to all human life. But how important do you feel good water management is in reducing poverty and achieving the MDGs?
A: Service-delivery will always run into constraints regarding water availability and water-resources management.
The way that country governments are organised – and, correspondingly, the way development agencies are organised - there are often different departments or ministries that take care of water resources, and others that take care of water supply and sanitation. The synergy between the two is not very smooth. Sometimes they don’t even talk to each other, so it is very important that water-resource management and water and sanitation delivery go hand-in-hand.
Latin America is already mostly urban, and Asia is on its way, and Africa will be in 2020 a mostly urban continent. So supplying the needs of the population will be beyond the challenges the water-supply and sanitation sectors are already facing, especially with regard to who pays for water services, and who pays for watershed management.
Q: Is there anything more you feel the UN or UNDP could do?
A: UNDP is probably - in the minds of the general public - not a strong water agency. But, in fact, it is. UNDP supports about 200 water projects in 66 countries worldwide, and we have a budget of about US$350 million of active water portfolio. This is very similar to what Unicef [the United Nations children’s agency] is doing. However, UNDP is the capacity-development agency of the UN system, and certainly we do more capacity development at the local and national level than any other agency. So the issue of capacity is essential to achieving coverage and proper management of water resources.
The mistakes of the past related to the implementation of mega water projects: there is a lot of money for infrastructure and very little funding available for social components. Participation, training and organisation don’t get funded by these large investment projects - and community participation, training and organisation are the key elements of sustainability in the water sector, as well as in many other sectors.
These large projects have not promoted ownership locally, and we really don’t know if they are benefiting the poor, because they are so large and they go through so many agencies for implementation. They are using cookie-cutter approaches in places where local knowledge and technologies would be more appropriate and affordable. The projects are very complex, and when they end, the experts leave. There are no human or financial resources left in-country for operation, maintenance or replacement due to obsolescence of these systems. We wonder, with the increased levels of funding for meeting the MDGs, especially for sub-Saharan Africa, whether the mistakes will be repeated. Informed and active participation of stakeholders is the key to sustainable solutions; there is no doubt about that. And by saying that, I think UNDP has the right approach in focusing on capacity-building issues.
Q: Do you think women have a greater role to play - and burden to bear - than men in development programmes, given their central role in domestic water supply in rural areas and their subordinate status in many cultures?
A: There is a very simple statement I am going to make that holds true for every continent. Women are the managers of the water resource at the household and village level, especially in rural areas. They take care of the children and the sick, and they prepare the food. They fetch water and firewood for cooking. Therefore, in the health, nutrition and livelihood aspect - they are the managers of the water resource.
Projects that do not include women are not as successful as those that do. Already, the IRC [International Red Cross] in the Netherlands has done a study that included several countries and many projects, which proved that projects which are designed and run with full participation of women are more sustainable and more effective than those that are not.
You think about these large projects that are coming in with investments of billons of dollars between now and 2015, and you have to wonder if participation of women will be included for sustainability and effectiveness purposes. There is no doubt that at the local level women need to be involved, not just for humanitarian reasons, but for project effectiveness and sustainability.
Q: The UN World Water Development Report of 2003 says that the world will need 55 percent more food by 2030, and that two billion people still lack access to reliable forms of energy. It seems the logical solution would be to further expand the number of dams under construction, despite their well-documented negative cultural and environmental impacts. Would you agree?
A: Nobody has ever proven that the benefits of large dams go to the poor, and I don’t think it can be proven. I believe that storing water at the community level to prevent and to prepare for the impacts of climate variability is very important. I believe communities can build small dams at the community level to control floods and to store water in times of drought.
There is no doubt that there is a need to conduct water-resource-management practices that involve catchments of different sizes. But to fulfil the local needs of communities around the world, I don’t think that large dams will necessarily imply direct benefits to the poor. They may reflect well on GNP and other macroeconomic indicators and increase production, but that doesn’t really give us any idea of the equity aspects of large dams. Nobody has proven that yet.
Q: So as far as filling this 55 percent gap for more food, you believe that more local dams are the answer, rather than big irrigation projects?
A: Yes, exactly. Large irrigation projects have not been proven to reach the poor with any kind of benefits. They usually go to large plantations. But having said this, I really believe that the combined uses of water for domestic consumption and for kitchen gardens will allow for improved livelihoods at the community level in rural areas. These are called hybrid systems. Studies have shown that combining productive uses of water with water for drinking purposes can improve livelihoods and can help the poor come out of poverty.
Q: Nongovernmental organisations have criticised the prices private vendors charge for water, yet people still buy it.
A: People actually buy less water. They consume less water to offset high prices.
The studies that we have done show that private-network operators - people that actually drill a well, put in a pump, a tank and distribute water to neighbours by hose - actually charge the same rates as the public utilities, and without subsidies. It’s not just one type of vendor – such as tanker trucks – there are many types of water vendors.
Q: UNDP obviously sees cooperation on shared water resources as critical, hence their Trans Boundary River Basins Initiative. Do you feel the management of freshwater supply could trigger conflict in the future?
A: Yes, certainly. Let me tell you about three approaches that we have been following. The first one is to link diplomatic to development efforts. Ministries of foreign affairs are in charge of making decisions about trans-boundary water issues, because of sovereignty issues. There are tensions with respect to management of trans-boundary waters.
We have been supporting (for more than 10 years now) the Nile River Basin Initiative dialogue at ministerial level. This is the second approach that I would like to mention. Ten years of negotiations have resulted in very close to meeting agreement on a cooperation framework document, to regulate the use and the management of the Nile River basin. I think this is the most exciting and interesting achievement that we can talk about. Progress is being made. UNDP has been supporting this process, assisting riparian countries to come together and agree on a common framework for the management of the Nile River. Again, it takes time - 10 years’ work - to reach agreement. So, these are very important issues and certainly there is potential for conflict, but also there is potential for development.
The third approach is being implemented on the Mekong River basin, where we are working directly with communities, again building capacities and promoting active and informed participation of communities that live along the Mekong River, adopting common practices, for instance, under the principle of do no harm to other parties/stakeholders. We are just beginning this process, and these communities are beginning to lobby local governments and district governments upstream and downstream for the proper management of their livelihood, which is the Mekong River. So, this a bottom-up approach, we are implementing that has proven very successful. So, in trans-boundary waters, let me say that we are working from the top down and from the bottom up, to eventually merge at some point in the future.
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