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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper examines the water environments experienced by children.
Beginning with an analysis of the current policy environment, it
looks at the specific challenges facing children in this area and how
future directions in policy may affect their lives. A fresh approach
is clearly needed, not just because of past failures but because
governments are moving away from providing water as a service towards
a policy that emphasizes management at lower levels, where
communities are expected to assume increasing responsibility for
maintenance and management.
Policy over the last thirty years has consisted of a series of
attempts to improve access to water resources based on the view that
clean water and sanitation are important for the health of
communities. Children, particularly those under five, remain central
to many of those international efforts, but economic and social
change has affected the ability of national governments to bring
about major improvements; the goal of access for all remains elusive.
Children are frequently the last to be involved in, but the first to
be affected by, changes in policy. We need to assess current policy
to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated and that future
policies are based on a sound analysis of what actually constitutes
benefit to children within the household and the community.
A qualitative change in the way that services are provided from the
needs-based approach to a demand-led approach emphasizing the
economic value of water, has had significant consequences for
communities. Mainly there has been greater emphasis on a community's
ability and willingness to pay for the provision of services and to
become managers and maintainers of those services.
However, serious questions have been asked about the impact this new
approach may have on levels of poverty within communities. Poverty
itself remains the principal obstacle both to the improvement of
services and the sustainability of resources. A gender-based approach
to the management of water resources has been widely advocated by
donors and governments alike. But the real links between gender,
water and the socio-economic development of communities have been
misunderstood or ignored, and the participation of women has been
reduced to attendance on management committees. Children are also
affected by the development of these gender-focused approaches.
Children are affected by their household water environments first and
foremost as carriers and consumers of water. It is essential to
increase children's awareness of water environments and of how they
can bring about positive change for themselves, their households and
their communities. However, the emphasis should be on children taking
action within their household environments.
An over-emphasis in the past on the health benefits of water and
sanitation provision has helped to obscure the varied uses to which
water is put at the household level. We will suggest a livelihoods
approach that is based on an analysis of the water economy of the
household and which will strengthen the role of children. The
strength of this approach lies in its broad-based analysis of water
as a productive and income-generating asset as well as an essential
consumption good. Its value and cost are therefore related to
household income, and factors such as time, energy and access to
other assets such as livestock will have to be taken into account. In
arid areas, designing and siting water points so that they are
suitable for livestock may take precedence over finding the most
convenient site for household consumption. Children are a major
factor in this equation.
Such an approach not only increases our understanding of children's
contributions to the productive and income-generating uses of water,
but also, and most significantly, widens the gender-based approach to
water and sanitation development, and points towards ways in which
children may influence the policy environment of which they are a
part.
Household management becomes more than just the daily toil of water
collection, but a decision-making process which involves both the
consumption and production uses to which water is put. By increasing
our knowledge and supporting uses that strengthen the household's
water economy and livelihood security, we can not only strengthen the
role of women as water economists at the household level but also
improve the livelihood security of households and communities in
which children grow up.Owner: Alan Nicol