PGWI_performance_indicator_report

Hello, Dr. Morssink! Will you please explain your role within the organization of the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative, and why you feel it is important to be involved in the local water network?

I am the current Treasurer of PGWI. It is important to study water because too little water isn’t good for you and too much water isn’t good for you, and it’s important to know that it’s a threat. In that context, I decided to get involved with PGWI, and I’ve been working with them for a long time. Water problems are addressed mostly by the few professionals who work on many levels. Of course, water issues often lead to war. I am glad to be helping and finding solutions. Sometimes solutions in one circumstance will work, but on the second hand, sometimes these solutions may create new problems. So there is always work to be done.

Could you give me your perspective on the 5th annual PGWI conference and what you took away from it?

We had a good representation of many different concepts of looking at water. Those who presented used case studies and global-level data collection mechanisms. The water professionals discussed the need to have a model for criteria by which you can always measure exactly in the same time, same way. On the other hand, everybody realizes that almost every water management project has ecological circumstances which will dictate the type of solutions that you need. That’s why I like to model water problems, and I hope that this can be built on in the future a little more. I’m not into research myself, I take the research that’s been done and I scream at the politicians.

That’s funny! Well, thank you for your insights on the most recent conference, and I certainly hope to see you again at future PGWI meetings and events!

Marissa is a Saint Louis native with a background in Communication and Biology from the University of Missouri – Columbia. She currently works full time in as an undergraduate House Coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania, and supports workplace sustainability as a Staff Eco-Rep. Marissa is also a Masters student in Environmental Studies at Penn, concentrating in Advocacy and Education. She has traveled to all 50 United States, is an avid dancer, and can complete the Rubik’s Cube. In her free time, Marissa also enjoys skiing, hiking, baking, and traveling.

This discussion began with session moderator Mrs. Susan Davis, Founder and Executive Director of Improve International. She began by pointing out the need for Performance Indicators (P.I.s). The purpose for P.I.’s, she stressed, is to “say something is changing and evaluate.” Susan founded her NGO to improve responses to water and sanitation crises, and every one of her projects follows the four cyclical steps to “Monitor, Evaluate, Learn, and Reform”. She concluded by asserting a rhetorical question: What is the “golden indicator”? Is it costs? Impacts? Or age?

Susan turned the attention to the first panelist, John Sauer, Assistant Director of Thought Leadership with Water for People. Mr. Sauer works to influence change in the water sector by tracking the documentation of innovations from the field and sharing results with key stakeholders. Mr. Sauer declared that water and sanitation should be provided through replicable projects, where influence and inspiration create a positive pattern of improvement in developing regions. He believes the best outcomes emerge when continual assistance is not necessary, and the initiative is self-sustaining. John explained the “Everyone, Forever” campaign of Water for People, which has seen much success in Chinda, Honduras in improving access to safe drinking water. The challenge of this successful project is that it needs to “last forever!.” His final comments were on the Millennium Development Goals stating that they are not key indicators of success. For example, diseases can only be eradicated when the condition of the whole population is elevated.

Mr. Sauer transitioned the spotlight to Ellyn Walter Director of Sustainability at WASH Advocates. She began by boldly stating that “nagging” for sustainability is the key to moving the sector forward. Her experiences have proven that success only comes from self-sustaining projects, and she instructed the audience, “if something is working, then replicate it, and learn from those around you.” The WASH Advocacy Initiative connects dozens of organizations and service providers with solutions to people in crisis around the world. As for Performance Indicators, Mrs. Walter says “collecting data for data-sake is useless… data must be collected purposefully with the end goal in mind”.

To that point, Mrs. Davis concludes the panel by agreeing with Mrs. Walters’s that data isn’t enough. The panelists agree that P.I. information should be transparent and shared with the individuals whom are affected by the actions of the NGOs. Mrs. Walter concludes that “part of what we are doing is to get people to realize how important our work is.”

Marissa is a Saint Louis native with a background in Communication and Biology from the University of Missouri – Columbia. She currently works full time in as an undergraduate House Coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania, and supports workplace sustainability as a Staff Eco-Rep. Marissa is also a Masters student in Environmental Studies at Penn, concentrating in Advocacy and Education. She has traveled to all 50 United States, is an avid dancer, and can complete the Rubik’s Cube. In her free time, Marissa also enjoys skiing, hiking, baking, and traveling.

Sasha Koo-Oshima has an extensive background with over 25 years national and international experience on integrated water resources management. At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, she leads the international water engagement strategies to meet the environmental challenges of the coming decades. Previously, she was the Scientific Program Manager at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as well as Lead Technical Officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a water resource expert on water quality and the environment.

Yaowen Ma is studying sustainability & environmental management and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a particular interest in corporate sustainability issues, resource management, and environmental risk management. Yaowen is a member of the Penn Civic Scholars Program on Civic Engagement and Social Advocacy Leadership and was the recipient of a research grant in 2010 to conduct independent research on urban water management in China with a group of four Penn students. An aspiring environmental journalist, Yaowen recently founded the Penn Sustainability Review with the support of the Penn Green Fund and oversees the online editorial as well as annual print publication.

There are currently a number of global monitoring initiatives on clean water access and sanitation. One such example is the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), which mandated the creation of Indicators of Sustainable Development (ISD) in 1995. These indicators serve as a reference for countries looking to develop national indicators of sustainable development and include 96 indicators spread over 15 themes (one of which is freshwater). Another example of a global monitoring initiative would be the UN Millennium Development Goals which aim, among other things, tot “halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”. To many organizations, these water performance indicators are essential for their work. UN Water would be one such example. Created in 2003 by the United Nations High Level Committee on Programmes, UN Water seeks to provide a platform for information exchange and knowledge building on water issues through efficient monitoring and reporting systems. The scope of UN-Water’s work includes all aspects of freshwater (surface and groundwater resources) and sanitation (access and clean use by population).

But recognizing what makes one indicator reliable and better than the others is not exactly easy work either. Dr Shannon Marquez, Director of Global Public Health Initiatives at the Drexel University School of Public Health, transitioned the afternoon dialogue to delve into the important characteristics of effective water performance indicators and health-based targets. While water access and sanitation targets have four distinct categories – health-based outcome targets, water quality targets, performance targets, and specified technology targets – the process of creating them is remarkably similar. The four steps of creating effective performance indicators, in brief, are: formulation, implementation, evaluation, and communication of data. But in order for the indicators to be useful for evaluating outcomes, the methodology for obtaining information needs to be based on accurate monitoring. Targets need to be realistic, measurable, and based on scientific data. And finally, these appropriate targets need to strike that fine balance between supporting the overall public health goals whilst being economically-feasible with the given budget.

Despite setting such grandiose sounding processes by the panel, a number of questions remained unanswered. Who would be responsible for determining the targets? Ask a private institution, an NGO, or a government official, and you will get three very different answers. Given budget restrictions, what is an acceptable breadth and range for the measurements? How should different indicators be prioritized? And once the data has been collected, how will a baseline comparison be conducted?

There is also the question of addressing cultural barriers. Some water-related diseases such as diarrhea are considered culturally shameful and self-reporting thus means that the data could be biased. The credibility of a database could become compromised; how do you rely on the indicator then? If we are to truly build capacity for measuring, organizing, and using performance indicators, these complex – and somewhat overwhelming – concerns must be addressed and soon.

Yaowen Ma is studying sustainability & environmental management and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a particular interest in corporate sustainability issues, resource management, and environmental risk management. Yaowen is a member of the Penn Civic Scholars Program on Civic Engagement and Social Advocacy Leadership and was the recipient of a research grant in 2010 to conduct independent research on urban water management in China with a group of four Penn students. An aspiring environmental journalist, Yaowen recently founded the Penn Sustainability Review with the support of the Penn Green Fund and oversees the online editorial as well as annual print publication.

Dr. Alexander Danilenko, a Senior Water and Sanitation Specialist with the World Bank, is a large-minded man with an expansive vision for reshaping the way we think about provision and expansion of water services. He believes that “we need to think about water as a complex system and monitor it.”

He talks in a staccato English draped lightly in a Soviet accent, employing informal colloquialisms such as “what the hell, why don’t we try?” when referring to topics as seemingly abstruse as “benchmarks and indicators for water and sanitation.” He moves as he speaks, showing the construction of an idea with his hands as if it were a wave growing ever larger, acquiring legitimacy with evidence, until leaning slightly forward on his toes the overwhelming force of logic crashes to the lecturn with his hands. It’s almost as if he is trying to kinetically will his audience out of the comfortable boxes in which they have been thinking.

For Danilenko, the problem is not so much in the classification of water as either a right or a commodity, but on the financial end of supplying water and sanitation to everyone. Here the math of costs and revenues becomes vitally important, regardless of the moral or self-interested motives involved. “The major problem,” asserts Danilenko, is that “costs and revenues from water services are structurally incompatible – water revenue is variable, while costs have both fixed and variable elements.” But the fixed costs of water services cover a whopping 70-80% of total required expenditures. Though revenues can vary widely depending on rate structures, population shifts, economic pressures and conservation initiatives, the costs remain largely unchanged. Financing water management in a dynamic world is a tricky game.

Danilenko chafes at the supposed prerequisite of total cost recovery championed by some. “Cost recover is important,” admits Danilenko, but we can’t stop the water in the absence of sufficient revenues because it would jeopardize the well-being of the population. Provision of water is usually a government mandate. Besides, shutting down and re-starting water treatment and purification facilities creates an enormous cost burden of its own.

There are many countries where water is provided for free such as Kuwait and Ireland. “It doesn’t mean that they have bad water there. Go to Ireland and drink the water and find out. It’s good.” Governments have simply found ways around the cost-revenue incongruity by finding revenue sources elsewhere.

Water utilities face a set of contradictory mandates: the provision of water and sanitation should be socially oriented with the goal of total coverage, all consumers should be treated and charged equally, water must be conserved, and costs must be covered. A major hurdle is thrown up by these last two mandates. While conservation efforts often cost money in terms of initial capital outlay, they reduce or keep constant the revenues of water utilities. A simple business model would encourage water utilities to try to sell more water to earn greater revenues. The first mandate—that everyone is entitled to water—dictates that water is not like oil or diamonds: quantities cannot be held in reserve so that market pressure will inflate the price. If all consumers are to be charged equally for water, then a direct tax on water following a progressive tax structure, where wealthier patrons are charged more than disadvantaged ones, will not work either.

Danilenko asserts that a complex and delicately balanced scheme must be created according to the endowments and requirements of the place. One idea that appeals to Danilenko proposes a fixed tariff on water services to be paid by all. Such a tariff would cover a certain amount of water, perhaps equal to the minimum required amount for a family or individual. Additional water would cost progressively more. Such a structure provides water at an affordable rate for all, while utilizing demand-side management to encourage conservation and falls in line with the basic business mandate to sell more product and obtain greater revenue. Surprisingly, such a solution might satisfy those aid-obsessed NGO’s as well as single-bottom-liners sweating over balance sheets.

The water sector is a complex system. Perhaps if we acknowledge this and dissect its many cross-connecting pieces, we can find surprisingly simple solutions.

Michael McCullough is studying sustainable development, environmental management and politics at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a special interest in natural resource economics and resource management. Recently, Michael represented Penn, the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative (PGWI) and Wharton’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) on a trip to India and Sri Lanka. Michael has worked as a member of U.S. Senator Robert Casey’s personal staff. He has also worked with small and VC-funded clean technology, alternative energy and food and agricultural companies at a Washington, DC lobbying firm.

Oh, and he’s working on a budget that gives him about a tenth of what he needs.

Other cities have pursued “grey-infrastructure” approaches to dealing with CWA guidelines, usually building giant concrete tunnels hundreds of feet below the ground to hold excess rain and sewage until storms pass and treatment plants are able to process it. These tunnels are not cheap, with price tags reaching well north of ten billion dollars and require massive amounts of energy when their contents are pumped back to the surface for treatment.

Neukrug balks at the idea of burying billions of dollars of city wealth below the ground. “We’ve been fighting with the EPA for ten years not to build the tunnel,” he admits. Despite being the obvious and easy option from an administrative and political angle, Neukrug is adamant that subterranean storage is not the right option: “it would have condemned the city to an unsustainable future for the next 200 years.” Neukrug’s vision is to put the money above ground and leverage it with other funds for greater and more diverse impact.

If he has his way and all goes to plan, Neukrug will save the city between eight and nine billion in capital outlay costs required to comply with Clean Water Act guidelines and add a couple of billion in value to Philadelphia’s struggling economy. The plan is fairly simple: control excess stormwater at its source by keeping it out of storm drains and sewers and encouraging it to infiltrate back into the ground through the combined use of structural and vegetative features. The Water Department’s numerous guides to green infrastructure often read like gardening and landscape books, suggesting conversion of lawn to meadow, inclusion of vegetated swales and trenches, green roofs and vegetative strips in parking lots, downspouts that redirect to special planter boxes, rain gardens, infiltration beds, detention basins and curb bump-outs with planters.

The green infrastructure approach has many benefits. It reduces the strain on city sewers and treatment facilities while bringing the city into compliance with CWA rules. Encouraging water to infiltrate also has the added benefit of recharging the city’s aquifers. When ground water returns to normal levels the base flows of long-degraded urban streams return to normal levels, restoring the health of the streams and creating better opportunities for recreation. With a greening approach, Neukrug would remake the city in a healthier more prosperous image. Green infrastructure cleans the air and reduces urban heat island effect. It reduces energy costs associated with heating and cooling. The city expects to see huge returns on investment through increased property value. A whole class of new, sometimes unanticipated, “green jobs” is being created as the program takes shape. Often these jobs employ members of Philadelphia’s underserved communities.

The former Director of the water department’s Office of Watersheds, Neukrug finds a compartmentalized approach to water management unnatural and counterintuitive. Water in its various forms is part of an interconnected cycle. In conceptualizing the plan, says a contemplative Neukrug, “we started with an idea of ‘One Water’: one city, one region, one water. It’s all coming from the same place and going back to the same place”.

In a bus bumping along the slow lane of 76-West on a rainy Saturday morning, Neukrug surveys the banks of the Schychill below and chooses his words carefully. “What we’ve been doing in cities for the past 100 years is totally unsustainable. We’re going to spend the next 100 trying to undo many of the mistakes we’ve made.” We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing.

For the sake of Philadelphia’s future and perhaps the futures of cities all over the world, let’s hope that Neukrug’s vision wins out.

Michael McCullough is studying sustainable development, environmental management and politics at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a special interest in natural resource economics and resource management. Recently, Michael represented Penn, the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative (PGWI) and Wharton’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) on a trip to India and Sri Lanka. Michael has worked as a member of U.S. Senator Robert Casey’s personal staff. He has also worked with small and VC-funded clean technology, alternative energy and food and agricultural companies at a Washington, DC lobbying firm.

Dr. Andrew Trevett, Senior Advisor for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) at UNICEF, opened the conference with a keynote entitled “A Global Perspective on the Challenges of Selecting Performance Indicators.”

Dr. Trevett’s discussion centered around three topics:

1. Important performance indicators and their relevance
2. Specific examples of global monitoring of performance indicators
3. Progress, challenges, and the post-2015 process

Performance indicators are a way to measure performance in a particular project or activity.  Anyone can identify data, collect it, measure it, and then report on that data.  But if you do not have the correct data, it will not be useful to you or your project.  The key to selecting useful, sustainable performance indicators is to know your audience (which indicators would interest them) and the goals of your project.  Useful performance indicators will be specific to each project.  They can help you make mid-course corrections if needed, design a follow-up project, report to donors, and can be used to advocate at all levels for an issue. Good performance indicators do not collect data for that sake of collecting, they collect data to create change.

There are a handful of organizations monitoring global performance indicators, including:

The Joint Monitoring Program (JMP), part of UNICEF, is tasked with monitoring progress toward Millennium Development Goal 7, which is to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation.”  This access is measured using two indicators – proportion of population using an improved drinking-water source, and proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility. The JMP accomplishes this by:

• Defining improved and unimproved categories (ex: water, sanitation, separating human excreta from human contact)
• Creating drinking water and sanitation “ladders” (using well water as drinking water is better than using surface water)
• Collecting data from household surveys and national census data
• Taking the data and plotting it in a time series to provide estimates of coverage of water supply and sanitation for urban and rural populations

GLAAS, the Global Analysis & Assessment of Sanitation & Drinking Water, looks at financial flows, targeting funding, policies and institutions, budget and expenditures, human resources, and stakeholder coordination as performance indicators. Country Status Overviews (CSO) were first developed in sub-Saharan Africa and use a rural water supply scorecard. CSO focuses on enabling environment using three pillars: enabling, developing, and sustaining and a score card rating from 0 to 3.  IBNet, the International Benchmarking Network, looks at operational and financial performance of 3000+ utilities in 100 countries.  IBNet uses approximately 27 total indicators relevant to urban utilities related to water and sanitation to collect data for participating countries.  All of these monitoring organizations provide different information which can be used together to further the MDG for drinking water and sanitation.

There has certainly been progress in developing usable performance indicators.

The last few years have seen steady improvement in JMP performance, as well as in the complementary performance indicator reports, such as the GLAAS report.  Complementary reports measure different PIs, depending on focus of each project, and give a much clearer picture of progress.

Despite the progress, there are still many challenges that haven’t been properly addressed at this time:

• Improved drinking water: is improved drinking water safe drinking water?
• Does improved sanitation protect the environment if there is no treatment of the waste?
• Shared sanitation: is shared sanitation considered an improvement? The JMP does not recognize shared sanitation as improved sanitation.
• Open defecation free (ODF) verification: We need reliable and practical steps to verify that communities are ODF and that ODF practices are sustainable.
• Service quality: Is daily water supply continuous or is it for only a few hours each day? This can change within each city, from city to city, regionally, etc.

The post-2015 process is important because 2015 is only three years away.  While we likely won’t reach the MDG to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation, we can create goals and indicators to help us reach that goal in the years following 2015.  JMP held broad stakeholder consultation to discuss progress and develop targets and indicators for post-2015.  It was decided that there was a need to set up focused working groups that include water, sanitation, hygiene and equity, and nondiscrimination.  The goal for 2015 and beyond is to create universal access and frame it around human rights.  JMP wants to make access to sustainable drinking water and sanitation a human right.

It will be interesting to hear the upcoming presentations to hear about what is happening in the field.

Lindsay Shafer is pursuing a concentration in Resource Management in the Masters of Environmental Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania. Interests include the connections between water, agricultural practices, and food security, particularly in rural communities in east Africa. Lindsay received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. While working at the Museum Applied Science Center for Archeology at the Penn Museum (MASCA), Lindsay’s research focused on the Maasai of southern Kenya and she worked with several families to document women’s traditions and the role of decorative beading within the Maasai culture.

The 5th Annual Philadelphia Global Water Initiative conference is going full steam ahead here at Houston Hall at the University of Pennsylvania. Following on the success of the last conference that focussed on allocating water to the last few to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals, this year instead measures performance indicators to determine whether water and sanitation projects in developing countries are succeeding. With a healthy mix of students, academics, organisations and representation from UNICEF, US EPA and the World Bank, brings together a truly global discussion of sustainable development to the UPenn community. A welcome speech by Mayor Michael Nutter – a leader in city sustainability initiatives – only underlined the fact that wherever in the world we might be, we have a lot to learn from each other if we come with open minds.

Hear a snippet of Mayor Nutter’s speech on Philadelphia’s role in water education in paving the way for a green America and a greener world.:

Stay tuned to hear the latest action throughout the day from Penn Student Reporters – a collection of graduate and undergraduate students from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences – reporting live from the conference.

Aishwarya Nair is a Master of Environmental Studies student at Penn, with a focus on Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management. She is currently researching solutions for sustainable electrification in rural areas in the developing world and the redesigning of the grid system. She was a student reporter with the oikos International and University of Pennsylvania team at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille. You can follow her posts at the student reporter website.