Better Management through Inspired Leadership: Tackling the Trouble Spots in Asia’s Water Sector
Opening Statement by
Xianbin Yao
Acting Director General, RSDD,
Asian Development Bank
At the World Water Week
Stockholm, Sweden
19 August 2008
I. Introduction
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests—good morning.
It is my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of ADB and our co-conveners to the first Asia Water Day ever to be held during World Water Week in Stockholm.
In the interest of time, forgive me for not individually recognizing our many co-conveners. Let me just say that their enthusiastic support and participation assures us of an insightful day ahead, and we appreciate their contribution to today’s preparations.
II. A Picture of Progress
Responding to Asia’s need for water is a tall order, with the region beset with water challenges from all fronts. Despite this, growth and progress are taking place.
Between 1990 and 2006, the number of people without safe drinking water dropped from 855 million to 477 million—a 44% improvement. The number of people without improved sanitation dropped from 2.1 billion in 1990 to 1.8 billion in 2006—a slight but definite 14% improvement. River basin organizations have been established at growing rates, especially across Southeast Asia. They help introduce IWRM and gain greater stakeholder participation in the decision making and management of water resources.
We will hear today how this achievement is being pursued.
For example, in South Asia, where not a single city has 24-hour water supply, India is improving and may meet its MDG water targets. We will hear how India is tackling its water supply challenges through a national reform program called the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. We will also hear how the provincial government of Punjab in neighboring Pakistan embarked on a successful irrigation reform program, combining institutional and capacity development with substantial investments in infrastructure.
To build the case for sanitation, we will share with you the results of a study by the Water and Sanitation Program and ADB on the cost and benefits of investing in sanitation. The finding is one you all know already—investment in sanitation pays.
Before the day is through, we will also discuss how IWRM systems are being introduced in Indonesia’s Citarum River Basin, which flows through economically critical manufacturing zones before supplying Jakarta. And we will hear how the Mekong River Commission is managing this major artery between the 6 countries it flows through.
Before the day is through, we will also discuss how IWRM systems are being introduced in Indonesia’s Citarum River Basin, which flows through economically critical manufacturing zones before supplying Jakarta. And we will hear how the Mekong River Commission is managing this major artery between the 6 countries it flows through.
III. Crisis of Management
Of course, a region of over 4 billion people with diverse traits and needs could not be all progress. Asia faces three major challenges: water resource management, rural development, and climate change adaptation.
Water resources management has the potential to make or break trends in economic growth and social progress. Rapid urbanization and a new wave of industrialization have put the region’s water resources under tremendous stress. Pollution and unsustainable withdrawals are creating an imbalance between nature and communities.
The scales between nature and man finally tipped this year when global food prices soared beyond the poor’s ability to cope, setting off speculation, hoarding, and panic buying. Ultimately, this crisis exposed Asia’s second challenge— rural development, specifically the insufficiency of irrigation infrastructure to deliver water for food production. Irrigation is a major input to rural development, yet finance has largely bypassed rural areas.
The third challenge for Asia is climate change. Asia’s climate-induced natural disasters cost billions in destruction and total loss to lives, livelihoods, and critical infrastructure. Just this year, we have seen devastating tolls from Cyclone Nagis in Myanmar, the flash floods in South Asia, and the drought in Central Asia that affected thousands. Today’s luncheon session will address the challenges of climate change and present adaptation and mitigation strategies.
For most of the region, though, these challenges are underpinned by one crucial truth—that beyond suffering from poor funding, Asia’s water sector is suffering from poor management. In a word—governance. Devolution has transferred responsibilities but not resources. Political interference is a standard part of business in many places. And a widespread misunderstanding of how regulation can bring about service improvements by imposing service standards and appropriate tariffs, has held progress hostage.
What Asia needs is not just more financing. It needs better management.
Better management, however, doesn’t happen overnight. And it doesn’t just happen through broad reform packages and capacity building technical assistance. More fundamental to the process of change is the irreplaceable role that inspired leadership plays.
IV. Asia’s Movers and Shakers
Asia’s success stories in the water sector have always had a champion at the helm to lead reforms. Asia’s leaders have been able to identify the trouble spots, face the reality on the ground, and mobilize resources toward sustainable and results-oriented change. These champions have taken the form of individuals as well as committed groups. Let me give you some examples.
The first is Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority. If there was ever a utility facing absolute odds, this was it. Yet its total transformation is not the achievement of large sums of financing, increased tariffs, private management, or major infrastructure projects. Yes, some of those things came later, but progress began in the heart of a champion: someone who believed that reliable, affordable, and sustainable public water service was possible. Ek Sonn Chan bet his career on it, and he’ll tell you that sometimes he risked his own life on unpopular yet necessary decisions. When he took over the system in 1993, 70 percent of the city’s water was lost to leaks and thieves, among them his own staff, the military and VIPs.
Today, Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority is one of the developing world’s brightest examples of high performance—and it became so while remaining under public management. Its nonrevenue water dropped from 72% to 6%, its collection efficiency ratio doubled from 48% to 99.9%, its metered coverage rose from 13% to 100%, and its finances graduated from heavy subsidy to full cost recovery. Later this morning, you will hear from Viet Nam’s Hai Phong water utility and Sri Lanka’s water board how they are working towards achieving improvements to their service delivery.
Another shining example of Asia’s movers and shakers is The Sulabh International Social Service Organisation (Sulabh), a nongovernment organization in India. Since 1970, Sulabh has installed low cost and ecologically sustainable toilets in over 1.2 million houses across India. It has also constructed and has been maintaining 7,500 community toilets on a pay-and-use basis, servicing about 10 million people daily.
But its most fundamental contribution began with one man’s dream to elevate the social status of “untouchables”—the people who cleaned pit latrines and were treated as the lowest of the low. After witnessing how “untouchables” were ostracized, including seeing a boy gored by a bull and left to die in the street because of his social status, Sulabh’s founder, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, knew that his only chance of changing this 4,000 year old practice was to eliminate the need for scavengers. That meant making latrines maintenance-free, or as close to it as possible.
Four decades after Dr. Pathak started his crusade, many of these “untouchables” are now self-employed and enjoying a higher status in society. Sulabh has also diversified by putting up vocational schools for women and young people, community clinics, mobile hospitals, and more.
And even though they are less known compared to their counterparts in the water supply and sanitation front, river basin champions also abound. Today, river basin groups throughout Thailand study and try to replicate how the Bang Pakong River Basin Committee harnesses stakeholder participation to manage conflicts on water uses. But the committee itself was a hotbed of conflicts when it was first formed in 2001, with the members having differing interests and distrusting each other. Things improved when Khun Chamroon Suaydee, a restaurant owner and president of a tourist club, was elected chairperson in 2003.
Having a chairperson who hails from the private sector is rare among Thailand's basin committees. Cultivating his contacts from various sectors and promoting collaborative efforts between the basin committee and its constituents, Khun Chamroon rallied the village communities into collecting data that fed into water allocation proposals for the basin. This earned him the trust of the people and Government officials who initially doubted his leadership.
They are but a few of a large pool of champions rising to their water challenges. Through their proven leadership, they have won the confidence of financing sources and the paying public, and are on the sustainable path.
V. Conclusion
In closing, let me say that major gaps in service delivery and the breakdown in resource management can be resolved where inspired leadership is exhibited.
Good governance does begin in the determination of individuals and grows into proud, resolute, capable bodies of technical and social professionals within critical water groups. The key is to capture the work of leaders and champions to start the reform process and institutionalize the change as quickly as possible to ensure continuity.
I hope during today’s discussions, you will consider the role of inspired leadership in the reform and capacity development process, and how your resources might be better targeted at programs that support leadership in the sector.
I look forward to today’s sessions, and wish you a productive day.
Thank you.
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