So you think your water pump will save lives...

Water for People is an amazing organization based out of Denver, Colorado. Small, but dynamic and they want you to rethink how we (development practitioners) are "fixing" the water crisis.

Transparency, sustainability, accountability are great buzzwords; only a few of the many that are tossed around the development world - and they don't hold water. I want you to think about the projects with which you have been involved; the millions of dollars invested by multi-lateral and development agencies. Think about the tangible products or "solutions" that have been implemented around the world to help those in need lead healthier lives. Think about the self-congratulating and back patting that occurs when I project is deemed successful and the marketing campaigns that follow. 

Now, give it five years after close-out, eh... give it two, and go back to those projects.  What do you see... another broken pump, another over flowing latrine, broken technologies, and people that are returning to ways that they were promised would be long past. So is this now broken project still considered a success?

Now this type of failure is not always the case and the world is not filled with evil development workers that are intentionally trying to bring about these unfortunate situations. The reality is funding does run out, the areas where these projects are implemented are often in conflict or difficult to reach, and there are competing priorities. However, we need to start accepting the reality that we are not always creating sustainable projects, we in fact are just moving on to the next intervention.

“We in fact can often exacerbate or create problems with the projects we implement... and we know it.”

There is not a one-size solution, in fact there may not be a solution at all because development is often trial and error and no one has all the answers, or else this industry would have worked itself out of existence (debate for another posting). However, I hate when people announce a problem without offering ideas for transforming it (commonplace in academia). 

I would like to introduce a tool that may be helpful called FLOW. A mobile-based phone system for survey use developed by Akvo and Water for People. I encourage you to check it out and listen to Ned Breslin's (CEO) presentation on "Fixing the Water Crisis", quite powerful. Share with me your ideas and enjoy the video!

The "Got'Em" Mentality behind Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)

As I become more engrossed in participatory methods for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and the benefits that the process can have for both implementing partners, donors, and beneficiaries, I reflect on the current use of M&E as a tool for scrutiny and blaming. This story from a blogger's recent experience conducting an evaluation of a "problematic" activity (Got'Em: An Evaluation Story) should ring true for many M&E practitioners. I encourage you to read the story and reflect on how you use M&E on projects: Is it to help find areas that need improvement and to work with the project to yield better results in an encouraging manner, or are you only interested in results and efficiencies? Lesson learned that if we look at the impacts of a program by using a scientific, and predominately Western approach, we miss important contextual factors. 

“...when you’re looking for what’s wrong, you’re certainly going find it.”

— Jennifer Lentfer

Carbon-Cutting Initiative May Harm Indigenous Communities

There was a recent dialogue hosted here in Washington D.C. (held on March 19th) by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) following Following the Warsaw Agreement on REDD+. The discourse emphasized increased impacts that this agreement will have on indigenous peoples and priority steps needed towards safeguarding their rights. This was an eyeopening event for me as carbon conflict has become a fiery debate as of late, in the conservation and energy sectors. The RRI presented new research in this forum, highlighting the lack of legal protection and safeguards for indigenous communities living in forests.

“As the carbon in living trees becomes another marketable commodity, the deck is loaded against forest peoples and presents an opening for an unprecedented carbon grab by governments and investors,” said Arvind Khare, RRI’s executive director.

REDD+ promoted by the World Bank and UN, provides a series of financial incentives and rewards for developing countries to reduce their carbon emissions resulting from deforestation; is in fact diminishing indigenous peoples rights since the initiative does not directly link land carbon rights with land tenure rights. 

The argument also brought to light impacts from REDD+ that may be contributing to deforestation and that its lack of progress on emissions reduction and the restrictions it imposes on the rights of indigenous forest peoples to use their land are evidence of the initiatives failure.

How can you envision REDD+ being a more viable alternative that creates incentives for the bottom as well as the top? Is the program salvageable if it becomes more socially inclusive and accepting of techniques (i.e., swidden agriculture) that has been scientifically proven to enrich forest ecosystems, when carried out under the right conditions?