To understand the lack of progress in sanitation, research needs to move beyond aid-financed technology-driven action.

According to a new working paper by the Stockholm Environment Institute, research needs to move towards investigating the governance challenges of co-ordinating different stakeholders and actors across societal levels, from implementation at the local or household level up to steering at the national level.

The purpose of the paper, titled “Multi-level sanitation governance: Understanding and overcoming the challenges in the sanitation sector in sub-Saharan Africa”, is to introduce multi-level sanitation governance, and to present path dependency and institutional inertia as useful concepts to improve understanding of the complex governance challenges  plaguing the sanitation sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

The paper lists many governance challenges facing the sanitation sector in sub-Saharan Africa. These include low importance ascribed to sanitation; poor co-ordination and communication between stakeholders; gaps in research, policy, coordination and programmes; inadequate spending; inadequate implementation of decentralised solutions; and inappropriate institutional and legal frameworks.

However, the paper states that, “The role of governance and awareness of the political constraints and opportunities in achieving development outcomes in the water and sanitation sectors is increasingly being recognised.” Sanitation governance entails on-going dialogue between public and private sanitation stakeholders in order to better understand expectations as well as problems, and the best way to develop common and shared understandings of what results to achieve.

Multi-level governance

The paper states that formal sanitation institutions such as policies, guidelines, standards and strategies are formulated at the macro level. They are then interpreted, communicated and executed by actors at the meso level, while the actual implementation on the ground is done mainly by the micro level. As a result, policy is usually interpreted via several layers of actors before it reaches the household level.

The final result is that prescribed minimum hygiene requirements are difficult to meet and maintain.

The research concludes that coordination between actors and clear messages from the highest political levels are key factors in making sanitation happen. “Clearly, the multi-level form of sanitation governance is prone to known complication of coordination in such polycentric governance systems.”

Continued efforts to clearly assign rights and responsibilities for policy implementation and enforcement will help accelerate progress in the sanitation sector.