Wrong way round the U bend? Why the Gates Foundation’s pivot on sanitation is wrongheaded and poorly implemented

Just as the world is aligning around a core set of ideas about how to tackle water and sanitation, the Gates foundation has decided to bet the farm on technology. Not only is this pivot wrongheaded, the way it has been implemented is less than respectful of its partners.

Over the past decade there has been an emerging consensus that the solution to the water and sanitation crisis lies in the spheres of politics, governance, economics and planning and not solely (or even mostly) technology. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has been a major contributor to this movement, notably through its support of City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS).

Why then, just as the movement the foundation is part of is gaining traction, has it turned back on itself – doubling down on its commitment to technology and signalling its intention to abandon its more systems-focused work?

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A shift in strategy that ignores best practice and leaves the poor behind

Back in February we started to hear rumours about a dismaying message being circulated to the BMGF sanitation grantees. Announcing the departure of longstanding head of the programme, Brian Arbogast, it also signalled a strategic pivot - refocusing the foundation's sanitation portfolio on bringing to market technologies developed in their “reinventing the toilet” work. Nothing particularly wrong with that. But.

Since dipping their toes in the water and sanitation world back in 2007, the foundation has come to wield an outsize influence on the sector. In this way it has brought welcome investment to a much-neglected area.Thanks to the Gates Foundation’s efforts, "non-sewered" sanitation is now seen as a viable, environmentally friendly option in many parts of the world, rather than just a temporary step towards sewer systems. The reinvented toilets that BMGF grantees have been working on are an important part of this shift.

That said, the pivot has a deeply negative downside in that, even as they double down on technical innovation, the foundation is walking away from work related to sanitation systems, work they played a major role in championing – particularly City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS).

The timing of this decision is also surprising. The world is just coming to accept that, while technology has an important role to play in water and sanitation, water and sanitation are not fundamentally technological sectors. Just then, the foundation decides to focus on technology and bringing technology to market. A market that is, at best, embryonic (indeed an important part of CWIS is market development!).

The world is littered with infrastructure that fails to work within a matter of years. This is largely due to institutional and governance failures, as well as lack of participation and inadequate capacity building. Technology alone has been tried before.

Now, the strategic move will have severe negative consequences for the organisations that have relied on Gates funding to drive crucial systems work forward. Most worryingly, it will have grave consequences for the recipients of the work, particularly the poorest and most marginalised communities.

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Undermining past progress and future governance work

The message announcing the changes made the point that “innovative technology development and delivery is what originally drew the foundation to the sector”. This is partly, but only partly true. A decade ago, for the first “landscaping” studies of the foundation, it was clear that technology development was not the only (or main) challenge facing the sector. Indeed, some of the foundation’s biggest early bets (including their generous funding of IRC) were based on “systems” work.

What is more, even since the "reinventing the toilet" work started, the foundation has steadily done more and more work on the system side of things (including CWIS), precisely because the demands and markets for the reinvented toilets did not, of themselves, exist.

It would appear that part of the thinking is that the foundation can focus on the technical work and others will fund the "softer" stuff. This sends a disturbing message – that one of the biggest and most powerful funders of the sector sees governance and the tough, system, capacity strengthening, and institutional work as being of secondary importance. What does this mean for sanitation policy down the line?

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Abrupt rupture with partners

There’s a second part of the decision that is also disturbing: the way it is being implemented. Despite the message announcing the change committing to a “respectful and thoughtful transition” with existing grantees, word on the street is that this is not quite how things are going in practice. Nor did the decision itself come out of dialogue with partners - more like a bolt from the blue.

Organisations, like ours, that rely on philanthropy to do our work have no right to expect unending flows. Our donors have a right to change their strategies. Of course. That said, there is a growing body of accepted good practice as to how philanthropies can do this. One that acknowledges the power of their money over their recipients and that puts genuine value behind concepts like dialogue and partnership. Part of that includes communicating strategy shifts clearly and well in advance. This was, sadly, not the case this time. We believe a major organisation like the Gates Foundation can, and should, do better.

In the end, it’s the foundation’s money and how they spend it is unarguably their business! Even if how they plan to spend it will undermine the progress they, and the sector, have been making over the last decade. The impact for the 1.5 billion people who still do not have access to a decent sanitation service is dramatic.

By Barbara Schreiner, Executive Director, Water Integrity Network

Patrick Moriarty, CEO, IRC

With:

Cántaro Azul

DORP

End Water Poverty

Redes del Agua Latinoamérica

Zobair Hasan, Chief REM, DORP

Herbert Kashililah, Chair, Shahidi Wa Maji

Timothy Kpeh, United Youth, Liberia

Sareen Malik, Executive Secretary, ANEW

Jane Nabunnya, Country Director, IRC Uganda Dr. Fermín Reygadas Robles Gil, Director General, Cántaro Azul

Nathalie Seguin, Global Coordinator, End Water Poverty

Photo: Everett Bartels on Unsplash 

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