Published on: 27/08/2014
The book that was launched at the Stockholm World Water Week on Tuesday 2 September 2014, describes the journey IRC took with partners worldwide to answer: how much does it cost to provide a basic service?
Many low- and middle-income countries show enormous effort to ensure that their citizens gain access to clean water and hygienic sanitation. But their efforts are constrained by the lack of basic information on costs and actual quality of services. The WASHCost project was born in reaction to the poverty of data that threatened the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation.
The new e-book Priceless! describes how the IRC-led project WASHCost worked in four countries with local partners and governments to uncover the real costs of services that last. It presents practical challenges of working in a sector that has a collective loss of memory about the money it spends, and reveals the tensions of being accountable to country governments and to a grant donor.
"I'm very excited to be launching the WASHCost book in Stockholm next week," says CEO of IRC Patrick Moriarty. "Priceless! shows how finance and economics are intimately connected with peoples aspirations to quality services: to water that does not stop flowing and is close to them; to a toilet they can use without feeling ashamed or disgusted. This is what IRC is all about: good services for everyone, forever."
Speaking about WASHCost in India, V. Ratna Reddy, Director of Livelihoods and Natural Resource Management Institute (LNRMI) says: "the adoption of a life-cycle costs approach in budgeting secures the much-needed allocation for source sustainability, asset management and natural disasters." To Reddy, comprehensive budgeting "expands life opportunities for people and is crucial for its uptake at national and regional level budgeting processes."
Editor's notes
The book launch took place on Tuesday 2 September, 5 pm at the Stockholm World Water Week - Exhibition Hall, Booth No. B01:63. Until supplies last, free copies of the book will be available.
Programme: Presentation by Patrick Moriarty, CEO of IRC; Piers Cross, Advisor and formerly the Global and Regional Manager of WSP-WB; Vida Duti, IRC Ghana Director; and Arumugam Kalimuthu, WFP's India Country Director.
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