Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2: Developing Effective Interventions

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2 is our second MOOC in a two-part sequence, and looks at ‘Developing Effective Interventions’. Here we invite you to develop analytical skills and deep understanding about a complex, controversial policy problem – one with no simple, easy answers. About half a billion people on our planet still lack access to improved water supplies and about two billion do not have improved sanitation services, leading to an unknown but very large number of avoidable deaths each year from water-related diseases. Millions of dollars are spent on avoidable health care expenditures, and people – mostly women – spend many billions of hours carrying water from sources outside the home. Reducing these costs is a major global challenge for us all in the 21st century. Join us to explore the challenging and complex political, economic, social, and technical dimensions of the policy interventions that donors, national governments and water utilities use to address this challenge. This second MOOC consists of the following seven sessions:

• Session 1: Introduction and how our ‘ancient instincts’ affect water policy interventions.
• Session 2: Planning better policy interventions: Roles, features and examples of planning protocols.
• Session 3: Water pricing, tariff design and subsidies.
• Session 4: Providing information to households and communities to improve water and sanitation conditions.
• Session 5: Changing the institutions that deliver water and sanitation services: Privatization in developing countries.
• Session 6: Changing institutions: Lessons from the UK water privatization story.
• Session 7: Changing institutions: Improving regulation of the water and sanitation sector.
Your instructors for this course have worked in and studied this sector for many years. Professor Dale Whittington has worked on water and sanitation policy and planning issues for over 40 years in more than two dozen low and middle-income countries. Dr Duncan Thomas has worked in the UK and European water sectors for 15 years, focusing on overcoming barriers to technological, organizational, regulatory and policy innovations.
Please watch this introductory video outlining the course: https://youtu.be/KkBmo3EKkkI

What you will learn

Introduction and how our ‘ancient instincts’ affect water policy intervention
Planning better policy interventions: Roles, features and examples of planning protocols
Roles, features and problems of water pricing, tariff design and subsidies
Providing information to households and communities to improve water and sanitation conditions