Job: Study - Cost of water in refugee context

Location: World 
Deadline: Friday, 15 November 2013 

Description

Study: Cost of water in refugee context

Overall UNHCR allocates around 25 to 30 millions USD for operation and maintenance of water supply systems across its operational areas. UNHCR together with UNICEF, is planning to commission a study to better understand the interaction and between capital investments and costs of ongoing O&M, considering aspects of sustainability and resilience with specific considerations of the different contexts (rural camps, settlements and peri-urban camps).

Interventions at the beginning of an emergency response rarely plan for long term water infrastructural considerations despite the fact that the average lifespan of a refugee camp is 17 years. These temporary water systems inevitably require upgrading and/or revamping within a few years to cater to longer term use and potential expansion of networks. This inevitably infers retrofitting or adaptation of an emergency/temporary system to function as a long-term sustainable water supply system. Further complicating this pattern is the increasing unpredictability of funding and for post-emergency situations.

Water supply systems supported by UNHCR can be divided in 3 sub-groups:

• Refugee camps: water infrastructure is built from scratch (i.e. piped water supply systems or borehole/shallow wells equipped with hand pumps). The scale of each camp varies from location to location (5,000 to 450,000 refugees).

• Settlement: refugees living within the host community in a defined environment; these are often challenging contexts as water supply will have to complement existing (often inadequate) systems to meet the needs of both communities (refugees and hosts); challenges are numerous but include water quantity, water quality standards (national and humanitarian), private sector water providers, cost recovery and overall sustainability of the system.

• Urban/urban type: for example of Lebanon and Jordan. As with other agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR has a very limited experience in this area and generally does not engage in WASH for urban refugees.

The aim of this study is to develop a tool for better understanding the cost of the water supplied to refugees. The objective is not for refugees to pay for water provided, but to develop a tool which will support better planning and effective management of the water supply systems, generate persuasive cost/benefit analysis for advocacy purposes to ensure suitable choices are made and the right level of investment is allocated to water infrastructure to sustain the adequate level of services to refugee and host communities.

This concept paper highlights the main approaches to be considered and potentially used to define and understand the costs involved in water supply systems in refugees situations.

• The Life Cycle Costs Approach (LCCA) was developed by IRC for rural contexts. The LCCA approach aims to generate an overview over the income and expenditure flows, funding instruments, budgeting and planning tools associated with water supplies, with specific focus on sustainability. The approach specifically focuses on post-construction costs (such as O&M, large repairs and activities to support the water supply mechanisms) and discusses potential benefits of adopting the approach in a pilot area (Uganda) with the objective of creating an overview of the minimum benchmarks for costing sustainable basic services in developing countries. These costs have been derived from the WASHCost dataset and the best available cost data from other organisations all over the world. The results are therefore based on comprehensive and comparable data on water costs and service levels available for developing countries in rural and peri-urban areas. The benchmarks are useful for planning, assessing sustainability from a cost perspective and for monitoring value for money. The IRC's preliminary outcome indicates that a number of tools for improving planning and budgeting are in place, but these are not always used to their full capacity, thus, applying the life-cycle costs approach can help resolve financing issues linked to WASH service delivery.

• The second approach, developed by UNESCO-IHE for urban water infrastructures systems is part of an education program, and seeks to provide the right tools for asset management in order to manage infrastructure capital assets to minimize the total cost of owning and operating them, while delivering the service levels that customers' desire. The education course includes asset management programs with long-range planning, life-cycle costing, proactive operations and maintenance, and capital replacement plans based on cost-benefit analyses as the most efficient method of meeting the challenge of providing the best possible service under numerous real-world constraints (e.g. limited funds, capacity). This approaches the asset management of urban water utilities from an engineering point of view, using quantitative analysis and modelling extensively.

Although the second approach is much more modelling-based and therefore not always applicable to the different levels of expertise deployed in the field, a simplified method might potentially be developed (i.e. excel) and combined with the LCCA approach for the identification and analysis of the minimum benchmarks on water costs.

The main outcomes of the UNHCR water cost 'project' should include:

1) Definition/development of the most appropriate approach for water cost analysis

2) Advocacy tool for cost benefit analysis3) Identification of camps and settlements which will be representative of WASH infrastructure situation in others camps4) Identification of the key stakeholders involved in the design/construction/operation of the water supply systems5) Define which costs should be included on the cost analysis (partners logistic costs, admin costs or only project related costs: i.e. engineers, pumps, consumables, energy, etc…)6) Comprehensive data collection on capital expenditure used for construction of the water supply system, recurrent expenditure for its upgrading and O&M (including assessment of the different funding mechanisms), and direct expenditure for support personnel.7) Assessment of the different funding mechanisms8) Development of a flexible decision making tool/model to analyse the data and define which benchmarks are used for prioritize and set up strategic planning9) Best practices

How to apply:

Potential candidates/organizations need to apply by sending not later than 15th November 2013, abstract of the suggested methodology to undertake the study, timeframe, estimated cost, and a short background of the organization with the relevant experience in undertaking such studies.

Applications shall be sent via email to the following email address: hqwash@unhcr.org

More Info and Application