Can peer-to-peer learning strengthen local government capacity to deliver sustainable and equitable sanitation services in low resource settings?

- The challenge:
Strengthening capacities of local governments to deliver sanitation services is imperative to ensure we have area- and nation-wide outcomes. The top-down transfer of best practices from one place to another without accounting for local capabilities or resources overburdens administrations setting them up for failure. Horizontal P2P between local governments operating within a particular system, and under similar conditions, could support the spread of local innovation and ideas while avoiding the pitfalls of top-down, carbon copying of interventions.
P2P learning is popular in development however much of the evidence base has focused on intervention in western contexts or international initiatives between the global North and the global South. There is limited scholarship on P2P between local governments within a low or middle income setting.
- The approach:
A participatory action research approach is proposed, working with an implementing partner to develop and test a P2P learning initiative in a particular country. Throughout the initiative data will be collected from participants. Regular workshops will also be held with the implementing partners and others involved in the rollout to reflect on data collected and tweak the intervention design. Participants will then be followed-up with to assess outcomes and impacts of the initiative, including any changes to the scale and quality of service provision.
In addition, I plan on undertaking two to four case studies on P2P learning initiatives that can also be drawn on and inform the research project.
- Impact:
The primary aims of the research is to develop an evidence base on P2P learning between local governments in a low or middle income setting alongside a P2P learning intervention which increases local capacities. If successful the project could be expanded and a blueprint developed which other countries and regions could adapt to their context.

Water-WISER will train a cohort of 50 British research engineers and scientists and equip them to work in challenging environments both in the low-income settings of rapidly growing poor cities and in the changing urban environment of the UK, Europe and other regions with a historic endowment of aging infrastructure. The vision is for a generation of engineers with the skills to deliver the trans-disciplinary innovations needed to ensure that future water, waste and sanitation infrastructure is resilient to the stresses posed by rapid urbanisation, global climate change and increasingly extreme natural and man-made disasters. Our alumni will address the urgent need to re-imagine urban spaces as net contributors to ecological and environmental well-being rather than being net users of vital resources such as energy, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. These new leaders will be an essential resource if the UK is to deliver on its commitment to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 which calls for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services, within planetary and local ecological boundaries. This next generation of research engineers will enable UK-based engineering consultancies, manufacturers, and utility companies to grow their share of the expanding global market for water and waste services, for example; in the water services industry from 3% to 10% (an increase of £33 billion per annum) by 2030, and attract significant inward investment.
The research which Water-WISER cohorts enable will form the basis of new innovations in the design and delivery of resilient infrastructure and services. Innovations developed by Water-WISER graduates will inform how growing cities are designed and built in the global south and will be used to inform the re-engineering and replacement of the aging infrastructure on which the UK's water and waste services are currently reliant. Our alumni will form the new generation of leaders who will play a central role in securing a larger share of the international water and waste management consultancy market to UK consultancies. The network of expertise and skills created by Water-WISER will enhance potential for collaborations between major UK players (for example strengthening links between UK consultancy, the Department for International Development, and leading UK water agencies such as WaterAid and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and between UK companies and partners in the global south including international investors such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Graduates of Water-WISER will enter industry, academia and development agencies having spent a substantial period (minimum of six months) embedded in an industry or development partner organisation delivering their field-based research. Water-WISER students will thus gain a unique combination of trans-disciplinary training, field experience and cohort networking; they are destined for leadership roles in UK and international engineering and development consultancies, academia, international development banks, international agencies such as the United Nations and international non-governmental organisations.