From the Central African Republic to the United States: Learning to dance with wicked problems.

A few weeks ago, I had the immense privilege of attending the first WASH Convening? to be held about the WASH sector in the United States. As part of the Vessel Collective, the convening was co-hosted by DigDeep and Water For People . As a member of One for All (OFA), an international alliance with IRCWASH and Water for People, I was invited to share my experience in the WASH space from an international perspective.

The convening brought over 200 attendees from more than 100 organizations to Washington DC, to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and solutions to closing the water access gap in the United States. There is a reality that flies below most people’s radar: An estimated 2.2 million people across the United States live in households without running water or a flush toilet.?

I have been working in the WASH space at Water for Good in the Central African Republic (CAR) for the past ten years. Only one in five people of the 5.6 million citizens have access to basic levels of water access, and less than 13% of the population has access to safely managed sanitation services.

Given how different the context is between the United States and CAR, I was skeptical about there being much overlap or commonality of problems with regards to WASH. The contexts are indeed vastly different, and yet, I came away with a sense of familiarity about the nature of the problems the country faces. I recognize a common trait, that delivering on WASH for everyone constitutes a wicked problem. Wicked problems are by nature highly complex, have interdependent factors that play into them, and are seemingly impossible to solve.

The shared wicked nature of the problem drew me to the same conclusion. Most of us working in the WASH space are already thinking about the multiple facets of the sector, making us systems thinkers, whether we know it or not, and the first place to start effectively addressing a problem is by naming the problem as it truly is. Just as in CAR, thinking about the WASH problem in the US cannot be linear, but must take into account all the different parts of the system, as well as all its individual parts — it takes systemic thinking.

All the conversations I engaged in, the panels I listened to, came from many different and fascinating perspectives, and yet I found another commonality between the US WASH context and the one in CAR. I picked up on language and mental models that were not in phase with addressing wicked problems.

What is a wicked problem?

The term “wicked problem” was introduced in the 1970s to highlight the complexities within social planning and policy making.

Wicked problems have no formulas to solve them, no universal solutions to them. They vary from one context to another, and the boundaries between issues that make up the problems are fuzzy. They are intractable, solutions can only really improve a situation, without solving them. They often involve a financial and environmental cost, impacting humans, and they involve multiple perspectives, stakeholders, agencies, and scales. Our own understanding (or lack of) of the nature of the problem, contributes to its wickedness.

Wicked problems can also be described as a cluster of problems that lie within greater clusters of problems that occur beyond anyone’s control. In CAR, geographical remoteness, complex supply chains tied to the whims of global trends are among some of many systems and clusters of problems that affect WASH services.?

Wicked problems have interconnected issues, and solutions often breed new problems. As a bird watcher, I am aware that the avian kingdom is undergoing a tremendous amount of pressure. In North America, at least 30% of the bird population has disappeared in the past 50 years. For every two birds sitting on a branch you see today, our grandparents would have seen three. Their decline is a problem, but that problem has a thousand origins, ranging from agricultural practices, lagging policy around protection of sensitive breeding spaces, climate change, destruction of habitat, and dwindling areas that are critical for migrating birds. Each problem originates from another complex set of factors. As a specific example, a shift in human eating habits changes agricultural practices. The need for agriculture to adapt to these demands can alter how fields are treated and what plants are available. A region that once provided a safe haven for millions of birds to land, feed, rest, and move on can become inhospitable and dangerous. Collective awareness that global bird counts are plummeting is not enough to address the problem. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are aware of the decline in bird populations and have taken it upon themselves to address the issue, by putting bird feeders out as an example. While individual action is important, millions of bird feeders won’t “fix the problem.” In fact, as I described above, single solutions often breed new problems. Millions of birds die by contracting salmonella from dirty bird feeders, or because of the spread of viruses from sharing the same feeders. This example ties to what I have seen occur in CAR for a long time. A new water infrastructure installation breeds (or extends) the wicked problem from answering one water access need to creating additional problems to solve, such as the ongoing maintenance of said infrastructure.?

Regarding the wicked nature of the WASH problems in the US, I am drawn to one of the characteristics of what a wicked problem I mentioned above – that there are no universal solutions, nor a real end to it.

Dancing with our wicked problems.

As organizations and individuals working in WASH, we must be aware that safe, permanent access to water will never be a done deal. Statements such as “ending the problem once and for all” does not truly apply to the WASH sector. Those types of statements imply that there is a finality to the problem, that the water and sanitation problem can be solved “once and for all.” Ask your town officials if water and sanitation is solved. Some highly developed cities are in fact facing some of the most challenging water issues ever. Most of Washington DC's 1,300 miles of pipes that distribute water across the city are beyond their life expectancy, requiring a system-wide overhaul. The capital maintenance expenditures to maintain water access are a real challenge of the present.

I love what Patrick Moriarty , CEO of IRCWASH, once said: “We must learn to dance with the system” when thinking about the WASH sector. The statement is an invitation to acknowledge the systems beyond our own organization. Focusing on our particular expertise does not preclude us from engaging with other actors involved in the sector. Collective action increases the impact and success of our individual efforts, that’s how we can truly address wicked problems. The agencies and WASH actors we might see as responsible for problems could really use our feedback, and they also may have feedback for us that could help us understand their needs and how we could improve our own approaches. I encourage all of us systems actors to learn to dance with the wicked problem of providing sustainable access to reliable water and sanitation services. Naming the wicked nature of the problem is the first step to learning to negotiate with it, improving the situation, adapting to new pressures and evolving environments. It will be an important key to improving the lives of the millions of Americans who lack safe and reliable access to water and sanitation services, as well as the 200 million in the world who face the same needs.

References:

• Washington DC Water crisis
• Wicked problems, a definition
• JMP WASH services in the Central African Republic
• The decline of birds in North America