Programa de Agua y Saneamiento - WSP

El Programa de Agua y Saneamiento (o Water and and Sanitation Program - WSP) es una alianza internacional dedicada a apoyar poblaciones marginadas a obtener acceso sostenido a servicios de agua y saneamiento de calidad. Con presencia en más de 22 países alrededor de todo el mundo, el programa cuenta con una oficina regional en Lima, Perú, y una oficina sub-regional en Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Honduras y Nicaragua son los países latinoamericanos involucrados en el programa, sin embargo se planean futuras actividades en Guatemala, El Salvador y Colombia.

Los invitamos a visitar el sitio web del programa.

wsp Water and Sanitation Program http://www.wsp.org

The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) would like to see a world where all people have sustainable access to safe, reliable, and affordable water and sanitation services.  We are an external partnership program of the World Bank, one of the largest investors in water and sanitation services in developing countries. This means we are able to work directly with client governments at the local and national level, with the backing of the World Bank"s administrative and management processes. We function as an independent unit within the Department of Energy, Water and Transport in the newly created Sustainable Development Network Vice Presidency. The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) began in 1979 as a cooperative effort between The World Bank and the United Nations Development Program to look at cost-effective technologies and models for providing safe water and sanitation to the world"s poor. Its basic purpose of providing safe water and sanitation hasn"t changed, but its governing structure and methods have evolved along with the world"s views on how those services should be provided.

During the 1980s, much of the effort of WSP"s forebearer—the UNDP-World Bank Water and Sanitation Program—involved testing technologies, such as handpumps and latrines. By the end of that decade, however, many of the world"s governments and international relief organizations were looking at the broader picture of how to develop effective models and strategies that would have a broader effect of mobilizing communities to help themselves.

In 1992, the UNDP-World Bank Water and Sanitation Program developed a strategy replacing supply-side thinking with the pursuit of ways local communities could access water and sanitation services according to their own demands. At the same time, the concept of sustainable services—services that the communities could operate into the future—took hold in the water and sanitation sector. By the end of the 1990s, UNDP-World Bank had split its activities between field projects in regions across the world and research and evaluation efforts that could compile successes and spread the knowledge.

Today, the Water and Sanitation Program, as it is now known, focuses much effort on capacity building— forming partnerships with and between nongovernmental organizations, governments at all levels, community organizations, private industry, and donors to effect the regulatory and structural changes needed for broad reform.