The Environmental Cooperation-Asia (ECO-Asia) Water and Sanitation Program of USAID collaborates with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Working Group on Environmentally Sustainable Cities (AWGESC) to support implementation of the Environmentally Sustainable Cities (ESC) Clean Water Framework and to promote achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

During 2007 and 2008, ECO-Asia cooperation included: (1) conducting a rapid survey to collect information on water supply and sanitation from member cities; (2) organizing a regional workshop to confirm and elaborate findings; and (3) developing city-to-city twinning partnerships to facilitate sharing of best practices and promote improved access to water and sanitation in selected cities.

Despite differences in population, institutional arrangements, and service models among the participating ESC cities, the survey results revealed certain commonalities, including:

• Water supply coverage is generally high;
• Wastewater management is a mix of centralized systems and septic tanks;
  
• Every city has a city development strategy or a master development plan; and Most cities implement hygiene promotion programs.

Participating ESC member cities identified the three top priorities for water supply as

• Improving operational efficiencies of water supply (e.g., reduce non-revenue water, enhance billing and collection, and expand customer outreach);
• Extending water supply services to priority areas, including urban slums; and
  
• Improving the quality of water supply to protect public health.
  

For sanitation, the top three priorities included:

• Raising user and community awareness of the importance of sanitation;
• Developing a hygiene improvement program; and
  
• Developing or improving implementation of a septage management program.
  

In September 2007 in Bangkok, ECO-Asia and ASEAN co-organized a regional workshop hosted by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to discuss survey findings, and develop a regional strategy on water and sanitation. At the workshop, ECO-Asia invited practitioners to share experience that highlighted key elements of the ESC Clean Water Framework, and facilitated a practitioner-to-practitioner exchange of knowledge and best practices to identify key implementation strategies.

The outcomes of workshop discussions linked closely with the results of the rapid survey: Delivering water to the urban poor and addressing water quality were top priorities, along with increasing awareness for sanitation services and developing standards for sanitation management, particularly septage management.

Member city discussions confirmed that ASEAN cities face common institutional, technical, and financial challenges and constraints in delivering urban water supply and sanitation services. Many cities suffer from poorly functioning systems due to insufficient investments in system development and operations, and limitations in human and institutional capacity. For each of the identified challenges, participants proposed solutions and possible actions which constitutes a regional action agenda (see below). Of the proposed solutions, there were three cross-cutting areas that apply to both water and sanitation: (1) raising awareness; (2) promoting good governance; and (3) facilitating regional cooperation.

In 2007 and 2008, in addition to working with the ASEAN ESC Initiative on developing a meaningful regional strategy and promoting regional exchange, ECO-Asia facilitated the development of twinning partnerships between counterpart cities or utilities to demonstrate effective strategies for improving access to water and sanitation.

During 2009, ECO-Asia will continue to identify opportunities to facilitate twinning partnerships in part through a competitive, small grants program that will enable development of new twinning arrangements between ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable Cities and/or their water and wastewater service providers.