Clarissa Brocklehurst
Senior Advisor, Sanitation and Water for All Secretariat

"One of the differences is that things that were crazy ideas 10 years ago are now being discussed as quite sensible solutions. Now we’re not talking about whether excreta reuse is a good idea or not, we’re talking about all the different ways to do it, including some quite crazy ways - but it’s all good. Sanitation is a far bigger issue; it’s now accepted as the big issue and I think also this issue of eliminating inequalities, focusing not just on the poor but certain pockets of vulnerable people, has also become very mainstream within the conversation.

When I was at UNICEF I really enjoyed working on the presentation of data, and what we’ve seen is that the WASH sector has really come to appreciate the data that it has and uses data much better than it used to 10 years ago. There’s more data out there and we’re better at using it to make a case. We’ve got data about economic impacts and health impacts and altogether it’s just better for making the case.

Sanitation and Water for All, even 5 years ago, was just a twinkle in the eye and we were just starting to get going on it. We didn’t realize how successful it would be because we didn’t realize how much appetite there would be for donors to have a forum with developing countries and developing countries to talk to donors - and particularly to get finance ministries involved. This was a big breakthrough and we found that there was lots of scope there. We’re still not doing it exactly right, but there’s lots of scope. My hope for the future is that water and sanitation stays very high on the development agenda, that’s it’s recognized as being a big part of the post-2015 agenda, and that we go on thinking up crazy ideas so 10 years from now the crazy ideas of today will be the mainstream ideas that we discuss at Stockholm Water Week."