In 2011 the Rockefeller Foundation is conducting a Search on Multiple-use water Services to explore opportunities to expand MUS as a potential future investment for the Foundation to help create better health outcomes and generate income based on improved water service delivery. This exploration focuses on understanding the barriers that limit the scaling of MUS, their comparative importance, and possible approaches to overcoming challenges and supporting opportunities for scaling. Understanding these barriers will help the MUS community develop a theory of change to scale the MUS approach.  In turn, this will help the Rockefeller Foundation better understand the potential for impact, the preconditions as well as the pathways for impact which further investments in a MUS approach might enable. This Search includes the following four components. See: http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/what-we-do/work-exploration

1. Winrock International and IDEO are developing MUS working models and prototypes.

2. The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and International Water and Sanitation Center (IRC) with national partners are undertaking country studies to identify barriers and potentials for scaling MUS. The selected countries with highest potentials for scaling MUS are: India, Nepal, Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. Three main scaling pathways are examined: domestic-plus, irrigation-plus, and community-based MUS approaches.

3. The JHU Global Water Program organized a conference in Bellagio, Italy, on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation from August 29th to September 1st, 2011.  By convening leading experts in water and related fields, this conference identified opportunities for accelerating, sustainable, people-centered integrated water services for the poor. Recognizing that compartmentalized approaches to water management are grossly ineffective, barriers and opportunities were identified to shifting the paradigm in the water sector from a single use development context to a multiple use context.  A forthcoming Bellagio statement will be published in leading academic journals and on the web. See: http://globalwater.jhu.edu/magazine/article/accelerating_sustainable_people_centered_integrated_water_services_for_the_/

4. On 13 and 14 October, the Pacific Institute, Oakland, organized a MUS Convening, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Thirty participants from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, USA and elsewhere with extensive experience in the field of water and communities, developed recommendations to make the MUS framework a more robust and sustainable approach, so that it: ensures equity, protects the environment, builds climate resilience, incorporates sanitation and public health, and is designed for long-term success to improve the lives of the poorest communities. The workshop identified lists of mechanisms and challenges to render MUS project implementation more robust, ‘successful’ and accountable. Gaps in our current understanding of MUS were identified as well as ideas for a concept note on moving MUS forward in the next year.

The findings of these initiatives will be presented at a meeting on 11-13 January in New York, which will allow the Foundation to decide on further steps.