Optimising community management of rural water services

Richard Carter, Head of Technical Support, WaterAidChair, Rural Water Supply Network
Optimising community management of rural water services

Rural water supply and community management
The dominant paradigm since the early 1980s
establish physical infrastructure
set up community management arrangements (water user committee and revenue collection)
hand over and walk away
Water user committee
organise, train
External intervention
manages
Water supply assets
design, construct

Rural water supply systems (1)
Point sources – the vast majority using groundwater
Typified by borehole – handpump supplies
Community-managed by Water User Committee

Gravity flow piped systems – community-managed by tap and system committees

Motorised borehole systems. Community-managed or more commonly private operator-managed.
Need for sound management and financial viability.
Need for regulation.
Increasing in number?

Rural sanitation systems – household latrines
Household latrines – hh spending decisions to be taken when full

Rural sanitation systems – institutional latrines
Generations of defunct and abandoned school latrines

Common principles of household and community management for sustainability

Field realities
lip-serviceto principles of community participation and management
benevolencerather than empowerment for community management
lack of monitoring of post-construction performance

Field realities
community management worksbut it has its limits
technologycan fail in ways which communities cannot fix
committees can failbecause of breakdown of trust or of voluntarism
the operating environmentcan militate against sustainable service provision
external shockscan undermine the best of systems

The need for a paradigm shift
from belief in community management to community management plus
the ‘plus’ involves external support, due attention to financial viability and to the environment
not an abandonment of past practice, but building on experience to step up a gear

Doing differently and better
Community-management
Community-management plus
Sustainable service

Community management plus
Water user committee
External support (to both “hard” and “soft” infrastructure
External intervention
limited ability to maintain
Water supply technology

Community management plus
Enhanced performance of CM
external support - both strategic and responsive
recognition of internal and external threats to community management
thinking beyond CM and CM+ to future models of ‘professionalised’ service delivery

WaterAid’s sustainability framework
TRUE DEMAND
EXTERNAL SUPPORT
TO ACHIEVE COMPETENT CM
DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION

http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/sustainability_framework_final.pdf
http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/sustainability_framework_french_final.pdf
http://www.wateraid.org/documents/plugin_documents/sustainability_framework_portuguese_final.pdf

Why better models are needed: handpump functionality, 2009 [data and estimates RWSN]
Population-weighted average 63% - reduces coverage by one third

Why better models are needed: decline over time in Tanzania [WaterAid study, 2006, Haysom]

Optimising community management of rural water services

by International WaterCentre on May 25, 2011

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Optimising community management of rural water services — Presentation Transcript

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