Sustainability of water and sanitation services refers to continuous services that meet agreed upon levels over time. There are six key building blocks for sustainability: institutional capacity, financing, affordability, asset management, water resource management, and monitoring/regulation. For services to be sustained, enabling conditions like legal, organizational and cultural factors must support partners' effective engagement. However, many projects still fail to maintain benefits for 15-20 years due to lack of follow-up, inappropriate technology, unskilled operators, and slow/absent maintenance. Strong institutions with clear roles and adequate training/resources are needed for successful, sustainable service delivery.

1. Sustainability of Water Supply and Sanitation Services:
Sustainability of water and sanitation service delivery refers to water and sanitation services
that are continuous over time and meet agreed upon service levels. Sustainability is seen as
“whether or not services continue to work and deliver benefits over time. Sustainability is about
lasting benefits achieved through the continued enjoyment of water supply (and other).
There are six key areas or ‘building blocks’ of sustainability:
1. Institutional capacity
2. Financing
3. Affordability
3. Asset management
4. Water and Wastewater resource management
5. Monitoring and regulation
Enabling environment:
A set of interrelated conditions must exist – (legal, organizational, fiscal, regulatory, informational,
political and cultural) – These impact on the capacity of partners, including national governments,
donors and NGOs to engage in service delivery processes in a sustained and effective manner.
Every year, many millions of dollars are invested by national governments and
international donor agencies alike in project implementation and, despite ever-
increasingattemptstotackletheproblem,manyschemesstillfailtomaintaintheflow
of expected benefits over their intended lifetimes of 15 or even 20 years.
The followings are underlining causes of water and sanitation service delivery scheme breakdown:
 Lack of regular follow-up and supervision during the design and construction of schemes;
 Installation of inappropriate technology;
 Lack of trained and adequately skilled operators (lack of the necessary human and logistical
resources to undertake scheme maintenance in the case of breakdown);
 Absence of timely servicing and maintenance of equipment used in water service delivery.
(Unavailability of spare parts) When scheme breakdowns occur, the speed of maintenance is
generally slow. In some instances, maintenance for minor breakdowns is performed within
weeks, whereas major breakdowns take as long as three months;
 Power outages and no standby power source.
 Tampering with and Vandalism of service delivery infrastructure (improper use)
Strong institutional capacity have clarity in roles and responsibilities for different aspects of
service delivery; where staffing levels are adequate and training for staff is in place at
different levels, service delivery will be successful and sustainability can be achieved.
There is need for support mechanisms to be in place for service providers and they need to
be adequately resourced and this is key foundation for sustained service delivery.
Institutional and policy frameworks that exist must always be applied systematically, leaving
gaps or duplications in responsibilities for various aspects of service provision and oversight.