Water supply projects succeed when villagers want and maintain them

In villages in Peru, Bolivia and Ghana water supply systems are still working up to 12 years after construction. They succeed because villagers request them, manage them, and can get spare parts and technical help. However, some people still use unsafe water sources and the water systems do not pay for themselves.

Many people believe that village water supply projects do not work. This is not always true, according World Bank-funded research from Manchester Business School, in the UK, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Stanford and Purdue Universities, in the USA, and the Institute of Social Studies, in the Netherlands. Furthermore, villagers themselves do not need to pay a lot of money for them to succeed. The study assesses whether helping villagers look after a water pump or borehole makes a difference to how well it works in the medium term.

In Peru, Bolivia and Ghana almost every household in the 400 villages in the study can get clean water. However, some households still use water from unprotected springs and rivers for drinking or cooking. In addition, rural households usually pay very little for the improved water services and so many village water committees don’t have enough money to pay for repairs. Nevertheless, when the water systems break down most villages manage to get them fixed.

Nearly half of the communities in all three countries received additional training for their water system operators or caretakers after the system was built. Some villages received help with non-technical matters, such as billing or disputes over water.

The following factors play a role in the success of water supply projects:

• Water systems often work better in villages where operators and caretakers have received training.
• Free repairs and technical assistance do not necessarily lead to a water system working better or to villagers feeling happier with it.
• Training and visits to water committees to help with administrative tasks or water disputes are the most useful forms of support.
• Water committees often do not collect fees because banks are far away, people are poor, and when they save money villagers do not want to spend it on the water system.
• Some households continue to use unsafe water sources because there are not enough boreholes to serve a growing population.
• Few water projects have a systematic approach for providing money to villages to expand their water systems or to upgrade to a higher-level of service.

It is encouraging that in so many villages in different countries the water systems are still working after three to twelve years. However, policy makers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) need to find a different financial model to make the water systems sustainable in the long term. NGOs are creating ‘moral hazard’ problems that may undermine rural economic development – in that their interventions could undermine communities’ self-reliance and discourage them from making their own investments in water infrastructure.

Currently, NGOs and governments:

• could be discouraging communities from making their own investments in water infrastructure by providing free repairs and replacements
• need to coordinate their policies
• should encourage villagers to get technical support after water systems have been built, rather than just paying for repairs
• need to develop a new policy framework that will help communities deal with the double challenge of repairing water systems and expanding them as the population grows.

Source(s):
‘How well is the demand-driven, community management model for rural water supply systems doing? Evidence from Bolivia, Peru, and Ghana’, BWPI Working Paper 22, Brooks World Poverty Institute: Manchester, by Dale Whittington, Jennifer Davis and Linda Prokopy, Kristin Komives, Richard Thorsten, Heather Lukacs, Alexander Bakalian, Wendy Wakeman, 2008 (PDF) Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 14 September 2008

Further Information:
Dale Whittington
Manchester Business School
Booth Street West
Manchester, M15 6PB
UK

Tel: +44 161 3061320
Contact the contributor: dale.whittington@mbs.ac.uk

Manchester Business School, UK

Jennifer Davis
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega
Room 255- MC 4020
Stanford
California 94305
USA

Tel: +1 650 725 9170
Contact the contributor: jennadavis@stanford.edu

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, California, USA

Linda Prokopy
Department of Forestry and Natural Resources
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907
USA

Tel: +1 765 496 2221
Fax: +1 765 496 2422
Contact the contributor: lprokopy@purdue.edu

Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, USA

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'New approaches to manage rural water supplies in India'

'Can South Africa’s rural poor be guaranteed water?'