Rural Water Supply Network – blog – Page 47 – Rural water services that last, for everyone, forever

Everyone together for everyone forever: changing the whole system in practice

by Patrick Moriarty and Harold Lockwood

In the first post in this series, we explained why we believe that a paradigm shift is needed in the WASH sector: moving beyond the construction of physical hardware to the universal provision of safe drinking water (and sanitation) services worthy of the name.

Because of the number of activities and actors involved, water and sanitation service delivery is inherently complex. And as much as we may be drawn to the idea of straightforward technological or market-based solutions, this complexity means such solutions will never get us all the way to sustainable services for everyone – particularly for the poorest people in the hardest to reach and most remote areas.

It is not enough that one individual or organisation begins to perform better or that an improvement is made in some technical aspect of service delivery. The whole system of individuals, organisations, technologies and…

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Changing the whole system to provide water, sanitation and hygiene services that last

water services that last

By Patrick Moriarty and Harold Lockwood –

For the last six years or so, primarily through our WASHCost and Triple-S initiatives, IRC has engaged deeply with the challenges of what it takes to provide sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene services. We think that we’ve identified many parts of the puzzle (and so have many others working in the same direction – we’re keenly aware that we’re not the only show in town) and we’ve been sharing these regularly through our websites, papers and blogs. But, what does it take for these piecemeal findings to be taken up and to lead to wholesale change: ensuring that the post-MDG goals of universal access with sustainable WASH services can be achieved by 2030?

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“$25 will give a person water”…for a little while

Great blog post about lifecycle costs

Where do you throw your dirt?

Watara Sackor (Min. Public Works / National WASH Committee), Pinky E. White (Min. Health) and James Kokro (Min. of Health / National WASH Committee) head off to interview residents of the Fiamah area of Monrovia.

So I’m in Monrovia this week running a 4 day writing course for twenty staff from across a dozen ministries and government organisations who will be working together to produce the 2014 Sector Performance Report (SPR). Today we did some fieldwork – the group split into three and each visited a community in or near Monrovia.

We wanted to collect some data to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of data collection, presentation and analysis. The first challenge came yesterday when I asked the group to agree on three questions, which would asked to at least 20 people at each visit site.

The first question to be agreed on was “Where do you get your drinking water?”. Pretty straight forward, except that this morning when I wrote up the questions I accidentally wrote “Where do you get your water?”. The consequence was interesting – one team asked about “water” rather than “drinking water” and they were the only ones where some of the respondents gave multiple answers: “Sometimes we get our water from the handpump, sometimes from the well, sometimes from the pipeline” said one woman, interviewed by Watara Sackor, from the Ministry of Public Works.

Continue reading “Where do you throw your dirt?”

The performance of piped water systems versus handpumps in growing rural growth centres (2500 to 7500 people)

water services that last

By Dr. Christelle Pezon, IRC

Piped water systems provide a better service than handpumps, at a lower cost. This conclusion is derived from the in-depth study of the water provision in four rural growth centres (2500 to 7500 people), in Sahel, the poorest region of Burkina Faso (Pezon, 2013).

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Who serves the in-betweeners?

water services that last

By: Marieke Adank, IRC

Small towns and peri-urban areas are by definition found in the grey area in between the truly urban and the truly rural. Also in terms of water supply, fifty shades of grey are found in these types of settlements. People living here often fall in between the cracks of urban utilities and rural water committees. Their water supplies have characteristics of both these service delivery models – though not necessarily the best of those two worlds.

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India rural water supply: an orphan of reforms?

water services that last

By V. Kurian Baby, India Country Director, IRC

Community rural water supply (RWS) in India is an orphan of partially implemented demand responsive sector reforms on the one hand and unsuccessful decentralisation on the other. Historically, rural water supply in India has been outside the sphere of governments (NRDWP 2013). The 73^rd and 74^th constitutional amendment (Act 1992) made drinking water and sanitation a constitutional mandate of the three tier system of Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs). Even after two decades, the decentralisation process is an unaccomplished dream lying between de-concentration and devolution. In many states the progress is either stalled or reversed.

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Groundwater for the 21st Century: A primer for Citizens of Planet Earth

On returning from the Christmas and New Year break, I found a package on my desk from a publisher in the US. Inside was a copy of “Groundwater for the 21st: A Primer for Citizens of Planet Earth” by Dr John A. Connors. Full disclosure: they asked for a review and a blog post in return. As RWSN is all about promoting better understanding and use of groundwater, I don’t see a problem with this, so here we go:

My first question is why does this book exist? Groundwater is a critically important resource and one that is poorly understood. When I started my career as a young water resources officer in the UK, I was constantly amazed that even quite learned folk imagined great caverns and rivers underground. Yes, you do get pretty, karstic limestone caves full of water, but that is a tiny fraction of the world’s groundwater resource.

Users perception of rural water services in Ghana: A case of satisfaction or dissatisfaction?

water services that last

By: Tyhra Kumasi, Senior Research Officer, Triple-S Ghana

Dora is a 33 year old teacher living in Agbedrafo in the Akatsi South District. She depends on the only handpump in the community for her daily domestic chores; however she laments the difficulties in getting access to fetch water. According to Dora “even though fetching is on a first-come-first-serve basis, people bring very big receptacles and containers that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for others to get the opportunity to fetch. Because of this I am sometimes unable to fetch enough. In such a situation I borrow from a neighbour and replace later”. The problem with the borehole is that, after fetching the first few buckets it becomes difficult and hard to pump, one has to wait for a while, about 15 minutes to resume pumping for water. This is worse in the dry season, when she has to…

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December 11, 2013 Webinar – Introducing and scaling up sustainable water and sanitation technologies

WASHTech, THE project (2011-2013)

The WASHTech Consortium is organising a webinar to introduce the WASHTech’s tools and launch the online resource base

Wednesday 11 December, 12.30-13.30 pm CET

Background

This webinar introduces two new tools that will help to select water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) technologies that keep working. The first, the Technology Applicability Framework (TAF), has been extensively tested and is now available on www.washtechnologies.net. A second, complementary tool, the Technology Introduction Process (TIP) provides guidance on the roles and activities needed for successful scaling up of technologies.

The TAF manual, questionnaires, Technology Introduction Process guidelines and other key publications are provided as public domain and can be accessed through www.washtechnologies.net. This resource base also provides a platform for sharing experiences on the application of the TAF after completion of the WASHTech project in December 2013.

Programme