Assessing sustainability of community management of rural water systems in the developing world

Abstract

An alarmingly high percentage of drinking water systems in the developing world do not provide design service, or may even fail. This has health implications for vulnerable populations forced to consume water from alternative, often unimproved sources. The Sustainability Assessment Tool developed in this research serves as a diagnostic to inform decision-making, characterize specific needs of rural communities in the management of their water systems, and identify weaknesses in training regimes or support mechanisms. Fifteen specific measures result in a score of sustainability likely (SL), possible, or unlikely for eight indicators. A weighting factor is applied to each indicator to provide an overall sustainability score. The framework was tested on 61 statistically representative geographically stratified sample communities with rural water systems in the Dominican Republic. Twenty-three percent of systems were assessed to be SL, 59% sustainability possible, and for 18% it is unlikely the community will be able to overcome a significant challenge(s). As post-construction support increased so did community participation (p = 0.005) and financial durability (p = 0.004). Increased accounting transparency was correlated to increased compliance with user tariffs (p < 0.001) and system age was inversely correlated to transparency (p = 0.003) and community activity level (p = 0.005).

Sustainability of Water Safety Plans Developed in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…In order to evaluate the sustainability of a water service, several frameworks have already been developed and adopted worldwide, using specific and objective sustainability indices [15][16][17]. Interesting tools were also suggested by the IRC (International Water and Sanitation Centre) [18,19], where for instance the quality and quantity of water delivered, the distance/access to and reliability of water supply services were the main aspects taken into consideration.…”

Using Causal Loop Diagramming to Explore the Drivers of the Sustained Functionality of Rural Water Services in Timor-Leste

“…While CBM schemes often appear sensible in many rural water management contexts, there are inherent technical, social and economic constraints that introduce additional complexity and often inhibit sustained water service provision. In this case, "technical" constraints generally relate to the community's ability to properly operate and repair the water system [17,18]; "economic" constraints refer to the capacity of the community to afford O & M costs [19,20]; and lastly, "social" constraints generally refer to such aspects as the perceived demand for services, community organization and community member satisfaction with the intervention [3,[21][22][23]. As a result of these frequently confounding constraints, many critics state communities inherently lack the necessary capacity to maintain their water systems without the help of the external support of governments or NGOs.…”

Improving the Global Competency of Graduate Engineers Through Peace Corps Partnership and Long-term International Service

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