Self-Supply

Abstract

While governments and development partners focus on improving community and utility-managed water supplies to ensure access for all, hundreds of millions of people are taking actions to supply their own water. In the WASH sector household investment in construction and improvement of facilities is widely employed in sanitation but in water similar efforts are ignored. Recognition of the contribution of self-supply towards universal access to water and its full potential, is hampered by a lack of data, analysis and guidance. This well-reasoned source book highlights the magnitude of the contribution of self-supply to urban and rural water provision world-wide, and the gains that are possible when governments recognise and support household-led supply development and up-grading. With limited public finances in low- (and many middle-) income countries, self-supply can fill gaps in public provision, especially amongst low-density rural populations. The book focuses on sub-Saharan Africa as the region with the greatest predicted shortfall in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for water. Household supplies can be created, or accelerated to basic or safely managed levels, through approaches that build on the investment and actions of families, with the availability of technology options and cost-effective support from the private and public sectors. The role of self-supply needs greater recognition and a change in mindset of governments, development partners and practitioners if water services are to be extended to all and no-one is to be left behind.

Domestic Wells – Introduction and Overview

“…However, the available information indicates that hundreds of millions of people worldwide rely on domestic wells. Sutton (2021) estimated that more than one billion people around the world use self-supplied water (i.e., households providing water by their own means). This estimate is for all types of household self-supplies, including those using surface water sources and rainwater cisterns, but the majority of self-supplies are from groundwater sources.…”

“…New data have been published recently (e.g., Sutton and Butterworth, 2021;Foster et al, 2021) because household self-supply is being promoted as an approach to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal for drinking water (i.e., to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030).…”

“…Sub-Saharan Africa it is estimated that 155 million people rely on dug wells and springs for their domestic water (Sutton and Butterworth, 2021).…”

Fear, Efficacy, and Environmental Health Risk Reporting: Complex Responses to Water Quality Test Results in Low-Income Communities

“…In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, where water access is largely reliant on community managed supplies or self-supply [ 11 , 12 ], water-related disease is an important public health challenge [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Since the 1980s, international and national development policies have focused on infrastructure design and quality of construction as a means to improve the sustainability and safety of supplies while devolving responsibility for operations and maintenance to the community level [ 16 , 17 ].…”

Customary Water Tenure

“…3 and 4), mobilize heritage, culture and existing technical, financial, social and institutional capital. Accordingly, both the WASH sector (Sutton and Butterworth 2021) and irrigation sector (Giordano et al 2012;Woodhouse et al 2017;Izzi et al 2021) recognize and increasingly support self supply and farmer-led irrigation. This recognition and support of heritage and culture but also the vibrancy of customary water tenure accelerates the sustainable achievement of SDG 1 (ending poverty), 2 (food security) and 5 (gender equality by alleviating women's domestic chores).…”