Access to Water in the Slums of the Developing World

The text and data in this publication may be reproduced as long as the source is cited. Reproductions for commercial purposes are forbiddenThe discussion reveals the failure of public policies as well as markets to provide satisfactory solutions to the problems of access to a safe, affordable and continuous water supply. In many countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, access to safe water through household connections declined in the 1990s. Achievements in access rates in many Asian and African economies are the due to widespread use of public water points such as public standpipes and kiosks. These sources are important, but doubtless the quality of access to water with these facilities is unsatisfactory since they involve greater effort by households, involving queuing, carrying water and lacking continuous access. A substantial proportion of urban dwellers in developing countries, especially in unplanned settlements, rely on a wide range of small-scale providers whose services are vital in the absence of alternatives. Their services, however, are often inferior to those provided by the formal network. Invariably, the water charges of alternative sources are higher than those for supply from the public network.Final Published versio

Access to Water in the Slums of the Developing World

According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), 924 million people lived in slums in 2001. Population growth in these settlements is much greater than in other urban areas. The estimates suggest that this figure may rise to 1.5 billion by 2020 (Payne, 2005). This rapid increase is expected despite ?slum upgrading? efforts that have been taking place for decades, though inconsistently and with disruptions over time. There is a prolific literature on informal settlement areas, but research on access to essential services such as water and sanitation (WS) in these areas is very limited. Most studies consider issues of access in connection to urban poverty, an approach that often reduces the discussion to the income and expenditure constraints faced by households. Examining access to WS in the slums spurs an appreciation of the multidimensional nature of the problem, including income poverty, infrastructural limitations, asset ownership and housing quality. Moreover, developments in the slums concern every aspect of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper examines the conditions of access to water in the slums of the developing world. It has three goals. The first is to identify the objective and policy-related challenges that hinder progress in the provision of safe, affordable, continuous and easy access to water in countries where there is a sizeable slum population. The second is to explore the existing systems of provision in informal settlements and to discuss the weaknesses and strengths of each. The third is to make policy recommendations. Though the discussion on access to sanitation is limited, this is not to deny the importance of that issue. Besides, water and sanitation services are often intrinsically linked and therefore are provided together by network utilities. The discussion reveals the failure of public policies as well as markets to provide satisfactory solutions to the problems of access to a safe, affordable and continuous water supply. In many countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, access to safe water through household connections declined in the 1990s. Achievements in access rates in many Asian and African economies are the due to widespread use of public water points such as public standpipes and kiosks. These sources are important, but doubtless the quality of access to water with these facilities is unsatisfactory since they involve greater effort by households, involving queuing, carrying water and lacking continuous access. A substantial proportion of urban dwellers in developing countries, especially in unplanned settlements, rely on a wide range of small-scale providers whose services are vital in the absence of alternatives. Their services, however, are often inferior to those provided by the formal network. Invariably, the water charges of alternative sources are higher than those for supply from the public network. Section 2 provides a general discussion of informal settlements and outlines the growth of slum development and trends in access to water supply since 1990. Section 3 examines changing public policies towards squatter settlements and the challenges such settlements pose. Section 4 presents the problems associated with the existing market-based water supply arrangements in countries where a sizeable proportion of the urban population resides in informal settlement areas. We then argue for the need to pursue a more proactive public policy on the basis of a discussion that highlights the limitations of private sector ventures. The paper concludes with a number of policy recommendations.Access to Water in the Slums of the Developing World

Reforming Without Resourcing: The Case of the Urban Water Supply in Zambia

I. Introduction Public water supply systems have increasingly been subject to commercialisation or corporatisation in the developing world. This method is sometimes used as a surrogate for privatisation in circumstances where existing systems of provision are unattractive for multinational water companies. By reforming the public sector in the image of independent and self-sufficient private enterprises, the chief aim of commercialisation is to improve the efficiency of operations often associated with the private sector. (...)Reforming Without Resourcing: The Case of the Urban Water Supply in Zambia

Reformando sem Conseguir Recursos: o Caso do Abastecimento de Água Urbano em Zâmbia

Reformando sem Conseguir Recursos: o Caso do Abastecimento de Água Urbano em Zâmbia

Supporting quality indicators in the UK national health service

Quality indicators for performance management of the UK National Health Service have been introduced for general practitioners (GPs) in order to monitor if they are meeting their performance targets. Such requirements impose significant load to GPs’ everyday operations and any type of software solution that stores relevant information and addresses performance indicators can help GPs to justify their fundholding. In this paper we report on a way of incorporating the semantics of a set of quality indicators in a database schema that can fit any GPs' practice. We concentrate on indicators that posed problems when creating the database and we provide a discussion that justifies our design decisions

Thermal fission rate around super-normal phase transition

Using Langer's $Im F$ method, we discuss the temperature dependence of nuclear fission width in the presence of dissipative environments. We introduce a low cut-off frequency to the spectral density of the environmental oscillators in order to mimic the pairing gap. It is shown that the decay width rapidly decreases at the critical temperature, where the phase transition from super to normal fluids takes place. Relation to the recently observed threshold for the dissipative fission is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, Submitted to Physical Review C for publication, 3 Postscript figures are available by request from [email protected]

La pobreza del Estado : reconsideración del rol del Estado en la lucha contra la pobreza global

El espectro de la pobreza ha tenido una presencia constante en la historia de la humanidad. Actualmente es posible erradicar la pobreza extrema. Existen los recursos para lograrlo en un período razonable. Los deseos y la disposición de las organizaciones internacionales, los gobiernos y los pueblos son evidentes en los discursos dominantes que expresan la necesidad y la voluntad de la comunidad internacional de reducir y erradicar la pobreza. ¿Cuáles son los factores que están impidiendo el logro de una meta tan ampliamente aceptada? Es difícil dar una respuesta exhaustiva y precisa a esta pregunta. No obstante, una parte sustancial de la explicación puede estar en una de las estructuras más importantes, pero problemáticas, del mundo moderno, a saber, el Estado.Prefacio / Hartley Dean, Alberto Cimadamore y Jorge Siqueira Introducción Parte I. Dimensiones teórica y global El programa mundial de derechos humanos y la (im)posibilidad del Estado ético Hartley Dean La redefinición del problema social y la retórica acerca de la pobreza durante el decenio de 1990 Anete Brito Leal Ivo La antiglobalización y el antiestatismo desde la perspectiva del postdesarrollo y el antiutilitarismo Paulo Henrique Martins Parte II. Dimensiones política y nacional La estrategia de reducción de la pobreza y la brecha educacional en la Guatemala de posguerra Virgilio Álvarez Aragón El futuro que no llegará: la erradicación de la pobreza desde la perspectiva del gobierno federal de México (2000-2006) Nelson Arteaga Botello Las dificultades de una política de seguridad alimentaria en el Brasil José Graziano da Silva, Walter Belik y Maya Takagi Políticas de empleo público como instrumentos para la reducción de la pobreza y la desigualdad en el Brasil Tarcisio Patricio de Araujo y Roberto Alves de Lima Pobreza, desigualdad y desarrollo: el rol del Estado en la experiencia de Cuba Mayra Paula Espina Prieto ¿Privatización para la reducción de la pobreza? : El caso de Bangladesh y su importancia para otras economías en desarrollo Hulya Dagdeviren Parte III. Dimensiones práctica y local Sinergias frágiles para el desarrollo: el caso de Jardim Oratório, São Paulo, Brasil Rowan Ireland Pobreza, políticas y prestidigitación en Bolivia y América Latina John-Andrew McNeish Fondos Sociales en África: ¿una respuesta clientelístico-tecnocrática a la pobreza? Einar Braathe

Access to Water in the Slums of the Developing World

The discussion reveals the failure of public policies as well as markets to provide satisfactory solutions to the problems of access to a safe, affordable and continuous water supply. In many countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, access to safe water through household connections declined in the 1990s. Achievements in access rates in many Asian and African economies are the due to widespread use of public water points such as public standpipes and kiosks. These sources are important, but doubtless the quality of access to water with these facilities is unsatisfactory since they involve greater effort by households, involving queuing, carrying water and lacking continuous access. A substantial proportion of urban dwellers in developing countries, especially in unplanned settlements, rely on a wide range of small-scale providers whose services are vital in the absence of alternatives. Their services, however, are often inferior to those provided by the formal network. Invariably, the water charges of alternative sources are higher than those for supply from the public network

Business models for cloud computing: Experiences from developing Modeling & Simulation as a Service applications in industry

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