Can 'functionlaity' save the community management model of rural water supply?

As attention increasingly turns to the sustainability of rural water supplies - and not simply overall levels of coverage or access - water point functionality has become a core concern for development practitioners and national governments, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Within the long-enduring Community-Based Management (CBM) model this has resulted in increased scrutiny of the “functionality” of the local water point committee (WPC) or similar community management organisation. This paper reviews the literature written from both practice-focused and critical-academic perspectives and identifies three areas that pose challenges to our understanding of water point functionality as it relates to CBM. These concern the relative neglect of (i) the local institutional and socio-economic landscape, (ii) broader governance processes and power dynamics, and (iii) the socio-technical interface. By examining these three areas, the paper engages with the specific issue of WPC functionality, whilst also considering broader issues relating to the framing of problems in development and the methodological and disciplinary ways that these are addressed. Furthermore, by focusing on community management of rural water points, the paper lays the ground for a more substantial critique of the continuing persistence of the CBM model as a central development strategy

Social-ecological system resilience for WASH

In a rapidly changing world, WASH services are often exposed to a range of unpredictable social, environmental, economic, and physical disturbances that disrupt WASH access. Social-ecological system (SES) resilience thinking can inform WASH service delivery approaches that adapt to changing conditions in order to sustain access for users rather than resist change. In this chapter, we familiarize readers with SES resilience thinking and consider its application to WASH services. We outline three key processes that practitioners can follow to get themselves and other stakeholders into an SES resilience mindset: mapping WASH systems, considering SES resilience principles, and identifying areas for interventions. We provide illustrative examples and resources to assist practitioners in thinking about how SES resilience concepts can be used to plan for WASH services that are flexible and adaptive. We also consider some limitations and pitfalls to SES resilience concepts to encourage readers to take a critical approach

Country clustering applied to the water and sanitation sector: A new tool with potential applications in research and policy

The fields of global health and international development commonly cluster countries by geography and income to target resources and describe progress. For any given sector of interest, a range of relevant indicators can serve as a more appropriate basis for classification. We create a new typology of country clusters specific to the water and sanitation (WatSan) sector based on similarities across multiple WatSan-related indicators. After a literature review and consultation with experts in the WatSan sector, nine indicators were selected. Indicator selection was based on relevance to and suggested influence on national water and sanitation service delivery, and to maximize data availability across as many countries as possible. A hierarchical clustering method and a gap statistic analysis were used to group countries into a natural number of relevant clusters. Two stages of clustering resulted in five clusters, representing 156 countries or 6.75 billion people. The five clusters were not well explained by income or geography, and were unique from existing country clusters used in international development. Analysis of these five clusters revealed that they were more compact and well separated than United Nations and World Bank country clusters. This analysis and resulting country typology suggest that previous geography- or income-based country groupings can be improved upon for applications in the WatSan sector by utilizing globally available WatSan-related indicators. Potential applications include guiding and discussing research, informing policy, improving resource targeting, describing sector progress, and identifying critical knowledge gaps in the WatSan sector