Sustainable services for whom?

Innovations in rural water service delivery are required to achieve universal and equitable water access. Rural water services must not only be operationally sustainable, but also accessible to all. Water services also need to progressively provide a higher level of service toward meeting the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) criteria for “safely managed” water access for all people (Box 1). 

To-date, much of the discourse on service delivery innovation in rural water supply has focused on operational sustainability rather than equality. A sizable proportion of rural water systems do not function as per their design
parameters or fail to meet the demands of a growing and aspiring population, hence the justified attention on functionality. However, relatively little attention has been given to the implications of service delivery innovations for
achieving equality in service provision, or how innovations can be designed specifically to achieve equality.

This learning paper examines implications of the latest thinking on rural water sustainability for achieving equality in rural water service provision, drawing on recent literature on sustainable and equitable water service delivery and experiences on the ground.

Acknowledgements: This learning paper documents lessons and insights from recent learning and research activities in rural water and supply services, conducted jointly by SNV and ISF-UTS, and supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Water for Women Fund. It was published as part of Nepal’s BFL - Inclusive and Sustainable Rural Water Supply Services project.

The paper was prepared by Jeremy Kohlitz, Tim Foster, Naomi Carrard and Juliet Willetts from ISFUTS,
with contributions from Nadira Khawaja, Gian Melloni and Antoinette Kome from SNV. It was
reviewed by Gabrielle Halcrow, and laid out by SNV.

Download