Service provision in rural water supplies: analysis of four community-based systems in Colombia

Isabel Domínguez Rivera,Inés Restrepo-Tarquino,Edgar Ricardo Oviedo-Ocaña

doi:10.11144/javeriana.cdr13-77.sprw

Isabel Domínguez Rivera, Inés Restrepo-Tarquino + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.cdr13-77.sprw

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Abstract

Community management is the tendency to provide water to rural areas worldwide. Despite the diversity of rural communities and their water supplies, policies tend to be uniform, failing to be effective. Four rural water supplies in the Colombian Andes were studied combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Aspects of infrastructure, training of human resources, revenue collection, water quality and post-construction support were studied. The study provides evidence on the need to design policies and programs that consider rural diversity to help communal water organizations to provide sustainable services.

Highlights

In the world, there is a welfare urban-rural gap which demands urgent interventions (Bambra et al, 2010), and extends to water and sanitation services (Bain, Wright, Christenson, & Bartram, 2014; World Health Organization [who] & United Nations Childrens Fund [Unicef], 2014)
In Colombia, low coverage of water in rural areas is partly explained by the low capacities for collecting information, planning, and decision-making in municipalities with low and scattered population, and that receive few transfers from the national government
This research analysed managerial, technical, water quality, and post-construction support aspects in four water supply systems operating in an Andean rural area in Colombia

Summary

Introduction

There is a welfare urban-rural gap which demands urgent interventions (Bambra et al, 2010), and extends to water and sanitation services (Bain, Wright, Christenson, & Bartram, 2014; World Health Organization [who] & United Nations Childrens Fund [Unicef], 2014). Due to the difficulties of governments in developing countries to provide services in rural communities (Foster, 2013; Harvey & Reed, 2007), and the lack of attractive financial returns for private providers to operate in these areas (Bakker, 2007), since the 1990s community management has been the model which governments and donors promote for the provision of water services in the rural world (de San Miguel, Flores, Vilchis, Tovar, & Pedraza, 2015; Harvey & Reed, 2007; Moriarty, Smits, Butterworth, & Franceys, 2013; Smits et al, 2013). Some authors who criticize community management in water services in rural areas believe that these two influences are incompatible and that this may be the main reason why the model is not completely successful (van den Broek & Brown, 2015)

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