Water Supply And Sanitation Services Research Articles

Aedes Aegypti-Insights on the Impact of Water Services.

Epidemics in general and dengue in particular surcharge the health services and the economy. However, the fighting actions are circumscribed to the health sector despite the known positive economic impacts that the investments in water supply and sanitation services (WSS) may cause on society and public health. Besides the fact that urban WSS infrastructure is closely linked to disease prevention, in Brazil, the user's perception and demand are very few and many institutional aspects, like the integration between local WSS, health, environment, and development of city councils, need to be improved and better aligned. In this way, disease control and vector density reduction remain challenges to be overcome. This article addresses the need for greater institutionalization of urban WSS relating them to health aspects from official data. It concludes that the negative impacts of lacking universal access to WSS on dengue and other mosquito diseases are dispersed in all cities, regions, and populations regardless of their degree of development. Furthermore, contrary to what is normally emphasized, the analysis carried out shows that the lack of urban stormwater management systems may be an important component of WSS in preventing the proliferation of dengue disease.

Between development and banking: the KfW Development Bank in Latin America’s water sector

ABSTRACT This paper sheds light on the question to what extent public development banks can, and do, contribute to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 on water and sanitation under the current political economic conditions, drawing on the case of the German KfW Development Bank and its activities in Latin America. It concludes that bankable, large water supply and sanitation services (WSS) infrastructure projects based on cost-recovery models can hardly deliver the WSS systems needed in Latin America in a sustainable manner. Achieving SDG 6 requires long-term subsidies for public water utilities and addressing the political conditions of WSS governance on the ground.

Policies and incentives for developing universal access to water and sanitation for vulnerable families

Abstract This research investigates the development of water supply and sanitation services (WSS) for vulnerable households, discussing the alignment of policies, institutions, and regulations to provide the right incentives to achieve universal access. It provides evidence of the actions carried out in Brazil, particularly the integration of the recent National Public Policy for the universalization of WSS and assistance to vulnerable areas. The expansion of private sector participation is discussed as an alternative to stimulate the universalization of WSS.

Impact of poverty reduction on access to water and sanitation in low- and lower-middle-income countries: country-specific Bayesian projections to 2030.

In 2017, 785 million people globally lacked access to basic services of drinking water and 2 billion people lived without basic sanitation services. Most of these people live in low- and lower-middle-income countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. To monitor the progress towards universal access to water and sanitation, this study aimed to predict the coverage of access to basic drinking water supply and sanitation (WSS) services as well as the reduction in the practice of open defecation by 2030, under two assumptions: following the current trends and accelerated poverty reduction. Households reporting access to basic WSS services and those practising open defecation were extracted from 210 nationally representative Demographic Health Surveys and Multiple Cluster Indicator Surveys (1994-2016) from 51 countries. A Bayesian hierarchical mixed effect linear regression model was developed to predict the indicators in 2030 at national, urban-rural and wealth-specific levels. A Bayesian regression model with accelerated reduction in poverty by 2030 was applied to assess the impact of poverty reduction on these indicators. Out of 51 countries, only nine (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ghana, India, Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines, Togo and Vietnam) were predicted to reach over 90% coverage in access to basic services of drinking water by 2030. However, none of the countries were projected to achieve equivalent coverage for access to basic sanitation services. By 2030, 21 countries were projected to achieve the target of less than 10% households practising open defecation. Urban-rural and wealth-derived disparities in access to basic WSS services, especially sanitation, were more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa than South Asia and Southeast Asia. Access to basic sanitation services was projected to benefit more from poverty reduction than access to basic drinking water services. Households residing in rural settings were predicted to receive greater benefit from poverty reduction than urban populations in access to both basic WSS services. Achieving poverty eradication targets may have a substantial positive impact on access to basic water supply and sanitation services. However, many low- and lower-middle-income countries will struggle to achieve the goal of universal access to basic services, especially in the sanitation sector.

Public water supply and sanitation policies and inclusive development of the urban poor in Brazil

AbstractPoorly designed policies jeopardise ecosystems and their services and the expansion of basic services to vulnerable populations. In the water and sanitation (WatSan) sector, inadequate access of the urban poor to formal and public drinking water supply and sanitation services (WSS) calls for more inclusive policies. Inclusive development (ID) has social, environmental and relational dimensions. However, there is little research on operationalising ID dimensions in WatSan policy discourse analysis. Hence, this paper addresses: How can we elaborate on indicators for inclusive WatSan policies? How can these be applied to assess the design of Brazilian WatSan policies? It examines the literature on ID and WatSan, develops and applies an analytical framework with six indicators to assess ID in WSS through policy analysis: access to minimum WSS; access to WSS even if the urban poor do not have formal housing; domestic wastewater collection/treatment; water availability; participation; and WSS subsidies for low-income people. Comparison between two Brazilian WatSan policies shows that the current WatSan law scores higher on ID than the previous law but neglects key aspects of social, environmental and relational ID dimensions. The selected indicators were useful to operationalise ID in WatSan policy discourse analysis and can boost policy design assessment elsewhere.

Application of the analytic hierarchy process to sustainability of water supply and sanitation services: the case of Algeria

Abstract The aim of this paper is to develop a methodological tool for comprehensive evaluation of sustainability of water supply and sanitation services (WSSs) considering all quantitative and qualitative effective factors using the analytic hierarchy process. The proposed method has a significant advantage that determines which aspects have more priority and which ones are less important; hence, it gives a very good guideline for planning and implementation of a country's projects for sustainable development in WSSs. Additionally, the application of the proposed method is shown for Algeria as a case study. six dimensions, 12 criteria and 50 indicators were defined as three different levels of hierarchy for this purpose. Moreover, the matrices of pairwise comparisons were obtained by judgments of 12 experts in different involved fields including policy makers, managers and scientists. According to the results, the most important dimensions were economic (38.3%) and technical (26.1%) aspects. Furthermore, the financial autonomy (18.7%) and technical performance (18.4%) had the highest and transparency (2%) and organization (2.8%) had the lowest weights among all criteria. In addition, indicators with a high overall weight are: operation and maintenance cost, grand balanced budget, reliability, small budget balance, opportunity cost and state subsidy rates for investments.

Urban water pricing in Chile: cost recovery, affordability, and water conservation

To address water scarcity issues, policymakers are increasingly considering pricing as an important tool. However, implementing tariff reforms is often difficult in practice due to political factors and the absence of governance structures that can result in quality service provision. Additionally, institutional replication of successful water pricing policies has been difficult due to incomplete information and the contextual uniqueness of local institutions, politics, and social relations. The case study reported here seeks to fill this gap by analyzing Chile's water supply and sanitation (WSS) regulatory framework and evaluating its performance. We show that Chile's policy of providing WSS services through privatized regional and local water companies has been a notable success, but faces new challenges. Thus, Chile's urban water pricing regulation represents an interesting case study for countries that are analyzing their water and sanitation regulation. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1194. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1194This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Value of Water

Bayesian networks modelling in support to cross-cutting analysis of water supply and sanitation in developing countries

Abstract. Despite the efforts made towards the Millennium Development Goals targets during the last decade, improved access to water supply or basic sanitation still remains unavailable for millions of people across the world. This paper proposes a set of models that use 25 key variables and country profiles from the WatSan4Dev data set involving water supply and sanitation (Dondeynaz et al., 2012). This paper suggests the use of Bayesian network modelling methods because they are more easily adapted to deal with non-normal distributions, and integrate a qualitative approach for data analysis. They also offer the advantage of integrating preliminary knowledge into the probabilistic models. The statistical performance of the proposed models ranges between 20 and 5% error rates, which are very satisfactory taking into account the strong heterogeneity of variables. Probabilistic scenarios run from the models allow an assessment of the relationships between human development, external support, governance aspects, economic activities and water supply and sanitation (WSS) access. According to models proposed in this paper, gaining a strong poverty reduction will require the WSS access to reach 75–76% through: (1) the management of ongoing urbanisation processes to avoid slums development; and (2) the improvement of health care, for instance for children. Improving governance, such as institutional efficiency, capacities to make and apply rules, or control of corruption is positively associated with WSS sustainable development. The first condition for an increment of the HDP (human development and poverty) remains of course an improvement of the economic conditions with higher household incomes. Moreover, a significant country commitment to the environment, associated with civil society freedom of expression constitutes a favourable setting for sustainable WSS services delivery. Intensive agriculture using irrigation practises also appears as a mean for sustainable WSS thanks to multi-uses and complementarities. With a WSS sector organised at national level, irrigation practices can support the structuring and efficiency of the agriculture sector. It may then induce rural development in areas where WSS access often is set back compared to urban areas1. External financial support, called Official Development Assistance (ODA CI), plays a role in WSS improvement but comes last in the sensitivity analyses of models. An overall 47% of the Official Development Assistance goes first to poor countries, and is associated to governance aspects: (1) political stability and (2) country commitment to the environment and civil society degree of freedom. These governance aspects constitute a good framework for aid implementation in recipient countries. Modelling is run with the five groups of countries as defined in Dondeynaz et al. (2012). Models for profile 4 (essential external support) and profile 5 (primary material consumption) are specifically detailed and analysed in this paper. For countries in profile 4, fighting against water scarcity and progressing desertification should be the priority. However, for countries in profile 5, efforts should first concentrate on consolidation of political stability while supporting diversification of the economic activities. Nevertheless, for both profiles, reduction of poverty should remain the first priority as previously indicated. 1 JMP statistics, 2004 http://www.wssinfo.org/data-estimates/table/, last access: 22 July 2013.

Falling through the net: access to water and sanitation by the peri-urban water poor

There is still a considerable gap that needs to be filled in order to meet the water and sanitation target of the Millennium Development Goals. Current efforts are driven by the particular way in which the problem has been conceptualised, and this has implications for a large part of the population that lacks access to water supply and sanitation services (WSS), but is continually overlooked. This article takes a closer look at official attempts to improve WSS in order to understand their underlying assumptions and subsequent implications for the provision of services. This is contrasted with evidence from research in Cairo, Caracas, Chennai, Dar es Salaam and Mexico City, which sheds light on the continued struggles of the peri-urban water poor in gaining access to services. Peri-urban communities in these cities have developed a number of needs-driven practices in order to compensate for the inefficiency of the formal WSS system, but remain largely invisible and unsupported due to their political status. The article argues for recognition and active involvement of the peri-urban water poor to have a realistic chance to address the global water and sanitation challenges.

Basic Sanitation in Brazil: Lessons from the Past, Opportunities from the Present, Challenges for the Future

This paper presents an analysis of water supply and sanitation (WSS) services in Brazil, and focuses on the broader concept of “basic sanitation” used in Brazil. The analysis departs from the assumption that there is a need to combine appropriate technological approaches with a public-policy perspective that recognises the relevance of the political dimension. I adopt the concept of “systemic conditions” as an analytical tool to integrate the structural factors and processes that influence and even determine the development of WSS services. A brief description of the sector's historical evolution is included, where I identify key obstacles and opportunities facing the sector. The article examines the current state of access to the services, including the political, institutional and legal aspects, and highlights some of the challenges ahead. It shows that, although the Brazilian WSS sector has achieved important advances, there are significant deficits in several areas that need to be addressed. Closing t...