Debate on development approaches to meet equitable and sustainable access to water in cities of the global south

Embracing diversity or reinforcing inequalities?

DGIS H2O on-line course 2016Michelle Kooy, Sr.Lecturer UNESCO-IHE

Is the current diversity in urban water services positive or negative in terms of development goals?

Questions for today1. Can diversity in urban water services help address issues of inequalities in

access?2. Can diversity in urban water services help address issues of ecological

sustainability?

Debate

MDGs: Target 7C pledged to halve, by 2015, the population of people without access to an improved drinking water source

Achieved at a global level in 2010 conceals massive disparities between and with countries (India & China vs. SSA)

SDGs: Goal 6.1 “By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all”

Question for today: Can this goal be met through a different development approach to urban water supply?

Water and Development Goals

• Utility centric model > urban infrastructural ideal• Equated with modernization and indicator for state of development

Dominant development approach

Less than half the population in most urban centers in Africa, Asia, and L.A. have piped water to their homes (UNICEF, 2014)

“The lack of infrastructure or access is perceived as a developmental delay which time will remedy, whereas alternative services are temporary solutions, destined to disappear”, [BUT] the diversity is not confined to poor areas “but is an integral part of the material fabric of southern cities”

Sylvie Jaglin (2014) “Regulating service delivery in southern cities: rethinking urban heterogeneity”, in the Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South.

…not there (yet?)

…not there…ever?

Complex mix of sources, uses, and intermediaries in planned and unplanned settings and by affluent and poor citizens

• informal, small-scale and unofficial strategies to access water

• Combinations of different water sources

• piped water, groundwater, surface water, bottled water, rainwater

Realities of supply in cities of the global South

Nganyanyuka et al. (2014) Accessing water services in Dar es Salaam: Are we counting what counts? Habitat International 44: 358-366

Spring water in Arusha, Tanzania

Network is not homogeneous

Variety of providers & service delivery modalities

• different tariffs• different water quality• Different continuity of supply

Tailored to ability to pay, tailoring to consumer needs?

Diversity within piped network system

VEI water kiosk in Lilongwe, Malawi

Self-supply through groundwater is increasing by 1.5 > 5% /year in Sub-Saharan Africa

“Hundreds of millions of people in low-income urban settlements rely on wells for drinking and other domestic purposes. Efforts to enhance the quality, reliability and sustainability of these water sources receive little attention, locally and internationally. The implicit justification is that wells do not provide adequate water, but that little can be done to improve these supplies as they are essentially a residual that needs to be eliminated by the continued expansion of piped water systems.”Gronwall et al. (2010)

Diversity outside of the network: Groundwater

Shallow groundwater for non-potable water uses in Jakarta, Indonesia

“Sachet water has expanded drinking water access and is often of sufficient quality to serve as an improved water source”

Stoler (2012) Improved but unsustainable: accounting for sachet water in post-2015 goals for global safe water. Tropical Medicine and International Health 17(12): 1506–1508.

Greater Accra – 50% low income HH used sachet for drinking

Jakarta – 70% of all urban residents use packaged or bottled water for drinking

Diversity outside of the network: Bottled water

– Recognition of the diversity of water services in assessing and achieving equity of access

– Integrating issues of ecological sustainability across all urban water sources – relations between wastewater and water quality; surface water quality, groundwater sustainability; bottled water waste

– Resilience of urban water services: redundancy, modularity, Water Sensitive Cities…

Relevance for development goals?

“In order to go beyond this observation [of failure in water infrastructure systems in southern cities], I propose a radical change in perspective, taking as a starting point not the failure of urban services and the institutions responsible for their delivery, but the vitality and multiplicity of actual delivery systems which, despite policy announcements and reforms, and notwithstanding imported models, survive and contribute to the functioning of cities.” Jaglin, 2014: 434

Is the current diversity in urban water services positive or negative in terms of development goals?

Questions for today1. Can diversity in urban water services help address issues of inequalities in

access?2. Can diversity in urban water services help address issues of ecological

sustainability?

Is diversity of urban water services good or bad? What does this diversity mean, for whom?

Debate questions