"Start doing the right things in the right way"
Updated - Saturday 10 July 2010
Community management of water resources in rural areas remains the most effective and reliable service delivery model (SDM) in as long as it is backed up by strengthened governance and improvements in management. “ Start doing the right things in the right way” -- this was unanimously endorsed by some 200 delegates from 29 countries at the April 2010 International Symposium on Rural Water Services (Kampala). This synthesis report presents the highlights of the activity -- pointing out to what may be referred to as an ‘emerging philosophy in the water sector’.
This 'emerging philosophy' stems from the recognition that:
• Common practise and approaches to development (technology focus, one-off projects) in the water sector are insufficient. There is now a more concerted effort to move towards a ‘service delivery approach’ (SDA).
• There is a need to achieve a balanced, sustainable ‘financial equation’ to adequately cover the full life-cycle cost of the SDA.
• The failures and successes to community managed water service delivery result from the convergence of many factors (political, social and economic), and not in isolation.
• Community management models require on-going, long-term external support and multi-stakeholder collaboration (i.e. institutionalised post-construction support; legal regulation and mechanisms for accountability and its monitoring; the separation of service delivery and service oversight or regulatory functions, etc.).
As noted in the report (page 8):
“...discussions and recommendations of the symposium reflect a maturing of the community management paradigm; recognition that while not everything is perfect, there is a solid basis of experience from around the world on which to build”.
The synthesis report concludes with an overview of the next steps, namely the move “... away from the scramble to do things (to build anything just to meet the crushing unmet need)” to starting to doing the right things (providing services) in the right way (sustainably and predictably)” (page 9).
