Taking sustainable rural water supply services to scale: a discussion paper

Whereas many successful rural water supply (RWS) initiatives have been documented, few have evolved into sustained national programs. This paper reviews some of the issues associated with scaling up an effective RWS initiative, by which is meant that it reaches (or is expected to reach) the vast majority of the target population with sustainable, improved services within a reasonable time frame (inclusion), and that a system of actors and institutions (public, private, and/or civic) is in place that has the necessary capacity and resources to carry out the RWS service delivery approach indefinitely (institutionalization). Four broad categories of constraints to scaling up in RWS are identifies: insufficient resources, lack of knowledge/shared understanding, resistance, and untested implementation conditions. Drawing on relevant literature and empirical data from a limited number of cases, some preliminary thoughts on these bottlenecks and suggestions for an agenda for research that can yield guidelines for more scalable project design are offered.

PDF document from the WSP site

Contact: Bank Netherlands Water Partnership
Energy and Water Department,
World Bank
bnwp@worldbank.org
Water and Sanitation Program
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