Africa
Poor people in developing countries need water for many purposes: for drinking, bathing, irrigating vegetable gardens, and watering livestock. However, responsibility for water services is divided between different government agencies, the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) and irrigation sub-sectors, with the result that people's holistic needs are not met. Multiple use water services (MUS) is a participatory water services approach that takes account of poor people's multiple water needs as a starting point of planning, and the approach has been implemented in at least 22 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Scaling up Multiple Use Water Services argues that by designing cost-effective multi-purpose infrastructure MUS can have a positive impact on people's health and livelihoods. It analyses and explains the success factors of MUS, using a framework of accountability for public service delivery, and it also examines why there has been resistance against scaling up MUS. A stronger service delivery approach can overcome this resistance, by rewarding more livelihood outcomes, by fostering discretionary decision-making power of local-level staff and by allowing horizontal coordination.This book should be read by government and aid agency policy makers in the WASH and agriculture sectors, by development field workers, and by academics, researchers and students of international development.
Presentation by Tidiane Diallo, Regional Technical Adviser of WaterAid West Africa on practices and experiences in the West Africa region.
Presentation by Lucien Damiba of WaterAid on community based water resources management (CBWRM) in West Africa.
A mix of secondary and primary research was conducted to examine the hypothesis that access to an at-house water supply will deliver significantly greater health, social and economic benefits than those derived from a shared public water supply. The research was carried out by a team from the University of Leeds, University of North Carolina, University of East Anglia, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London, and was based on a mix of literature review and field-base case studies. Fieldwork was carried out in three countries; Ghana, South Africa and Vietnam and used a mix of data collection methods, specifically a three-part household questionnaire, which included anthropometric measures and the measurement of water collection journeys, natural group discussions, and contextual checklists.
The headline conclusion from the research is that at-home water supply has significant, measurable benefits when compared with shared water supply outside the home provided that the service provided is reliable enough to ensure access to adequate quantities of water when required. Reliable at-home water supply results in higher volumes of water consumed, greater practice of key hygiene behaviours, a reduction in musculo-skeletal impacts associated with carrying water from outside the home, and improved water quality. This suggests a logical policy shift towards the promotion of reliable household access as the international benchmark for water supply.
Report by B. Evans, J. Bartram, P. Hunter, A.R. Williams, J.A. Geere, B. Majuru, L. Bates, M. Fisher, A. Overbo, W.P. Schmidt available on DFID's Research for Development site.
In this presentation, Barbara van Koppen (IWMI) highlighted guidelines for community scale MUS, as applied in Southern Africa.
Powerpoint presentation by Jonathan Chisaka, International Water Management Institute, given at the World Water Forum in Turkey, 2009.
Powerpoint presentation by Ian Thorpe, Pumpaid, given at the World Water Forum in Turkey, 2009.
At the 7th WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA Symposium, held in Lilongwe, Malawi from 1-3 November 2006, the MUS project hosted a special session on multiple uses of water. A background paper to the session was prepared. This paper introduces the mus concept and its framework. It goes into detail on the relevance of mus for the SADC region, specially looking into issues of relevance for researchers. A short report of the session is also available.