A brief history of community management of rural water supply

Community management of rural water supply and sanitation schemes is now entering its second decade as a key paradigm for water supply development and management. While this book will deal mainly with the current state of community management and the future challenges, it is worth looking briefly at the history of community management and its precursors in the rural water supply sector.

Community management approaches did not appear spontaneously, nor do they exist in a vacuum. They emerged from a long history of trial and error in the rural water supply sector, and are linked to and affected by developments in many other sectors, particularly those related to more general rural development, but also natural resource management and, specifically, water resources management.

The rural water supply and sanitation sector gradually emerged in the two decades prior to the 1980s International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD). It developed in reaction to the struggles of post-colonial states to extend the benefits of 'modern' infrastructure to their rapidly expanding populations. In the view of many of these states, rural water supply was the responsibility of the national state.

If a single starting point for the more recent development of the sector is sought, it should be the 1977 Mar del Plata conference which set the groundwork for the IDWSSD. The Decade put the emphasis on community involvement in rural water and sanitation programmes. Community management came into being only during the IDWSSD, when the problems with existing, state and supply-driven management paradigms came to the surface. One of the main arguments of this book is that it is only now, at the start of the twenty-first century, that community management is ready to grow up from being an interesting pilot approach to become a paradigm for rural water supply throughout the world.

Pre-1980s – early days – the first steps towards involving communities

The earliest documented experiences of community involvement in water supply projects date from the late 1960s. The first use of the 'community participation' keyword in IRC's library database (IRCDOC2) dates from 1967, and concerns an introduction to evaluative research (Suchman 1967). The first books in the IRC collection on community involvement in water supply projects came from Taiwan (1969) and Colombia (1975) (Chang 1969; Inpes-Bogotá 1975). The IRC was an early champion of community involvement, and in the late 1970s it produced the first of its many books on the subject. The first bibliography and literature review on participation and education in community water supply and sanitation were published in 1979 and 1981 (Wijk-Sijbesma 1979, 1981).

1980s – the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade – community involvement

The community involvement paradigm was officially adopted by the international community during the 1977 World Water conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The conference adopted a declaration in which it announced the IDWSSD, the slogan of which was to be Water and Sanitation for All. The conference recognized that to come close to accomplishing this goal, a 'radical overhaul of precepts and investment strategies governing the proliferation of taps, pumps and pipes in the developing world' was required (Black 1998:4).

Such an overhaul was long overdue. The conventional water and sewerage systems, the only ones the international donors had to offer, were complex and affordable only to an elite minority, leaving a large majority of people without services of any kind. Public health experts and engineers had learnt from experience that poor people could only expect exclusion and marginalization from existing models of service delivery (Black 1998). 'The vast majority of those without water and sanitation services were poor, and the countries in which they lived were frequently water short and had little to spend on public infrastructure' (Black 1998:4). Therefore, if there was to be any substance to the Decade's slogan, entirely different, lower-cost approaches would have to be found, capable of extending services to poorer urban and rural areas; and governments and donors had to be persuaded to invest in them.

The new approach was found in concepts of self-reliance and community action that had begun to be popularized using the phrase 'small is beautiful' (Schumacher 1973). Small is beautiful was to become one of the key slogans of the water and sanitation sector. It came with a shift in focus to small NGO-led projects, in which users were encouraged to take an active role in terms of providing inputs, labour or cash for the development of simple, low-cost systems. This was the basis of the 'community participation' model that was to remain accepted practice for much of the rest of the Decade. The Decade also saw a massive expansion of donor investments in water supply and sanitation. These investments were mostly harnessed in projects and programmes. Both the community participation model and the project approach meant a drive away from the supply-driven models that were the territory of the post-colonial states. However, these models of the IDWSSD remained small and scattered and did not begin to approach the scale necessary to address the Decade's ambitious goals.

In parallel with the water sector activities of the IDWSSD, awareness grew throughout the various fields of development co-operation of the need to involve communities or users at all stages of the project cycle. An important chronicler of this process was Robert Chambers. In a number of publications, he stressed the importance of 'putting the last first', and highlighted the dangers of allowing outsiders with their characteristic 'biases' to drive the development process. Rather he suggested a 'bottom up' development model in which the subjects of development themselves defined their needs, priorities and preferred developmental pathways (Chambers 1983).

By the early 1980s there were therefore three main drivers to community participation-based approaches.

• First, a new paradigm for development rooted in the concept that development should come from the roots of a society, instead of from the top.

• Second, there was a widely shared perception that many conventional water supply policies and programmes were failing to achieve their goals.

• Third, a vision that community participation could replace some of the loss of the state's implementation capacity brought about by the implementation of IMF-promoted Structural Adjustment Programmes (Brikké 2000).

Halfway through the IDWSSD, in 1987, the donor community assembled in the External Support Agency Collaborative Council, which officially identified community participation as one of the six basic prerequisites for improved performance of the water and sanitation sector (Appleton 1994). As a result, many projects started involving women and men in trench digging, system maintenance and water committees. However, it soon turned out that sustainable water and sanitation could not be achieved without involving people not just in the manual work, but also in the planning of programmes and the selection of technology.

It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that it is around this time that the first references to 'community management' start to appear. Early examples include David Korten's monograph on community management in Asia (Korten 1986) and Parwoto's model for community-based management in Indonesia (Parwoto 1986). Later, in 1988, field studies in which community management played a major role emerged from Chile (Razeto 1988), Guatemala (Barrientos 1988), and Malawi (IRC 1988), while a year later experience emerged from Cameroon (Knecht 1989), sub-Saharan Africa (Andersen 1989), Ghana (GWSC 1989), Indonesia (Narayan-Parker 1989), and a WASH study (Roark et al. 1989). Experiences such as these were brought together in New Delhi in 1990 to mark the official birth of the community management paradigm.

The IDWSSD – a case of limited success

By the end of the Decade a total of US$73 891 million had been spent on expanding water supply, and by 1990 no region had achieved less than 73 per cent coverage of the population in urban areas (South East Asia) and less than 32 per cent coverage of the population in rural areas (Africa). Overall, this represented a significant increase in water supply service coverage: from 75 per cent in 1980 to 85 per cent in 1990. This was an enormous achievement; however, it also fell far short of attaining 'water and sanitation for all'. During the Decade it also became clear that many of the constructed water and sanitation systems broke down soon after implementation as a result of poor maintenance and management. Although coverage was increased, the sustainability was often questionable.

While missing by a wide margin its objective of water and sanitation for all, the Decade did trigger a number of activities and initiatives, which resulted in 1.2 billion more people worldwide having access to adequate and safe drinking water supply facilities, and 770 million more having access to sanitary facilities. In addition to this, a clear success of the Decade was in putting 'appropriate technology' firmly at the centre of rural water supply.

1990s – New Delhi – community management – Dublin and Rio

As the IDWSSD came to an end in 1990, a flurry of regional and global meetings sought to draw together the lessons of the Decade and to map out new directions for the water and sanitation sector in the 1990s. The resulting New Delhi Statement promoted the principle of 'Some for all rather than more for some', which set out the guiding principles as the basis of future sector work. For the first time at a global water conference, community management was endorsed in the guiding principles (UNDP 1990).

This was in part a reaction to the failures in upkeep and maintenance of the community participation schemes of the 1980s, and was supported intellectually on the 'last first' paradigm championed by Chambers et al. Put simply, the new paradigm said that communities should not just be involved in system inception, but should accept ultimate responsibility for and ownership of the entire life cycle of the system.

Other guiding principles adopted in New Delhi also have a bearing on community management. On institutional reforms, the New Delhi Statement promotes an integrated approach, including changes in procedures, attitudes and behaviour and the full participation of women at all levels in sector institutions. It also urges adoption of sound financial practices, where community management can also play an important role.

The emphasis on community management was strengthened in the Nordic Fresh Water Initiative in 1991, which called for water management responsibility to be devolved to the lowest possible level (Earth Summit 2002). The subject was further stressed in the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development in 1992 (ICWE 1992). The 500 participants at that meeting agreed that water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy makers at all levels. They underlined that women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water, and suggested that in principle water should be recognized as an economic good.

At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, world leaders committed themselves to a comprehensive programme to provide sustainable water supply and sanitation services to the hundreds of millions of the world's population who currently lack them. At the summit, all states and support agencies were urged to implement activities aiming for universal coverage outlined in Agenda 21, a strategy for sustainable development in the twenty-first century.

A guiding principle of Agenda 21 is: 'Community management of services, backed by measures to strengthen local institutions in implementing and sustaining water and sanitation programmes'. The activity list includes numerous measures to bring about effective community management – see box (Evans and Appleton 1993:7).

To consolidate desk research and field studies, and to provide guidance in community management, IRC in collaboration with UNDP, UNICEF, WHO, the UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Program and the Netherlands Directorate General for International Co-operation (DGIS) organized an international workshop in November 1992 in The Hague, the Netherlands, with the theme 'The Role of Communities in the Management of Improved Water Supply Systems'. The workshop brought together experiences in community water management from seven developing countries: Cameroon, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Pakistan, Uganda and Yemen. Participants from these countries presented case studies, which were reviewed together with a background paper and a review of experiences from 122 completed water supply projects prepared by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) (Evans and Appleton, 1993). This workshop was the prelude to the PAR project: participatory research to strengthen the capacities of communities to manage their water supplies. Some of the organizations taking part in the workshop would become IRC's partners in the PAR project.

The Third Global Forum of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) held in Barbados (November 1995) endorsed the creation of a WSSCC-sponsored Working Group on Community Management and Partnerships with Civil Society, led by the International Secretariat for Water (ISW). Regional co-ordinators were selected in Africa (NETWAS), Asia (Approtech Asia and NEWAH) and Latin America (CIUDAD). The aims of the working group were:

• to facilitate more harmonious interaction among governments and the various actors of civil society – private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs)

• to identify best practices of community management approaches

• to influence governments and external support agencies (ESAs4) to adopt these approaches, including involving the actors of civil societies in their planning processes (WSSCC 1996).

The working group presented a Code of Ethics on Community Management in Manila in 1997 (WSSCC 1997).

Members of this group also became involved in developing the Water for People Vision 21 that fed into the overall World Water Vision endorsed by the ministers at the ministerial conference in The Hague in March 2000. Vision 21 sets out the approaches that are needed to reach the goal of hygiene, sanitation and water for all by 2025. Vision 21 focuses on mobilizing people's own creativity and energy in developing solutions to improve their health and welfare. This people-centred approach builds on community management as its main vehicle (WSSCC 2000a).

During the 1980s and 1990s a variety of different actors, with very different agendas, signed up to the concepts of community management. Governments saw community involvement as a way of reducing demands on over-stretched resources. Donors saw an opportunity to focus and stretch development budgets towards effective implementation of water supply and sanitation facilities, and to bypass the problems posed by corrupt and inefficient governments. NGOs became the voice of the community and happily seized an opportunity to increase their role, becoming in many countries a parallel provider of services and, in that respect, a kind of parallel government. Finally, multilateral donors such as the World Bank saw community management as an ideal vehicle for their messages about reduced government involvement, and increased private sector and civil society roles. The World Bank, and later the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) developed the Demand Responsive Approach (DRA), which is heavily geared towards putting community management approaches into effect (Sara and Katz 1997; World Bank 2002).