Water is Life: Community-based research for sustainable safe water in rural Uganda

G. Honor Fagan, Suzanne Linnane, Kevin G. McGuigan, and Albert I. Rugumayo

Abstract

This is a book about community-based research in the service of improving the sustainability and equity of safe water production, consumption, and management at community level in rural Uganda. It provides an account of the findings of a five-year combined social science, natural science, and engineering research work programme (2009–14) which took place within and with the community, in the sense that the community identified their water needs and related their everyday struggles with water resourcing to the research team, and they contributed to the outcomes. Our research programme began 14 years after the Ugandan government enacted the 1995 Water Statute (which provided the framework for the use, protection, and management of water resources and supply, the constitution of water authorities, and the devolution of water supply undertakings), 10 years after the 1999 National Water Policy was rolled out, and six years short of the delivery date for the Millennium Development Goals on water.

Keywords: sustainability, research capacity building, water, equity, rural poverty

The project

The programme of research which forms the basis of this book was Water is Life: Amazzi Bulamu, supported by Irish Aid/Higher Education Authority funding for research capacity building around sustainable water development. It involved the creation of a partnership between Irish third-level institutes and the University of Makerere in Uganda to involve Ugandan-based and Irish-based teams of academics in training Ugandan or Ugandan-based researchers to doctoral level in the practical action setting of a poor rural community. The involvement of the community in the programme from the outset was intended to empower the local community in the management of its own water resources into the future. Additionally, the programme was devised to build research capacity in a two-dimensional way – at third level by enhancing the quality of community-engaged research and at community level by providing access to the resources of the team of scientists and social scientists contributing to the goal of sustainable community water supply in that specific community. The project raised a number of key questions in relation to aspects of the realities of safe water in this community: accessibility, affordability, management, use of technological advances, impact of climate change, and gender relations. Issues were described and interventions were devised, all of which were based on sound and robust evidence-based research 'in the field'. In order to be truly capable of contributing to the agenda of poverty reduction, and have societal relevance, the research involved all key stakeholders from the outset.

This book tells a story about carrying out evidence-based research at community level in response to community needs; it is also a story about science being put to use in the building of sustainable communities. It was in order to assess and improve the community's access to and participation in water management that the researchers and the community entered the research collaboration. It was also in order to engage in the proposed practical action of producing and improving a community-managed sustainable water system for the parish. Overall, it describes and analyses what is happening in the water lives of a rural Ugandan community. In addition, it is a story of critique. It does not presuppose that community management is the right way to increase the sustainability of water supply systems, but only that it is the current emphasis in terms of policy roll-out of water systems as experienced by the community we report on here.

Global and national water context

The United Nations (UN) estimates that in excess of 1 million Africans still die every year from sanitation-, hygiene-, and drinking water-related diseases, which equates to approximately 115 Africans per hour or one person every 30 seconds. This is despite the fact that the targets for the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7C – to halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation – have been reached (WHO and UNICEF, 2012). Challenges remain and the WHO/UNICEF 2012 report highlights that global figures mask massive disparities between regions and countries, and within countries, with only 61 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa having access to improved water supply sources, compared with 90 per cent or more in Latin America and the Caribbean, northern Africa, and large parts of Asia. In fact, the 2014 WHO/UNICEF update estimates that 43 per cent of all people globally who lack access to drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa. It also confirms that in cases where water supplies are not readily accessible, the burden of carrying water falls disproportionately on women and girls, and in many countries the wealthiest people have seen the greatest improvements in water and sanitation access, whereas people in poorer countries still lag far behind.

Access to safe drinking water has been greatly expanded through implementation of the MDGs. However, the MDGs will reach their target date at the end of 2015, and therefore the...