Small-scale vs. Large-scale solutions

Community-managed water provision typically results from lack of provision of services from the public sector. In such a scenario, the local community take the initiative in controlling the supply and maintenance of water services.  However, Carter et al. 1999:294) state there are four essential aspects for community-managed water resources to thrive and succeed. The four components include: motivation, maintenance, cost/recovery and continuing support. Given that community management is entirely voluntary, it can be difficult to maintain, and could in turn be unreliable (Batchelor, McKemey and Scott, 2000). Financial constraints are also a big disadvantage of community-managed water provision, given that locals in such communities will not be able to afford to finance any big projects (Carter et al., 1999).

However, there are also benefits of community-managed water provision. These include a sense of ownership amongst the locals, so they will take more pride in the maintenance of the water provision. Additionally, it evades incompetency and blasé attitudes from the government who fail in the provision of water. Furthermore, such innovation takes advantage of intermediate technology, which is cheap and easy to maintain, and also easy for locals to use, whilst utilising and making the most of limited resources. However, it is necessary to state that there needs to be a ‘strong local institution’ in place to support the communities (Harvey and Reed, 2006: 372). Water is a fundamental human right (World Water Council, 2002), and governments need to accept responsibility in facilitating local communities to fulfil this basic need.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is the large-scale alternative to alleviating water and sanitation problems in urban Africa. IWRM means meeting basic human needs, in an equitable manner, whilst respecting transboundary commitments. However, IWRM requires institutional ‘capacity to integrate’, and this capacity is not in abundance (Van der Zaag, 2005: 868). Given that it is large-scale and involves so many different actors, there are plenty of places where there there could be a lack of cooperation. The approximate cost for IWRM is $20billion in order to meet the material costs of infrastructure, and technological costs (UN 1992). However, despite these problems, IWRM constitutes a path of short-term risk that leads to long-term security (Van der Zaag, 2005: 868).

Both routes will inevitable have pros and cons, but the correct option depends on the individual context of the place in question.