Who pays for water? Comparing life cycle costs of water services among several low, medium and high-income utilities

Libey, Anna; Adank, Marieke; Thomas, Evan

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105155

Cited by 31 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Many reasons may account for the low apparent governmental investment in WSS from within SSA. Some of these include: (a) high initial capital cost required to build new water infrastructure, (b) high cost of maintaining water supply and sanitation facilities, (c) priority of education and health care provision by governments and donors compared with WSS, (d) lack of financial sustainability for sanitation projects, (e) weak technical and administrative capacity, (f) limited private sector involvement particularly in the provision of sanitation services, and (g) low stakeholder participation (Libey et al, 2020; Ndikumana & Pickbourn, 2017; Perard, 2018; Salami et al, 2014). Our review clearly highlights that, access to WSS in SSA faces a myriad of challenges, and these seem to be impacting countries progress toward achieving these targets.…”

Section: Water Security Challenges Facing Sub‐saharan Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This suggest that governments and donors would need to substantially increase capital investment in the region in order to cover the WSS funding deficit. Given that revenue collected by water utility companies cannot cover the full cost of service delivery, it has been suggested that governments and development partners need to provide additional support to cover this gap (Libey et al, 2020). Countries may also need to identify new financing mechanisms to bridge the funding gap and explore ways of making sanitation services sustainable.…”

Section: Water Security Challenges Facing Sub‐saharan Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water security in sub‐Saharan Africa: Understanding the status of sustainable development goal 6

et al. 2021

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The world is nearing the 2030 target‐year by which sustainable development goals (SDGs) should be achieved. While other developing regions seem to be making progress toward achieving SDG6, sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) is lagging behind significantly, particularly with regard to access to water supply and sanitation (WSS). As a result, most studies evaluating progress toward the achievement of water security SDGs in SSA have focused on WSS while the rest of the SDG6 targets have received scant attention, often using fragmented or incomplete evidence. Here, we fill this knowledge gap by conducting a comprehensive assessment of the status of SDG6 in all 48 countries in SSA. We provide a review of the progress made, the challenges affecting each SDG6 target and examine the different political, socioeconomic, and environmental factors with potential to undermine the achievement of SDG6 in the region. Our review clearly demonstrates that it is likely that most countries may not achieve water security by 2030. The complex nature of the challenges and factors impeding the achievement of water security in SSA outlined here suggests that a holistic intervention involving local, national, and international stakeholders and the research community is urgently needed to address SDG6 if the 2030 target date is to be met. Approaches to enhance water security may equally consider: (a) underpinning peace and security in SSA and (b) the commitment of more financial resources by donors particularly during this period of COVID‐19 pandemic. This article is categorized under: Human Water Human Water > Water Governance Engineering Water > Planning Water

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Section: Water Security Challenges Facing Sub‐saharan Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Water Security Challenges Facing Sub‐saharan Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Water security in sub‐Saharan Africa: Understanding the status of sustainable development goal 6

et al. 2021

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“…This begins with verifying that new or refurbished supplies can provide safe water under a range of conditions, with response options in place to respond to hazards. Further, LWMs require ongoing support to operate and maintain water supplies, and this is widely unachievable with local financing alone [ 17 , 79 ]. The disconnect between the constraints on LWMs self-efficacy and the demands of their intended roles is well-established in the literature on community-based water management, although the focus of post construction support has largely been on functionality without explicit consideration of water safety [ 17 , 24 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fear, Efficacy, and Environmental Health Risk Reporting: Complex Responses to Water Quality Test Results in Low-Income Communities

Nowicki

Bukachi

Hoque

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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Reducing disease from unsafe drinking-water is a key environmental health objective in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, where water management is largely community-based. The effectiveness of environmental health risk reporting to motivate sustained behaviour change is contested but as efforts to increase rural drinking-water monitoring proceed, it is timely to ask how water quality information feedback can improve water safety management. Using cross-sectional (1457 households) and longitudinal (167 participants) surveys, semi-structured interviews (73 participants), and water quality monitoring (79 sites), we assess water safety perceptions and evaluate an information intervention through which Escherichia coli monitoring results were shared with water managers over a 1.5-year period in rural Kitui County, Kenya. We integrate the extended parallel process model and the precaution adoption process model to frame risk information processing and stages of behaviour change. We highlight that responses to risk communications are determined by the specificity, framing, and repetition of messaging and the self-efficacy of information recipients. Poverty threatscapes and gender norms hinder behaviour change, particularly at the household-level; however, test results can motivate supply-level managers to implement hazard control measures—with effectiveness and sustainability dependent on infrastructure, training, and ongoing resourcing. Our results have implications for rural development efforts and environmental risk reporting in low-income settings.

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“…The performance indicators used to evaluate the water utilities (Table 1) were selected based on the available information to characterize the performance of the water distribution network. Non-revenue water was selected to characterize the current condition of a distribution network, a common performance indicator mentioned in the literature [47][48][49][50]. Network rehabilitation is a common research subject within the context of strategic asset management [51,52] that assumes that limited resources have to be invested [53] in order to guarantee the maintenance of the level of service.…”

Section: Water Utilities Performance Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge Management and Operational Capacity in Water Utilities, a Balance between Human Resources and Digital Maturity—The Case of AGS

Feliciano

Arsénio

Cassidy

et al. 2021

Water

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Digitalization and knowledge management in the water sector, and their impacts on performance, greatly depend on two factors: human capacity and digital maturity. To understand the link between performance, human capacity, and digital maturity, six AGS water retail utilities were compared with all Portuguese utilities using Portuguese benchmark data (2011–2019). AGS utilities achieved better results, including in compound performance indicators, which are assumed to be surrogates for digital maturity. These compound indicators were also found to correlate positively with better performance. In fact, AGS utilities show levels of non-revenue water (NRW) (<25%) below the national median (30–40%), with network replacement values similar to the national median (<0.5%). These results seem to imply that higher digital maturity can offset relatively low network replacement levels and guarantee NRW levels below the national average. Furthermore, regarding personnel aging index and digital maturity—two internally developed indicators—there was an increase in the digital maturity and aging of the staff, which, again, raises questions about long-term sustainability. The growing performance and the slight increase in digital maturity can be attributed to group-wide capacity building and digitalization programs that bring together staff from all AGS utilities in year-long activities.

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Who pays for water? Comparing life cycle costs of water services among several low, medium and high-income utilities

Cited by 31 publications

References 15 publications

Water security in sub‐Saharan Africa: Understanding the status of sustainable development goal 6

Water security in sub‐Saharan Africa: Understanding the status of sustainable development goal 6

Fear, Efficacy, and Environmental Health Risk Reporting: Complex Responses to Water Quality Test Results in Low-Income Communities

Knowledge Management and Operational Capacity in Water Utilities, a Balance between Human Resources and Digital Maturity—The Case of AGS

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