Global study on sustainable service delivery models for rural water: evidence from 16 countries

An assessment of rural water supply sustainability was commissioned by the World Bank in 16 countries utilizing five building blocks and a taxonomy of prevailing service delivery models. Results show a mixed picture in progress towards establishing optimum conditions for sustainability. Institutional capacity has advanced most markedly. Financing and monitoring score second highest, with good examples in countries such as Nicaragua and the Philippines. Consistently lower scores are found for asset management and water resource management. Community-based management is still the predominant management model, often formalized in policy, but not systematically supported or regulated. A greater differentiation of other service delivery models is found, with a trend - especially in urbanizing, middleincome countries - towards the delivery of services by utilities, private operators and/or through the aggregation of multiple rural schemes under one management entity. Dispersed rural populations continue to rely on either poorly supported community-based management or self-supply.