Integrated self-financing drinking water projects

Advanced technologies now available enable integrated rural distributed drinking water projects to be self-financed by most rural communities provided the initial seed or investment capital is made available to them. Even the very poorest communities in the world should be able to contribute a part of the investment costs, and at least and in any case cover all the on-going administration and maintenance costs of a modern drinking water supply project. This paper suggests that the relative lack of monetisation of a local economy need not necessarily imply that the community be forced to beg for “gifts” from the international community or driven to accept technologies which are culturally and technically inappropriate for that community. The traditional, also mostly non-monetised, costs to a community of inadequate or unsafe drinking water supply must also be borne in mind when assessing what the community itself is able and willing to contribute towards the cost of its drinking water supply system.