Community management or community participation?

This week's blog will be about some reflections on two articles focusing on community participation in water supply management.

Both Carter and Howsam (1999) and Harvey and Reed, (2006) report some problems in community water supply and sanitation programs, identified by the authors as reasons of unsustainability.
I tried to reorganise them in two groups:

• Problems due to dissaffection with water supply projects, due to absence of participation of communities at different levels -mainly in decision-making and information sharing;

This takes the form of lack of sense of responsibility for the water supply facilities; doubts about the desiderability of new facilities; absence of trust in the water committee; abandonment of roles in the committee.

• Problems due to lack of institutional support to communities;

The authors report that communities lacking financial and technical resources,can hardly maintain or replace facilities without long-term support from governments and NGOs.

So, what are the possible strategies to cope with these problems?

• As regards the first set of problems, Harvey and Reed suggest that a necessary condition for sustainability is not community management, but community participation, as groups expressing a high sense of ownership still present low levels of sustainability. They consider community management one aspect of participation and express the idea that sometimes the latter does not even imply a real involvement of locals when it is only the result of governments' decision to get rid of their operation and maintenance responsibilities. 

Therefore, a good strategy might seem that of providing communities with information about all the possible systems of management, financing and maintenance in order to enable them to decide among various options with a sufficient level of knowledge. 

For example:

1) management: what are the 'boundaries' of the community? do locals prefer to organise themselves in smaller groups, based on households? which techniques should be used? is 'indigenous knowledge' considered? -in this last case, it seems important to highlight that the preliminary information exchange is not only unidirectional (from external agencies/experts to communities), but also bidirectional (form communities to external agencies/experts);
2) financing: how do member contribute? are there alternative types of contributions for low income families (e.g. providing labour force)?;
3) and maintenance: is the community responsible for maintenance? if so, how are roles assigned and how are members replaced? if not, can private sector take this responsibility?;
It can be argued that communities which choose the desired water management scheme, with a specific division of roles according to the every community member's willingness, are less likely to distrust the committee or abandon their roles.
Moreover, it seems that another important aspect of community participation is receiving correct information about the effects of water supply projects; so that institutions proposing these programs can maintain their credibility and there are less probabilities that locals do not support future projects taking into account that benefits promised failed to materialise.

• The second aspect, addressing the second group of problems, which might be taken into account is a greater institutional financial and technical support.

This can take various form, including training schemes to enable communities to maintain their facilities -in case they decide that this duty is a responsibility of the community.

In conclusion, these papers seem to reinforce the idea that what is really crucial is community empowerment: enabling communities to become active actors of the decision making process in possession of all revevant information.


Sources:

Carter, R. Tyrell, S. and P. Howsam (1999) ‘Impact and sustainability of community water supply and sanitation programmes in developing countries’ Journal of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, 13(4), pp. 292–296

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-6593.1999.tb01050.x

Harvey, P. A., & Reed, R. A. (2007). Community-managed water supplies in Africa: sustainable or dispensable?. Community Development Journal, 42(3), 365-378.