End-user participation in drinking water management through Awareness, Education, and Resources: Tools for Water Partnerships

Despite the human right to safe water and sanitation, 2.2 billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water (UNICEF & WHO 2023). Poor access is especially prevalent in rural settings where decentralized approaches are often needed. Furthermore, changing climates are affecting water availability and quality (Famiglietti & Rodell 2013), to which decentralized approaches may offer resilience. The long-term success of drinking water interventions, especially decentralized services such as household filters, boreholes, and household-level water reuse, requires end-user participation in decision making and governance roles from project ignition through operations. Yet long-term success has been observed as unlikely for end-users alone, requiring involvement from community leadership, health practitioners, technical experts, government, social mobilizers, NGOs, and others. Such collaboration represents a Water Partnership.

Past initiatives, from the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1980s) through to the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015), focused on the construction of improved water infrastructure such as piped water, boreholes, and rainwater harvesting systems (Weststrate et al. 2019). Indeed, between 1990 and 2015, 2.6 billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2016). However, there were concerns that ‘improved’ infrastructure did not lead to ‘safe’ drinking water (Weststrate et al. 2019), and it was estimated that despite 91% of the world having access to an improved water source in 2015, 1.8 billion people still used unsafe water (Onda et al. 2012). And so, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) instead promoted ‘safely managed’ drinking water supply, which includes both improved infrastructure and a management system to ensure the continued provision of safe water. While urban and peri-urban water systems might find a sustainable model for professionalized management, to date, rural water supply in poor contexts usually relies on community-led initiatives for the ‘safely managed’ component of SDG6 on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) (Schouten & Moriarty 2004). The long-term success of community-led schemes benefits from the involvement of end-user at the onset of deciding to embark on a project to improve water access, identifying water users' preferences and values, incorporating local ecological knowledge, and through scheme selection, design, and management (Chickannaiyappa & Ramaswamy 1984; Chambers 1997). However, at each stage of a bottom-up approach, water users benefit from support by trusted experts in technical design, public health, economics, politics, behaviour change, and education (Chickannaiyappa & Ramaswamy 1984), each contributing their lifetime of experiences through a Partnership Approach. Special Rapporteur for Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, de Albuquerque, eloquently described how Water Partnerships empower end-user participation: ‘Many decisions viewed as purely technical are in fact value choices, and the public must participate in making them. Experts still have a role to play, but that role is ideally one of facilitator, helping to synthesize and communicate expert knowledge and enabling people to take informed decisions’ (de Albuquerque et al. 2014).

A partnerships approach to water, sanitation, and sustainable development has been sought by the development community (Chambers 1997; Schouten & Moriarty 2004; Smith 2008) and recently exemplified by the title of the 2023 United Nations (UN) World Water Development Report, Partnerships and Cooperation for Water (UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme 2023). The benefits and challenges of community participation have been documented (Smith 2008; de Albuquerque et al. 2014; UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme 2023) but there is yet no consensus on which tools do support community-level stakeholders in championing their safe water solutions. This study shares the tools that empower people – especially end-users, but other community-level actors too – to participate in water partnerships that create and maintain solutions for safely managed drinking water, with findings likely extendable to sanitation, hygiene, and indeed other community-level development initiatives, too.

This study learned from local-level participants in water systems about what strategies and tools they believe lead to long-term safe drinking water solutions, specifically towards supporting a partnerships approach to safe water. Nine non-profit organizations were purposively selected as research participants and partners for their similar scale and direct involvement in community-level WASH initiatives: Tatirano Social Enterprise (Madagascar), Get Water Uganda (Uganda), INREM Foundation (India), Sehgal Foundation (India), Fundación Red Proyecto Gente (‘FRPG’, Colombia), CAWST (with partners in Colombia), EcoSwell (Peru), Environmental and Public Health Organization (EPHO) (Nepal), and Helvetas (Nepal). Snowball sampling followed introductions from these organizations to other local stakeholders who had past or ongoing involvement in community water projects. Interviews lasting around 35 min were either with individuals or small groups such as seven members of a water management committee. A total of 373 participants (65% male) were interviewed during 167 interviews (Table 1). Participants were classified under 13 water stakeholder groups (Table 2). Interviews in English and French were conducted by the researcher, while a local translator was hired to work with the researcher for other languages. The study was conducted with home-university ethics approval.

All interviews were audio-recorded (with permission) and transcribed verbatim in English. Mixed inductive and deductive coding in NVivo was used to inform three broad themes, namely, 1. Who are the important stakeholders, 2. What are their roles at each stage of a community-led water project, and 3. What tools empower everyone to participate in water management? A preliminary coding session identified organizational categories, followed by a second complete coding session for substantive categories, which were subsequently grouped by similarity. These codes are presented hereafter ‘italicised and with single apostrophe marks’, while direct quotes are “italicised with quotation marks”.

This may be the most important quote in the water sector, and it was repeated nearly verbatim by participants in this study on four continents. Across cultures, geographies, and water contexts, people are willing and able to participate in managing their water. This concept is not new; Chambers (1994) wrote that “poor people are creative and capable, and can and should do much of their own investigation, analysis and planning”, and a similar insight was shared by Ozanne & Saatcioglu (2008), but this framing does differ from past top-down approaches where professionals know best (Carr 2002; Smith 2008). However, nobody is born prepared to select an appropriate water reuse scheme or to site a solar pumping reservoir. The water sector's most important quote shows that people are willing and able to lead these tasks, but experience shows that they may first desire empowerment with the information and confidence to champion these tasks. It is worth noting that these lessons apply equally to developing and developed contexts, as was recently explored (Zimmermann et al. 2023b).

These three steps can empower community-led initiatives in a manner reported by many participants to result in long-term success for safely managed drinking water. Critically, this approach enables participation by community members in decision making and governance roles, the highest rungs on the Ladder of Citizen Participation (Arnstein 1969), and a distinction from involvement merely in labour and operations, which is important for a sense of ownership (Marks & Davis 2012), through input legitimacy (Dellas 2012). In the next section, we explore each step with examples from global case studies.

A limitation of the study should be noted that a majority of participants were from successful community water projects. Understanding that the literature contains reports of causes of water system failures, this study aimed to learn the recommendations from projects that are succeeding in providing safe water access. A further limitation is that simply completing the Awareness, Education, and Resources steps does not guarantee water system success. It is a Water Partnership approach to collaborative water management that supports the long-term success of community-led drinking water systems. Hence, it is important that those who receive empowerment to participate are members of the community, and not only from an inner circle. The phenomenon of ‘elite capture’ has emerged as a challenge to empowering community participation in development, whereby a select group of people, often relatives or colleagues of the ruling class, are preferentially selected to participate in training sessions and management roles. This was not directly reported during this study, but it is important to note the aim of Water Partnerships are to empower participation in water management by water users themselves.

In the same sensitization sessions, water quality should be linked to public health, especially ‘focusing on children's health’ such as how high fluoride can stain and decay their developing teeth. Similarly, demonstrating the value of safe water resources through its health benefits was reported elsewhere to improve the longevity of WASH interventions (Nelson et al. 2021). Other visible signs of poor water quality may be leveraged to make this connection, such as orange staining of utensils and clothing from iron. Further, some participants suggested drawing a connection with economic losses from missed income during illness, the need to purchase medicines, and the potential savings from avoiding these costs and not purchasing bottled water.

In all cases, awareness interventions were more impactful when communicated by local leaders, and people were especially attentive to ‘stories shared by families and neighbours’. This raises the important role of empowering trusted local actors to lead awareness sessions. For matters of health, people trust their community's nurses and doctors, while teachers are respected as educators, including on safe WASH practices. Such trusted leaders may be asked what resources they could benefit from while offering awareness sessions, which could, in turn, be contributed by government, donors/funders, NGOs, or development agencies. A common recommendation across research settings was to invite women from neighbouring villages (women are often the water caretakers (Fisher et al. 2017)) for discussions on safe water, sanitation, and health, supported by a nurse or community mobilizer. Small monies or even prepared meals for themselves and their families may make their time commitment more facile.

The indicator of success of an awareness campaign is a water user asking, “I understand, now what can I do about this?” This is a similar outcome to the triggering step in a Community-Led Total Sanitation (Kar & Chambers 2008), achieved here by focusing on the benefits of safe water. This question also represents a demand for WASH products such as candle filters, SODIS bottles, or toilet brushes. Keen entrepreneurs will recognize this opportunity for private sector involvement in creating a supply chain for such products, supporting the long-term success of WASH interventions, which may have been a consideration when Ojomo et al. (2015) reported that the top factor for sustainability and scale-up of household water treatment and sanitation practices was user demand. In fact, demand creation through hosting awareness sessions was a role identified for NGOs and was core to the WASH Mart programme by ENPHO Nepal (Zimmermann et al. 2023a).

Once aware of water challenges and interested in a solution, the second step to empowering participation is Education of the options, through two desirable approaches: i) is there a convenient safer source of drinking water and if not, ii) what are the treatment options at the village or household level? If neither a safer source nor appropriate treatment is available, then negative health effects such as bone density loss from high fluoride may be mitigated through nutritional supplements like calcium and magnesium.

Before trusting a technology, water users wanted to know (in order of frequency of response): i) ‘how does the filter work’; for instance, the mechanism whereby ceramic clay improves water quality (n = 16), ii) the ‘water quality after treatment’, including taste (n = 13), iii) ‘maintenance requirements’ and ‘durability of filter materials’ (n = 13), iv) ‘cost to install’ (n = 11) and ‘maintain’ (n = 4) a filter or ‘the monthly water fee’ (n = 4), and v) ‘treatment rate’ or how long to fill one bucket (n = 9). As with trusting discussion with their neighbours, people reported being more likely to ‘trust a technology that was tested in a nearby village’ (n = 16). For this reason, the Sehgal Foundation (India) offers a household filter risk-free for 10 days to people, and similarly, Helvetas Nepal offers a 15-day trial, so that households can become familiar with the water quality and taste, maintenance, appearance, costs, and clean water production rate. These findings are congruent with past works reporting the importance of ‘presenting feasible technologies and their costs’ (Chickannaiyappa & Ramaswamy 1984) and understanding user technology preferences (Ojomo et al. 2015) for successful safe water interventions.

However, more important than water filtration is to protect source water quality from contamination. In fact, when asked “What is the most important person or thing to keeping water safe in your community?”, the most common reply in this study (n = 261) was ‘protect source water quality’ (n = 23). This was especially reported in areas following awareness campaigns and also with (perceived or real) contamination by activities such as mining operations or farmers using fungicides nearby.

After gaining awareness of water contaminants in Step 1. Awareness, people may learn of the options for safe water during Step 2. Education. These first two steps to empowerment can lead the local water leaders to select their preferred safe water solution that is appropriate to the local context and provide motivation (Equation (1)) for its pursuit. However, the third step to empowerment is the resources for water action.

Meanwhile, community-led initiatives also ‘empowered agency over one's own wellbeing’ (n = 19), which was a source of pride among participants. This sense of pride might explain why participants identified ‘high quality of work’ as a benefit for community-led projects: “Involving the community is beneficial because they are here 24 hours, and they will be always watching and quality managing” [Local/municipal government member]’. Furthermore, ‘additional benefits to the community’ through jobs and skills training were noticed by both tradespeople and elected leaders. This was apparent as Tatirano Social Enterprise hires exclusively women as kiosk agents for their community rainwater harvesting systems, while also training all-female management and construction teams. It was inspiring to see small girls in the community gaze onwards as the women skilfully replaced broken valves or built a doorframe, roles typically filled by men in Malagasy society.

The most important quote in the water sector told us that people are willing and able to participate in water management. Yet, to go beyond tokenism or mere labour contributions and achieve the top rungs of the Ladder of Citizen Participation with decision making and governance roles, people may first need empowerment. Water leaders around the world reported strikingly similar approaches to empowerment, which were summarized in three sequential steps: 1. Awareness of local water challenges and their impact on health, 2. Education of the options for safe water, and 3. Resources for water action. Specific tools for each step were described alongside worldwide case studies.

Safely managed drinking water solutions require more than a technology: they require participation by diverse stakeholders throughout the initiation, design, and operations phases. Chief among these stakeholders are the water users themselves, but we have also seen the role of technical experts, health practitioners, teachers, government, NGOs, and others. The long-term success of safe water solutions evolves from cooperation by all stakeholders, facilitated through a Water Partnerships approach. Empowerment for water action allows each stakeholder to meaningfully participate in Water Partnerships.

All images are copyrighted to Karl Zimmermann and show real people and their water stories. To ensure that their water stories are properly represented, the photos should not be duplicated without prior permission from the author.

The author thanks the countless water leaders around the world who work tirelessly to inspire, create, and support sustainable water and sanitation schemes. In particular, the author would like to thank Harry Chaplin (Tatirano Social Enterprise, Madagascar), Marcio Botta, Eva Manzano, Suneel Rajavaram, Karen Lopez, and Johanna Gomez (CAWST, Canada), Kennedy Wanyama and Henry Ouma (Get Water Uganda, Uganda), Sunder Krishnan (INREM Foundation, India), Lalit Mohan Sharma (Sehgal Foundation, India), Ivan Castro and Rocio Robayo (Fundacion Red Proyecto Gente, Colombia), Alejandro Pizarro (EcoSwell, Peru), Bhawana Sharma and Buddha Bajracharya (ENPHO, Nepal), Madan Bhatta and Bal Mukunda Kunwar (Helvetas, Nepal), and Regula Meierhofer (EAWAG, Switzerland). These organizations and many like them continue to be extremely generous and welcoming to collaborations towards improving sustainable water management. The author would also like to thank the University of British Columbia's Friedman Award for Scholars in Health.

Data cannot be made publicly available; readers should contact the corresponding author for details.

The authors declare there is no conflict.