Research Catalog

Title

Water for rural communities : helping people to help themselves / John Briscoe and David de Ferranti.

Author

Briscoe, John, 1948-2014.

Publication

Washington, D.C. : World Bank, ©1988.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

De Ferranti, David M.

Description

iv, 32 pages : illustrations; 28 cm

Summary

Efforts to improve the water supplies used by people in rural areas of developing countries have run into serious obstacles: not only are public funds not available to build facilities for all, but many newly constructed facilities have fallen into disrepair and disuse. Along with the numerous failures there are also successes in this sector. From these successes a new view has begun to emerge of what the guiding principles of rural water supply strategies should be. This book brings together and spells out the constituents of this emerging view. The central message is that it is the local people themselves, not those trying to help them, who have the most important role to play. The community itself must be the primary decisionmaker, the primary investor, the primary organizer, and the primary overseer. The authors examine the implications of this primary principle for the main policy issues - the level of service to be provided in different settings, the level and mechanisms for cost recovery, the roles for the private and public sectors, and the role of women. The potential advantages of proceeding from this outlook, instead of the older top-down approaches, are considerable. Improvement efforts are more likely to meet felt needs, new facilities are more likely to be kept in service, and more communities are more likely to get safe water sooner.

Subject

• 1981-1990
• Water-supply, Rural > Developing countries
• Drinking water > International cooperation
• International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, 1981-1990
• Water-supply, Rural
• Developing countries

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 31-32.

ISBN

• 0821309641
• 9780821309643

LCCN

87031750

OCLC

• ocm17106769
• 17106769
• SCSB-9219082

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library