Governance of Water and Sanitation Services for the Peri-urban Poor. A Framework for Understanding and Action in Metropolitan Regions
DPU books The Development Planning Unit, 9, Endsleigh Gardens, (May 2006)Abstract
It is a well-documented fact that in many countries water supply and sanitation systems
fall short of present and future requirements. Some of the world's poorest people lack
adequate access to these most basic of services. The well-being and livelihoods of millions of
households and home-based enterprises in urban and peri-urban areas are seriously impaired
by the considerable time and money spent collecting water, buying it from private vendors or
fighting diseases arising from deficient water supplies and poor or non-existent sanitation.
And yet, national and international initiatives and commitments to improve access to
water and sanitation in the developing world tend to neglect the peri-urban context. This is all
the more important since the conventional distinction between urban and rural areas is
becoming more blurred and, therefore, less useful as a component of planning and other
government attempts to guide physical expansion and promote economic growth. This
distinction also fails to represent the daily reality of millions of people whose lives and incomeearning
activities straddle both the rural and the urban spheres. This document advances the
argument that a specific institutional approach is needed to water and sanitation service
provision that takes into account peri-urban realities.
The importance of considering water and sanitation in the peri-urban interface of
metropolitan areas and regions arises from the fact that there are social, economic, environmental
and institutional interactions between urban and rural areas which are captured in this
interface. It is here where many of the processes of change in urban-rural flows take place,
leading both to problems and to opportunities not only for peri-urban communities but also
for the sustainable development of adjacent rural and urban systems. The peri-urban interface
often acts as an 'environmental sink' for liquid and solid waste from the denser urban core.
Thus, for example, urban wastewater can be used for peri-urban irrigation as well as for periurban
industrial cooling systems. This calls for wider integrated water management
interventions which build on these problems and opportunities.
The peri-urban interface is associated at the same time with both rural and urban
features and consists of highly heterogeneous and rapidly changing socio-economic groups.
This diversity means that the needs and demands of local populations and producers for water
and sanitation services are also quite diverse and change over time. The identification of these
needs is more complex than in either urban or rural areas due to the particular mix of
newcomers and long-established dwellers, and also because farming, residential and industrial
land uses often coexist. This calls for an institutional and technical set-up which responds to
this diversity and to the changing needs of peri-urban residents and enterprises.
Peri-urban provision of basic services in a metropolitan context is also shaped by a wide
range of spatial and non-spatial policies and a high variety of agencies operating with
overlapping and sometimes contradictory remits. Some policies may point in the direction of
controlling the peri-urban expansion of metropolitan areas, while others might aim in the opposite direction (for example, encouraging the relocation of manufacturing industries from
the urban core to the periphery). An adequate framework for intervention requires a better
understanding of the impact of both spatial (for example, a 'green belt' around metropolitan
areas) and non-spatial policies (for example, agricultural subsidies).
In many countries, peri-urban areas generally lie outside the coverage of formal
networked water and sanitation systems, which are, in most cases, restricted to a relatively
small metropolitan core. Part of the reason for this is that many peri-urban settlements
develop outside existing formal regulations, affecting their formal right to these basic services.
However, if adequate land policies and official control procedures are in place, the goal of
improving access to water and sanitation by the peri-urban poor should not necessarily require
formal land or housing tenure, but might instead focus on collective land rights and responsibilities
for paying for these basic services.
One important conclusion arising from the case studies is that, in a context of rapid
peri-urban population growth and environmental change, weak or inadequate official
institutions, conventional supply-driven, centralised network systems for water supply and
sanitation services may never become the norm in poor peri-urban settlements. In many
countries, extension of these conventional systems will stretch official institutions beyond their
capacities. In contrast with urban areas, the lower population densities and higher distance to
centralised wastewater disposal systems that characterise peri-urban areas mean that such
centralised solutions demand high investments for collection and disposal, which prevent
economies of scale and are unaffordable by the poor. Planners and decision-makers should be
prepared to consider instead decentralised approaches involving greater user involvement with
less capital-intensive solutions. Similarly, small-scale commercial firms or not-for-profit
operators (e.g. NGOs or community-based organisations) may provide, with minimum official
control, adequate, affordable and more sustainable services such as water from local sources
or latrine-emptying services. In a flexible and responsive regulatory environment, such noncentralised
services may offer a solution that is more in keeping with the changing needs of
local users.
Governance in the peri-urban interface tends to be severely fragmented, with a
multitude of actors and no single organisation (either public or private) providing guidance or
leadership. Institutional fragmentation tends to be even more severe in the metropolitan
context, where multiple agencies often coexist with overlapping remits. In the specific case of
water and sanitation services, the extent of service provision, the range and number of actors
involved and the strategies they adopt vary significantly in relation to the different stages of the
'water cycle' (the water cycle describes the route taken by water in its different stages from
extraction to disposal). Recent trends to 'unbundle' the different stages of the water cycle by
allocating them to different actors (be they public, private, community or a combination of
these) tend to exacerbate this institutional fragmentation. This is particularly true in peri-urban
areas.
The goals of improving peri-urban water and sanitation require diverse technical and
political strategies at each stage of the cycle, which may involve supporting multiple local
agents. In practice, peri-urban water supply and, to a lesser extent, sanitation services are in
the hands of a range of formal and informal agents. This diversity of practices is higher in the
stages of distribution and access. Peri-urban poor communities often lack the resources and
incentives to become involved in (large-scale) extraction, treatment and storage of water.
However, large-scale, formal, private agents alone are unlikely to serve the needs of the periurban
poor at the different stages of the water cycle. Therefore, greater official recognition is
needed of unconventional service providers and the efforts of local residents and enterprises
to secure stable and affordable services. This involves the active support of 'non-hierarchical'
and 'cooperative' relations of production and provision of water and sanitation services.
The peri-urban poor rely mainly on a wide spectrum of informal practices to access
water and sanitation which often remain 'invisible' to policy makers and lie outside formal
support strategies and mechanisms. Whilst 'policy-driven' mechanisms are currently unable to
address the needs of the peri-urban poor, their 'needs-driven' coping strategies appear to be
more effective means of improving their access to these services. Addressing the needs of the
peri-urban poor, therefore, demands a better understanding of the rationale and rules that
govern informal practices and of the ways in which these could be articulated to the formal
water supply and sanitation system.
Peri-urban residents and producers are exposed to a combination of rural and urban
health hazards associated with water consumption and waterborne pathogens. Household
and surface drainage systems are generally combined and this increases the risk of exposure
to waterborne and water-washed diseases. When competition for limited water resources is
high, it is common for peri-urban farmers to reuse untreated wastewater for irrigation,
thereby posing potentially serious health hazards for agricultural workers and consumers of
food produced using wastewater. The health and livelihoods of the peri-urban poor bear the
brunt of these risks because they often inhabit low lying and marginal lands, which are more
susceptible to flooding by contaminated water and other wastewater forms of pollution. A
possible response may be to adopt decentralised wastewater management techniques to
increase opportunities for wastewater re-use, resource recovery and improvements in local
environmental health conditions. Similarly, many water-related diseases can be prevented by
improving hygiene practices and awareness-raising.