Governments, donors and NGOs have worked together for many years to increase access to
rural water services. However progress towards MDG targets and associated health, social and economic benefits are compromised if sources fail. Sustainability is a growing concern and threatens to undermine the potential impact of water investments.
Donors and country governments currently have no way of systematically assessing whether or not rural water services continue to function over time, and no little about the extent and causes of failure. The cumulative loss of investment in large numbers of failed sources is enormous - tens of millions of dollars - and hard won public health and livelihood benefits are lost if people revert to unimproved water sources.
The project sets out to address source failure by developing an interdisciplinary framework for assessing the many causes of failure and assembling the tools and methodologies to carry out such assesments.
