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About CM History of Community ManagementOver the last decades community management has become the leading concept in rural water supply. It started with community involvement in system construction and developed into community participation and community management. In the process the responsibility for service provision gradually moved from national government to local people. The theoretical frameworks that underpin community management differ widely, from neo-liberal perceptions on reduced state involvement, to water as a basic human right, to water as an economic good, to people first and empowerment approaches. For most water supply and sanitation projects community management now is the guiding principle. Implementing management institutions and capacities is common practice and a whole range of (participatory) methods have been developed to do so.
IntroductionCommunity management of rural water supply and sanitation schemes is now entering its second decade as a key paradigm for water supply development and management.Community management approaches did not appear spontaneously from, nor do they exist in a vacuum. They are underlain by a long history of trial and error in the rural water supply sector, and are linked to and affected by developments in many other sectors: particularly those related to more general rural development, but also natural resource management and in particular water resources management. The rural water supply and sanitation sector gradually emerged in the two decades prior to the 1980s International Drinking Water and Sanitation Supply Decade (IDWSSD). It developed in reaction to the struggles of post colonial states to extend the benefits of 'modern' infrastructure to their rapidly expanding populations. In the views of many of these states rural water supply was the prior responsibility of the national state. If a single starting point for the more recent development of the sector is sought, it should be the 1977 Mar del Plata conference which set the groundwork for the IDWSSD. The decade put the emphasis on community involvement in rural WATSAN. Community management came only into being during the IDWSSD, when the problems with existing, state and supply driven management paradigms came to the surface. It is only now, at the start of the 21st century that community management is finally ready to grow up from being an interesting pilot approach to take its place as paradigm of choice for rural water supply throughout the world. Pre-1980s- Early days - the first steps towards involving communities The earliest documented experiences of community involvement in water supply projects date from the late 1960s. The first use of the "community participation" keyword in IRC's library database (IRCDOC) dates from 1967, and concerns an introduction to evaluative research (Suchman 1967). The first books in the IRC collection on community involvement in water supply projects came from Taiwan (1969) and Colombia (1975).IRC was an early champion of community involvement, and in the 1970s it produced the first of many books on the subject. The first handbook and literature review on participation and education in community water supply and sanitation were published in 1977 and 1978 (van Wijk, 1979 and 1981). 1980s- the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade - community involvement The community involvement paradigm was officially adopted by the international community during the 1977 World Water conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The conference adopted a declaration in which it announced the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD) the slogan of which was to be "Water and Sanitation for All". The conference recognised that to come close to accomplishing this goal, a "radical overhaul of precepts and investment strategies governing the proliferation of taps, pumps and pipes in the developing world" was required (Black 1998).Such an overhaul was badly overdue. The conventional water and sewerage systems, the only ones the international donors had to offer, were complex and only affordable to an elite minority, leaving a large majority of people without services of any kind. Public health experts and engineers had learnt from experience that all that poor people could anticipate from existing models of service delivery, were exclusion and marginalisation. "The vast majority of those without water and sanitation services were poor, and the countries in which they lived were frequently water short and had little to spend on public infrastructure" (Black 1998). Therefore, if there was to be any substance to the Decade's slogan, entirely different, lower-cost approaches would have to be found, capable of extending services to poorer urban and rural areas. And governments and donors had to be persuaded to invest in them. The new approach was found in concepts of self-reliance and community action that had begun to be popularised under the catch-phrase 'small is beautiful' (Schumacher 1973). Small is beautiful was to become one of the key-slogans of the water and sanitation sector. It came along with a shift in focus to small NGO led projects, in which users were encouraged to take an active role in terms of providing inputs, labour or cash, to the development of simple, low cost systems. This was the basis of the 'community participation' model that was to remain accepted practice for much of the rest of the decade. The decade also saw a massive expansion of donor investments in water supply and sanitation. These investments were mostly harnessed in projects and programmes. Both the community participation model and the project approach meant a drive away form the supply driven models that were the territory of the post colonial states. The models of the IDWSSD remained small and scattered, and did not start to approach the scale necessary to address the decade's ambitious goals. In parallel to the water sector activities of the IDWSSD awareness grew throughout the various fields of development co-operation, of the need to involve communities or users at all stages of the project cycle. An important chronicler of this process was Robert Chambers. In a number of publications, he stressed the importance of 'putting the last first', and highlighted the dangers of allowing outsiders with their characteristic 'biases' to drive the development process. Rather he suggested a 'bottom up' development model in which the subjects of development themselves defined their needs, priorities, and preferred developmental pathways (Chambers, 1983). By the early 1980s there were therefore three main drivers to 'community participation' based approaches.
It is perhaps therefore not surprising that it is around this time that the first references to 'community management' start to appear. Early examples include David Korten's monograph on community management in Asia (Korten 1986) and Parwoto's model for community based management in Indonesia (Parwoto 1986). Later, field studies in which community management played a major role emerged from Chile, Guatemala, and Malawi in 1988 while a year later experience emerged from Cameroon, sub Sahara Africa, Ghana, Indonesia, and a WASH study Towards community management : a guide to integrating behavioural sciences and engineering technology in water and sanitation projects (Roark et al 1989). It was experiences such as these that would be brought together in New Delhi in 1990 to mark the official birth of the community management paradigm. The IDWSSD- a case of limited success By the end of the decade a total of US $ 73 891 million had been spend on expanding water supply, and by 1990, no region had achieved less than 73% coverage of the population in urban areas (South East Asia) and less than 32% coverage of the population in rural areas (Africa). Overall, this represented a significant increase in water supply service coverage: from 75% in 1980 to 85% in 1990. This was an enormous achievement, however it also fell far short of attaining 'water and sanitation for all'. During the decade it also became clear that many of the constructed water and sanitation systems broke down soon after implementation as a result of poor maintenance and management. Although coverage was increased, the sustainability was often questionable.While missing its objective of water and sanitation for all by a wide margin, the Decade did trigger a number of activities and initiatives, that resulted in 1.2 billion more people world wide having access to adequate and safe drinking water supply facilities, and 770 million more having access to sanitary facilities. In addition to this a clear success of the decade was in putting 'appropriate technology' firmly at the centre of rural water supply (Ireland Aid 1999). 1990s- New Delhi - Community management - Dublin and Rio As the IDWSSD came to an end in 1990 a flurry of regional and global meetings sought to draw together the lessons of the Decade and to map out new directions for the water and sanitation sector in the 1990s. They culminated in the Global Consultation Safe Water 2000 in New Delhi in September 1990 (UNDP 1990). The resulting Delhi Statement promoted the principle of "Some for all rather than more for some", which set out the guiding principles as the basis of future sector work. For the first time at a global water conference community management was endorsed in the guiding principles.The principles built on the failures in upkeep and maintenance of the community participation schemes of the 1980s, and supported itself intellectually on the 'last first' paradigm championed by Chambers et al. Put simply, the new paradigm said that that communities should not just be involved in system inception, but should accept ultimate responsibility for and ownership of the entire lifecycle of the system. Other guiding principles adopted in New Delhi also have bearing on community management. On institutional reforms, the New Delhi Statement promotes an integrated approach, including changes in procedures, attitudes and behaviour and the full participation of women at all levels in sector institutions. It also urges adoption of sound financial practices, where community management can also play an important role. The emphasis on community management was strengthened in the Nordic Fresh Water Initiative (1991), which called for water management responsibility to be devolved to the lowest possible level. The subject was further stressed in the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development (1992). The 500 participants in that meeting agreed that water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy makers at all levels. They underlined that women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water, and suggested that in principle water should be recognized as an economic good. At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, world leaders committed themselves to a comprehensive programme to provide sustainable water supply and sanitation services to the hundreds of millions of the world's population who currently lack them. At the summit all States and support agencies were urged to implement activities aiming for universal coverage outlined in Agenda 21, a strategy for sustainable development in the 21stCentury. A guiding principle in the achievement of Agenda 21 is: "Community management of services, backed by measures to strengthen local institutions in implementing and sustaining water and sanitation programmes." The activity list includes numerous measures to bring about effective community management (see panel). Agenda 21 activities linked to Community Management
Evans & Appleton, Community Management Today, 1993, p.1: To consolidate desk research and field studies and to provide guidance in community management IRC in collaboration with UNDP, UNICEF, WHO and the UNDP/Word Bank Water and Sanitation Program and DGIS organised an international workshop in November 1992 in the Hague, the Netherlands, with the theme "The Role of Communities in the Management of Improved Water Supply Systems". The workshop brought together experiences in community water management from seven developing countries: Cameroon, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Pakistan, Uganda and Yemen. Participants from these countries presented case studies, which were reviewed together with a background paper and a review of experiences from 122 completed water supply projects prepared by the WSP (Evans and Appleton 1993). The Third Global Forum of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) held in Barbados (November 1995) endorsed the creation of a Council-sponsored Working Group (WG) on Community Management and Partnerships with Civil Society, led by the International Secretariat for Water (ISW). Regional Coordinators were selected in Africa (NETWAS), Asia (Approtech Asia and NEWAH) and Latin America (CIUDAD). The aims of the Working Group were:
The members of this group also became involved in the development of the Water for People VISION 21 (http://www.wsscc.org/load.cfm?page=events/events_3.cfm ; available in PDF at: http://www.wsscc.org/pdf/V21core.pdf) that fed into the overall World Water Vision that was endorsed by the ministers at the Ministerial Conference following the Second World Water Forum in The Hague in March 2000. The approaches needed to reach the goal of hygiene, sanitation and water for all by 2025 are set out in VISION 21. VISION 21 focuses on mobilising people's own creativity and energy in developing solutions for improving their health and welfare. The people centred approach builds on community management as its main vehicle. During the 1980s and 1990s a variety of different actors, with very different agendas signed up to the concepts of community management. Governments saw community involvement as a way of reducing demands on over-stretched resources. Donors saw an opportunity to focus and stretch development budgets towards effective implementation of water supply and sanitation facilities, and to bypass the problems posed by corrupt and inefficient governments. NGOs became the voice of the community and happily seized an opportunity to increase their role, becoming in many countries a sort of parallel government. Finally multilateral donors such as the World Bank saw community management as an ideal vehicle for their messages about reduced government involvement, and increased private sector and civil society roles. The World Bank, and later WSP (Water and Sanitation Programme) developed the Demand Responsive Approach (DRA - see http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/water/rural.html), which is heavily geared towards the operationalisation of community management approaches. Community management had clearly therefore been accepted - albeit for a variety of different reasons - as a management concept. More and more examples of community management could be found around the world, and Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, India and Tanzania had all made community management a key concept in their national water policies and laws. However, as was highlighted in the Vision 21 report, the problems of lack of sustainability, inappropriate technologies, and failure to increase water and sanitation coverage all continued to be serious. 2000 and beyondAs we have seen, the first stirrings of what was to become community management can be seen as far back as the 1960s, yet, in 2001 "a supply-side approach, in combination with weak and fragmented institutional structures, still prevails in many countries, as water- related services are extended to promote public health and food production". Community management may be at the heart of donor policies and even national policies and legislation, it is often not in the heart of government officials and politicians who still see public services as something that should be supplied by the state.In November 2000 the Fifth Global Forum of the WSSCC in Brazil reached consensus on the way forward for the water supply and sanitation sector: the Iguaçu Action Programme (http://www.wsscc.org/load.cfm?page=events/events_2.cfm). The Iguaçu Action Programme (IAP)'s mainspring is Vision 21. It translates that Vision, which has caught the imagination of the world and is shared by all WSSCC members, into practical activities to improve hygiene, sanitation and water for poor people. Vision 21 covers many subjects, and it is important, for impact and consistency, to concentrate mainly on a small number of them. The Council therefore suggested four main advocacy subjects for the Council's work at all levels over the next few years. Two of those deal with community management issues: Institutional management options, public-private partnerships and the adoption of a code of sector ethics and rights. In many instances, institutional frameworks and arrangements require dramatic changes to enable realization of Vision 21 principles. This will be a massive challenge. While policies are in place in many countries, the lack of effective legal frameworks, implementing strategies and resources to execute these policies and actions are a hindrance. Public-private partnerships of various types are an emerging option. The ongoing work suggested to be undertaken in the IAP is the promotion of institutional reform, the promotion of good governance, capacity building of public sector agencies, and the promotion of engagement of all sector stakeholders, including the establishment of partnerships with the private sector and the implementation of institutional arrangements supporting sanitation. An aspect not previously addressed is the institutional implications for adoption of a code of ethics and greater appreciation of the rights of consumers, concurrent with responsibilities, in sustainable service development. Moving to these people-centred empowerment approaches will present additional institutional challenges. Community-based, participatory and social marketing approaches At the heart of Vision 21 is a commitment to building on people's energy and creativity. This implies the development of community-based approaches, which can operate at scale, in which householders, and communities can take action. A variety of social marketing and participatory approaches have been developed. These approaches need to be incorporated into support mechanisms and implemented at scale. References
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