Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development

Changing weather patterns, including prolonged periods of drought and rising water demand are putting increasing pressure on water management and underlying governance systems. Our study implemented a novel methodological framework to jointly assess the physical dimension of water use and the regulatory capacity of water governance in the Lake of Palmas River Basin by combining the Water Flow Diagram (WFD) and the Viable System Model (VSM). The WFDs were built to visualise seasonal water balances and flows and highlight water consumption by different sectors. Data were obtained from reports, utility managers and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool Plus (SWAT+) hydrological model. The VSM, grounded in organisational cybernetics, provided a structural and functional framework for diagnosing governance gaps across diverse organisational levels and sectors. Data for the VSM were collected through document review, interviews with representatives from government agencies involved in water management, water users from different sectors, water resource specialist and civil society organizations. Findings from the WFD and preliminary results from VSM were reviewed during a participatory co-creation workshop involving stakeholders from the same sectors. The combined application of both tools revealed the suitability of the methodology to foster the dialogue around different conflicts of interest on water use and potential mitigation measures. The process highlighted a significant gap between regulated water allocation and actual abstraction, identified critical structural deficits in local management capacity and inter-institutional coordination, and uncovered weak feedback and monitoring mechanisms across governance levels. The study demonstrated that VSM and WFD are structurally complementary: the WFD visualizes the physical environment of the system, while the VSM maps its regulatory architecture, enabling their joint use for an integrative diagnostic process and redesign. For practitioners, the combined methodology offers a replicable, participatory approach for identifying governance failures in complex hydric systems.

Après plus que cinq ans d'utilisation, la performance d'un «lombrifiltre» pour le traitement et la réutilisation des eaux usées dans le centre urbain de Genève a été évaluée. En plus de l'abattement de la matière organique, de l'azote, des pathogènes et des micropolluants, l'étude montre que grâce à la réutilisation des eaux traitées, ce système décentralisé diminue les besoins en eau potable.

The World Health Organization recommends Water Safety Plans (WSP) as the most effective means of ensuring safe drinking-water supply. WSP performance evaluation is necessary for improving water service delivery, scaling up, and motivating the roll out of WSP. In this study, the evaluation of WSP development and implementation was done in Bushenyi-Ishaka Municipality, a mid-sized semi-rural town in southwestern Uganda. Training of operations staff and the WSP team was done. Performance indicator data were collected before, during, and after 18 months of WSP implementation to determine the changes attributable to this intervention. Structured semi-quantitative questionnaires were used for data collection, which consisted of 11 progressive outcome indicators categorized under operational and institutional changes, and 14 short-term impact indicators categorized under water supply change. Results showed that WSP implementation enabled improvement in infrastructure, operational monitoring, customer engagement meetings, and training. Implementation of WSP did not result in improved catchment management, development and review of standard operating procedures and holding of internal meetings. Regarding short-term impacts, there was a significant improvement in compliance levels with drinking water quality standards, continuity of water supply, and customer satisfaction, as assessed by the frequency of complaints. There was, however, a significant reduction in the revenue-cost ratio (p = 0.001), likely due to an inadequate budget for implementing service expansion.