A hidden crisis: unravelling current failures for future success in rural groundwater supply

隐藏的危机：解决当前农村地下水供应失败的问题，以实现未来的成功

• 批准号: NE/M008606/1
• 负责人: Alan MacDonald
• 金额: $ 103.16万
• 依托单位: British Geological Survey
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FM008606%2F1
• 关键词: hidden; crisis; unravelling; current; failures

Extending and sustaining access to safe and reliable water services remains central to improving the health and livelihoods of poor people, particularly women, in Africa. Here an estimated 350 million rural inhabitants still have no form of safe drinking water, and depend on poor quality unreliable sources for all their domestic needs. Improving access to water, and helping to achieve new international goals of universal access to safe water hinges on accelerated development of groundwater resources, usually through drilling boreholes and equipping them with handpumps. However, emphasis on new infrastructure has obscured a hidden crisis of failure, with >30% of new sources non-functional within 5-years and many more unreliable. This problem has remained stubbornly persistent over the last four decades, with little sign of sustained progress despite various interventions. Part of the reason for this continued failure is the lack of systematic investigations into the complex multifaceted reasons for failure and therefore the same mistakes are often repeated. The accumulated costs to governments, donors and above all rural people are enormous. Addressing the functionality crisis requires a step-change in understanding of what continues to go wrong. The complex issue must be approached from a truly interdisciplinary viewpoint: combining innovative natural sciences to assess the availability of local water resources and how this changes with seasons and climate; with detailed social science research of how local communities function and make decisions about managing their infrastructure; and understanding of how the engineered structures can degenerate. Underlying these reasons for source failure may be other contributory factors, such as government incentives, the role of the donor community, or long term changes in the demand for water.The overall aim of the project is to build a robust, multi-country evidence base on the causes of the unacceptably high rates of groundwater system and service failure and use this knowledge to deliver a step-change in future functionality. To achieve this aim, our research draws on a novel interdisciplinary approach using the latest thinking and techniques in both natural and social science and applies them to three African countries that have struggled for decades with service sustainability - Uganda, Ethiopia and Malawi. There are five main objectives:1.to provide a rigorous definition of functionality of water points which accounts for seasonality, quality and expectations of service; 2. to apply this new definition to Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi to get a more realistic picture of water point functionality and therefore water coverage figures; 3. to investigate in detail 50 water points in each country by taking apart the water points and pumps, testing the local groundwater conditions, examining the renewability of groundwater and exploring in detail the local water committee; 4. we will also build on this information to forecast future rural water supply coverage by modelling the impact on water points of various potential future pathways; and 5. finally we will use all this information to develop an approach for building resilience into future rural water supply programmes and helping people decide when it is worth rehabilitating failed sources. To carry out this ground breaking research we have brought together a consortium, led by the British Geological Survey, of leading interdisciplinary UK researchers at BGS, KCL, ODI and Cambridge with groundwater academics from three highly regarded African universities (Universities of Addis Ababa, Mekerere and Malawi), and WaterAid, a leading NGO on developing rural water supply services across Africa with a history of innovation.The research has the potential to have a major impact on the delivery of reliable clean water throughout Africa, and if the results can be taken up widely break the pattern of repeated failure.

扩大和持续获得安全可靠的供水服务仍然是改善非洲穷人，特别是妇女的健康和生计的核心。在这里，估计有3.5亿农村居民仍然没有安全的饮用水，依靠质量差、不可靠的水源满足所有家庭需求。改善获得水的机会和帮助实现普遍获得安全水的新国际目标取决于加速开发地下水资源，通常是通过钻孔和为其配备手泵。然而，对新基础设施的重视掩盖了潜在的故障危机，5年内有近30%的新能源无法运行，还有更多的能源不可靠。这一问题在过去四十年中一直顽固存在，尽管采取了各种干预措施，但几乎没有取得持续进展的迹象。这种持续失败的部分原因是缺乏对失败的复杂的多方面原因的系统调查，因此同样的错误经常重复。政府、捐助者，尤其是农村人民的累积成本是巨大的。解决功能危机需要逐步改变对继续出错的原因的理解。这个复杂的问题必须从真正跨学科的角度来解决：结合创新的自然科学来评估当地水资源的可用性以及它如何随季节和气候变化；通过详细的社会科学研究，了解当地社区如何运作，如何做出管理基础设施的决策；了解工程结构是如何退化的。这些水源失效的原因可能是其他因素造成的，如政府奖励、捐助界的作用或水需求的长期变化。该项目的总体目标是建立一个强有力的多国证据基础，以了解地下水系统和服务故障发生率高得令人无法接受的原因，并利用这些知识对未来的功能进行逐步改变。为了实现这一目标，我们的研究采用了一种新颖的跨学科方法，使用了自然科学和社会科学的最新思想和技术，并将其应用于乌干达、埃塞俄比亚和马拉维这三个几十年来一直在努力解决服务可持续性问题的非洲国家。有五个主要目标：1。为供水点的功能提供严格的定义，包括季节性、服务质量和预期；2. 将这一新定义应用于埃塞俄比亚、乌干达和马拉维，以便更真实地了解供水点的功能，从而获得水覆盖数字；3. 对每个国家的50个供水点进行详细调查，方法是拆开供水点和水泵，测试当地的地下水条件，检查地下水的可再生性，并详细考察当地的水资源委员会；4. 我们亦会以这些资料为基础，模拟未来各种可能的道路对供水点的影响，以预测未来农村供水的覆盖范围；和5。最后，我们将利用所有这些信息制定一种方法，在未来的农村供水计划中建立复原力，并帮助人们决定何时值得恢复受损水源。为了开展这项开创性的研究，我们召集了一个由英国地质调查局、KCL、ODI和剑桥大学领先的跨学科英国研究人员组成的联盟，以及来自三所备受尊敬的非洲大学（亚的斯亚贝巴大学、Mekerere大学和马拉维大学）的地下水学者，以及WaterAid，一个致力于在非洲发展农村供水服务的领先非政府组织，具有创新历史。这项研究有可能对整个非洲提供可靠的清洁水产生重大影响，如果研究结果能够被广泛采用，就会打破反复失败的模式。

项目成果

Literature review: handpump functionality monitoring

文献综述：手泵功能监测

• 发表时间: 2016
• 作者: Casey V

A hidden crisis: strengthening the evidence base on the current failure of rural groundwater supplies

隐藏的危机：加强当前农村地下水供应失败的证据基础

• 发表时间: 2015
• 作者: Bonsor HC

Understanding process, power, and meaning in adaptive governance: a critical institutional reading

• DOI: 10.5751/es-10212-230249
• 发表时间: 2018-01-01
• 期刊: ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY
• 影响因子: 4.1
• 作者: Cleaver, Frances;Whaley, Luke
• 通讯作者: Whaley, Luke

Worldviews and the everyday politics of community water management

社区水管理的世界观和日常政治

• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Water Alternatives
• 作者: Cleaver F

Environmental tracers to evaluate groundwater residence times and water quality risk in shallow unconfined aquifers in sub Saharan Africa

用于评估撒哈拉以南非洲浅层无承压含水层地下水停留时间和水质风险的环境示踪剂

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125753
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal of Hydrology
• 影响因子: 6.4
• 作者: Banks E