A new study by Oxford University has found that globally accessible clean drinking water is achievable if good governance and management are adopted.

Despite reaching the Millennium Development Goal for drinking water access in 2012, over 780 million people still do not have safe and reliable drinking water, the report says.

The study found that the provision of clean water is most problematic in Africa where infrastructure can’t keep up with the growing urban populations. The study looks at the institutional side of how water supplies are delivered, operation and management systems, water payment systems, the quality of service, and whether populations had water on demand or a regularly disrupted service. It is based on nine case studies in Cambodia, India, Kenya, Uganda and Senegal.

Making clean drinking water accessible

A good system for maintaining existing water supplies was found to be critical in all cases. The monitoring of quality service can also be improved with new information systems.

The report proposes a framework built on examples of good practice in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – the areas which present the most severe challenges of all the developing countries. However it warns that the scale of investment necessary to update the ageing infrastructure goes beyond the often narrow project timeframes.

“We hope this study provides a framework to design policy and guide investments to systematically reduce drinking water risks in urban and rural contexts. These case studies demonstrate a variety of approaches taken by countries in some of the most challenging circumstances,” says lead author Dr Rob Hope. He argues that the case studies show that there are realistic ways to transform water services.