The Water Governance Blog at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education
Sumit Vij, Timos Karpouzoglou, and Vishal Narain challenge the myth of the formal (state controlled) water as ‘piped’ water versus the informal (non-state) water as ‘non-piped’. Their ethnographic work illustrates how these two water...
Jakarta piped water system is almost a hundred years old. Nila Ardhianie and Marie Belland argue that it has not changed much since the colonial times, carrying a legacy of social inequality and ecological...
Decentralized or communal water sources are officially labelled as “alternative”, but often represent the only affordable option for many urban residents. These systems require similar attention as centralised water provision, argues the SMALL research...
Semarang, one of the largest city in Indonesia, is currently hit by the worst flood of the last ten years. The response by the Government relies on giant flood infrastructure. In this collective piece...
In low income areas in African cities, where the poor cannot afford to pay the bill, water is often supplied by informal providers. Focusing on a study case in Kenya, a new article by...
As the Sustainable Development Goals call for universal access to drinking water, Akosua Boakye points at how water utilities in the cities of the Global South are caught in between the neo-liberal principles of...
Mireia Tutusaus and Klaas Schwartz edited a special issue on “Water Services in small towns in developing countries” in the journal Water Policy. They highlight how water services management on the ground diverges from...
This post is a brief overview of the recently published article, The Water‐Sensitive City: Implications of an urban water management paradigm and its globalization, written by the authors: Françoise Bichai and Andres Cabrera Flamini. Academics...
An uncomfortable reflection on my positionality: confronting my own ‘northern’ theorization of geographies of differentiated access to water in Jakarta. Good research often starts with discovering ‘productive paradoxes’. That is, the reality we observe...
In 2017 we made great progress with the SMALL project. At the beginning of the year we asked ourselves: how do the current arrangements for accessing water and sanitation services in SMALL towns actually...
This blog is based on the publication by Maria Rusca, Akosua Sarpong Boakye-Ansah, Alex Loftus, Giuliana Ferrero, Pieter van der Zaag, “An interdisciplinary political ecology of drinking water quality. Exploring socio-ecological inequalities in Lilongwe’s...
“Pro-poor is a bottom up approach which ensures participation by low-income consumers in water provisioning issues……. It promotes a sense of ownership among such consumers leading to the reduction of vandalism of infrastructure and...
“And now, I give the word to my M.D. (Managing Director)”, and with that off-the-cuff acronym, shortened title of power, the players embodied their roles and the game was on. The Operational Manager of...
Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized (Margaret Atwood) Water systems in small towns have kept me busy for the last three...
My best friend used to sarcastically translate the acronym PhD as ‘Permanently Head Damaged’. I am not sure if at the end of this marathon I will be head damaged but I know that...
