Assessment of community-managed water systems in rural areas of Espírito Santo, Brazil, using the SIASAR tool

Abstract Rural communities usually are poorly covered by basic services, including water supply services (WSSs). Within this context, community management of water is a promising alternative to address this issue, with many successes all over the world. This approach also contributes to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which intends to universalize water access. This paper evaluates the WSSs provided by eleven rural community organizations from Espírito Santo, Brazil. All of those participate in the sanitation program “Pró-Rural” created by Cesan (Companhia Espiritosantense de Saneamento), the state water concessionaire, to reach small-sized rural settlements. For this purpose, Siasar was used, an informational tool that enables the identification of elements in the rural water supply systems (RWSSs) that can enhance or hinder their performance. The results verified that the communities were able to maintain a satisfactory level of quality of the WSSs, although there were perceptible fragilities regarding the distance between internal (communities and service providers) and external (technical assistance providers) actors that can decrease the quality of the WSS or even lead to its interruption if not addressed.

摘要：乡村社区往往难以获得包括供水服务（Water Supply Services，WSSs）在内的基本公共服务。在此背景下，社区供水管理是解决该问题的可行路径之一，全球范围内已有诸多成功实践。该模式亦有助于实现可持续发展目标6（Sustainable Development Goal 6，SDG 6），该目标旨在推动供水服务的全民覆盖。
本文对巴西圣埃斯皮里图州11家乡村社区组织提供的供水服务进行了评估。上述组织均参与了州级水务特许经营企业塞桑公司（Companhia Espiritosantense de Saneamento，Cesan）发起的"Pró-Rural"卫生项目，该项目旨在覆盖小型乡村定居点。
为此，研究采用了信息工具Siasar，该工具可用于识别乡村供水系统（Rural Water Supply Systems，RWSSs）中对其运行绩效产生正向或负向影响的各类因素。
研究结果证实，受访社区能够维持供水服务的良好质量水平，但仍存在较为明显的薄弱环节：内部主体（社区与服务提供方）与外部主体（技术援助提供方）之间的协作距离问题，若未得到妥善处理，可能会降低供水服务质量，甚至导致系统停运。