Hidden crisis project: in-depth qualitative social science survey of community water management arrangements in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda 2017-2018 (NERC grant NE/M008606/1)

In developing countries, the dominant model for managing rural water supplies is a community-level association or committee. Although a relative paucity of evidence exists to support this model, it continues to exert a strong pull on policy makers. The Hidden Crisis Survey 2 dataset is the major dataset developed by the project. A social science and physical science survey were conducted in tandem, examining the physical waterpoint and the arrangement the community had devised for managing it. The detailed physical and social science datasets developed by the survey were intended to be used to: better understand the multi-faceted factors which underlie water source failure, their everyday governance arrangements, and to explore the inter-relations between the water point governance arrangements, engineering choice and performance, and groundwater resource conditions. The social science survey moved beyond the more standard preoccupation with examining waterpoint committees (a focus on form) to instead examine context-specific water management arrangements (based on the functions needed for sustainable and equitable management). The survey produced a detailed social science dataset of the arrangements communities have devised for managing their waterpoint across 150 sites in Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, surveyed in 2017 and the early part of 2018 (fieldwork was staggered across the three project countries to time with their dry seasons). The findings challenge many of the normative assumptions in the literature about community based management of water and help to move the debate on to more productive areas of enquiry.

在发展中国家，管理农村水供应的占主导地位的模式为社区级别的协会或委员会。尽管支持该模式的证据相对匮乏，但该模式依然对政策制定者产生着强大的吸引力。隐藏危机调查2数据集是该项目的核心数据集。该项目同时进行了社会科学和自然科学调查，旨在考察物理水点及其社区为管理该水点所制定的安排。调查所开发的详细物理和自然科学数据集旨在用于：更深入地理解导致水源失效的多重因素，其日常治理安排，以及探讨水点治理安排、工程选择与性能以及地下水资源条件之间的相互关系。社会科学调查超越了传统关注水点委员会（形式上的关注）的范畴，转而考察特定情境下的水管理安排（基于可持续和公平管理所需的职能）。调查产生了关于社区在埃塞俄比亚、马拉维和乌干达150个地点（2017年和2018年早期部分进行调研，实地工作在三项目国家错开进行，以适应其干旱季节）为管理其水点所制定的安排的详细社会科学数据集。研究结果挑战了文献中关于基于社区的水管理的许多规范性假设，并有助于将辩论引向更有成效的研究领域。