International Symposium on Rural Water Services

International Symposium on Rural Water Services

“Providing Sustainable Water Services at Scale”

Kampala, Uganda - 13th and 14th April, 2010

The Thematic Group on Scaling Up Rural Water Services is organising an international symposium on providing sustainable rural water services at scale in collaboration with the Ministry of Water and Environment of the Government of Uganda.

The main aims of the symposium are to bring together research findings and lessons learned on how to improve sustainable rural water services at scale, to debate and analyse these lessons and to identify common principles to improve policy and practice.

The target audience of the symposium includes practitioners and policy makers from governments, donor organisations and local and international NGOs. 

The format for the two-day symposium will allow participants to share and learn from global experiences in the form of key note presentations, country case studies and interactive work-sessions. It is envisaged that this two-day symposium will provide inputs for the development of a general framework of principles for sustainable rural water services. Topics for debate will include:

·         What are the real costs of sustainability and who pays for them?
·         How can the role of the private sector in rural water be encouraged?
·         Is there a future for the community management model?
·         How can self-supply of services be encouraged?
·         What are the mechanisms to encourage harmonisation and alignment at intermediate (local government) level?
·         What are the most appropriate funding flows – for national governments, the private sector and donors – for supporting more sustainable service delivery?
·         How can decentralisation be strengthened in order to provide sustainable services at scale?

Call for Participation

There will be no open call for papers, but instead participants who have specific experience are encouraged to submit inputs in the form of short presentations with a two-page summary; guidance will be provided. Participants are encouraged to share their work and ideas at the symposium through other media such as film, photo essays, animated presentations or other methods.  All inputs will be reviewed by a committee created for the event.  More details on the format of the symposium, guidelines for submission of presentations and for registration will follow in the second announcement.

The symposium is supported within the framework of the Triple-S (Sustainable Services at Scale) initiative being managed by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.