Coverage, quality, and maintenance, challenges to improve the impact of rural water and sanitation projects

In La Paz, on August 17th, CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, presented its book "Agua potable y saneamiento en la nueva ruralidad de América Latina" (Water and sanitation in the new rurality of Latin America), a consultation instrument to facilitate the execution of the sector's development projects. The meeting represented a space for dialogue and reflection between key actors in Bolivia's water and sanitation sector, as well as staff from CAF and other cooperation organizations, with the objective of seeking solutions to the current challenges, closely related to the Sustainable Development Objectives. 

The publication reveals that despite the noteworthy advances in the past few years regarding water and sanitation in Latin America, there is still a significant gap in access to these services between urban and rural areas. To guarantee access to water and sanitation for all Latin Americans, which would entail a noteworthy improvement in their wellbeing and quality of life, it is necessary to strengthen the efforts in rural areas to optimize the quality and continuity of the services provided. 

Emilio Uquillas, CAF's Director Representative in Bolivia, stated, "Bolivia had a potable water provision system that was relatively small and concentrated in the most important urban centers, but it is currently expanding and municipalities have to respond to the protection of this asset through the quality of water, maintaining the value of the service provision structure".

During the event, aspects of vital importance were discussed, to improve the impact of rural water and sanitation projects in the region, such as:  

• Redefinition of the concept of rurality, and differentiated public policies for rural areas according to the views of different sectors. 

• Consideration of the comprehensive cycle of the projects and the implementation of technologies to update technical sanitation norms. 

• Improvement of the sustainability of the services designing specific policies to support the post-project phase. 

 In addition to the need to have policies for the post-project phase, it is important to take into consideration the inter-cultural process of rural inhabitants from a complementary vision that helps improve the sustainability and generation of demand through social marketing. 

Finally, Jaime Holguín, Director for Social Development Projects for the Southern Region, highlighted that it is a clear CAF objective to generate discussion spaces where knowledge of the sector is shared in a constructive dialogue that contributes to improve the quality of life of Latin Americans.