Water in Cities

Urban water issues in developing countries are complex and increasingly urgent. For the first time in history, more humans live in urban than rural areas, and the pace of urbanization continues to accelerate — every day, 180 000 more people are added to the world’s urban population.

Rural migrants in developing countries are typically looking for greater opportunities and a more secure livelihood in cities, yet frequently they fail to find either. According to the United Nations, one billion people live in slums, largely in Asia (550 million), Africa (187 million), and Latin America and the Caribbean (128 million). In Africa, 72% of urban residents live in slums, the highest concentration in the world.

One of the biggest challenges for people in slums is getting affordable, safe water for drinking and household use. Slum residents are forced to pay 10 to 20 times more, and sometimes up to 200 times more, for drinking water than wealthy urban residents connected to the municipal water mains.

“The urban poor often spend up to 25% of their income on water,” explains Naser Faruqui, team leader, Urban Poverty and Environment. “And too often that very expensive water isn’t safe because of a lack of sanitation services, poor drainage, and no wastewater collection or treatment.”

Fewer than 20% of the urban poor worldwide have access to safe water, compared to 80% of the affluent.

IDRC’s many urban water-related projects focus on bringing communities, governments, and researchers together to overcome the major technical and social challenges of helping slum residents obtain adequate supplies of safe, affordable water.

Keeping Water Safe

Urban growth in developing countries tends to be rapid and unplanned, characterized by minimal or non-existent sanitation services. For example, 83% of the population in 43 African cities lacked toilets connected to sewers in 2004, according to UN-HABITAT. When sanitation is poor, water sources become contaminated. In densely populated urban slums, water-borne diseases spread rapidly.

But slums are usually located on marginal lands — steep hillsides in Latin America, flood plains in Africa and Asia — that make delivering sanitation services especially challenging. For example, slums on flood plains have poor drainage and may be covered by flood waters for several months every year, creating ideal conditions for the transmission of disease.

IDRC’s many successful sanitation and hygiene-related urban projects address not just the technical challenges of supplying safe water and sanitation services to slums, but also the social challenges of building cooperative institutions that can protect water quality by organizing garbage collection and educating the community about hygiene.

Building Partnerships and Institutions

“You need to build inclusive partnerships,” says Faruqui, “which is difficult because there are many types of government organizations in urban areas with overlapping responsibilities. And because social cohesion often breaks down in slums, it’s a challenge to bring people together in a common cause.”

“Researchers, decision-makers, and technicians are learning from one another.... These kinds of exchanges are very exciting.”

Naser Faruqui, team leader, Urban Poverty and Environment

A big part of the challenge is the unclear status of slum residents.

“The government may feel that by providing services it would be acknowledging that squatters have a right to live there, and that then an even greater wave of migrants would come,” says Faruqui.

Lack of tenure also tends to make residents reluctant to invest in improving their homes and communities.

“They have no piece of paper. They feel that their homes could be taken away at any time,” he adds

Increasingly, however, governments at all levels are acknowledging that slums will not simply go away and that social organization is required to make these communities work. IDRC projects help build and sustain organizations and institutions capable of finding local solutions to local water problems. These projects focus on areas and municipalities within cities because taking on the entire water system for a vast urban area is simply too complex.

“The approach we take is to drill down to the neighbourhood level, and deeper to the household level because some of these problems won’t be addressed by governments for some time,” says Faruqui. “So people need to work together to address the issues themselves. When they do work together, when they’re able to reconcile different perspectives and needs, it’s amazing what they can achieve.”

Knowledge without Boundaries

In 1999, Naser Faruqui was chosen as one of the world’s top water experts under the age of 40 by the Third World Centre for Water Management, the International Water Resources Association, and the Stockholm International Water Institute. He cites water demand management projects in North Africa and the Middle East as a particularly promising instance of the synergy between cooperation and coordination.

“Researchers, decision-makers, and technicians are learning from one another,” he says. “Syrians are learning from the Tunisians how to improve wastewater treatment, Jordanians are learning from Egyptians how water user organizations can improve water sharing and governance at the local level. These kinds of exchanges are very exciting.”

For More Information

Research that Matters

How IDRC-supported research is addressing development challenges and making a difference in the lives of people in the South.

Making the Most of Minimal Water The IDRC-supported WaDImena project is helping countries in the parched Middle East and North Africa share lessons on how demand management can avert a looming water crisis.

Reservoirs of Hope An IDRC-funded shared learning effort helps farmers deliver fresh water — and the prospect of a brighter future — to impoverished villages in China’s Guizhou province.

After the Water Wars: The Search for Common Ground After 32 failed attempts to reach consensus on water legislation and a deadly social conflict over water rights, IDRC-supported researchers in Bolivia have helped their country develop a water law that everyone could agree on.

More Research that Matters

IDRC Links

Globe and Mail article about grey water re-use in Jordan

Global Approaches to Urban Wastewater Use in Irrigated Agriculture

Liquid Manna? Treating Urban Wastewater for Local Gardening

In Conversation with Naser Faruqui: A “Next Generation Water Leader”

Water Management in Islam

External Links

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada article on urban poverty

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