Is water still running? (Ned Breslin)

Tired of seeing broken hand pumps and taps litter Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Breslin sees these as signs of the critical need to assess water projects for their real impact. Sustainability is not about the quantity of water pumps installed. He proposes devices that will be able to send information to investors that a water supply has broken down.

However, this does not change the system of dependency on external assistance. Another strategy, would be to implement the supporting local organisation structures or institutions at the community level that will ‘own’ the technology, and control its operation and maintenance. This is an argument for ‘water sovereignty’ (see our argument in The Largest Mass Poisoning in History (AMRF), and see a similar argument for ‘food sovereignty’ in India in A new future for small farmers (Paul Enkelaar, Jan Paul Smit and Manuel Reichert)).