School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom;
Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Oct 5;118(40). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2105953118.
More than 500 million rural Africans lack safe drinking water. The human right to water and United Nations Sustainable Development Goal SDG6.1 promote a policy shift from building water infrastructure to sustaining water services. However, the financial calculus is bleak with the costs of "safely managed"' or "basic" water services in rural Africa beyond current government budgets and donor funds. The funding shortfall is compounded by the disappointing results of earlier policy initiatives in Africa. This is partly because of a failure to understand which attributes of water services rural people value. We model more than 11,000 choice observations in rural Kenya by attributes of drinking water quality, price, reliability, and proximity. Aggregate analysis disguises alternative user priorities in three choice classes. The two larger choice classes tolerate lower service levels with higher payments. A higher water service level reflects the smallest choice class favored by women and the lower wealth group. For the lower wealth group, slower repair times are accepted in preference to a lower payment. Some people discount potable water and proximity, and most people choose faster repair times and lower payments. We argue policy progress needs to chart common ground between individual choices and universal rights. Guaranteeing repair times may provide a policy lever to unlock individual payments to complement public investment in water quality and waterpoint proximity to support progressive realization of a universal right.
超过 5 亿非洲农村居民缺乏安全饮用水。水权和联合国可持续发展目标 6.1 倡导将政策从建设水基础设施转向维持供水服务。然而，由于农村非洲“安全管理”或“基本”供水服务的成本超出了当前政府预算和捐助资金，财务计算结果黯淡。由于非洲早期政策举措的结果令人失望，资金缺口进一步扩大。部分原因是未能了解农村居民重视供水服务的哪些属性。我们通过饮用水质量、价格、可靠性和接近程度等属性对肯尼亚农村地区的 11000 多个选择观测值进行了建模。总体分析掩盖了三个选择类别中替代用户优先级。两个较大的选择类别可以容忍较低的服务水平和较高的支付。更高的供水服务水平反映了最小的选择类别，这是女性和较低财富群体所青睐的。对于较低财富群体来说，他们更愿意接受较慢的维修时间，而不是较低的支付。一些人会对饮用水和接近程度打折扣，大多数人则会选择更快的维修时间和更低的支付。我们认为，政策的进步需要在个人选择和普遍权利之间找到共同点。保证维修时间可能为政策提供一个杠杆，以补充个人支付，支持对水质和供水点接近度的公共投资，从而支持逐步实现普遍权利。
