Description

ADB project officers now have a powerful tool for revealing the facts about water consumers and water and money flows in project cities and towns.

ADB has produced a model Terms of Reference (TOR) for investigating and responding to both the "formal" and "informal" segments of a city's water market.

Why Conduct a diagnostic City Water Assessment

City water supply projects mostly concentrate on the city water utility. But, in developing countries, many urban residents obtain water from an "informal" market. There might actually be more money turning over in informal markets than through the water utility.

And formal and informal markets are linked. The informal water vendors, tanker operators, water re-sellers, small piped network operators, and bottlers might be buying or stealing their water from the utility—and some water utility staff and officials might even be complicitly aware of this, which might explain intractable high unaccounted for water (UFW) in some utilities.

So it could be risky investing in the water utility without also understanding the informal water market. An incisive audit of water and money flows might reveal a governance and leadership problem that needs to be fixed before committing to the project.

Even more important, the project might completely miss those who need support most— the underserved and disadvantaged poor.

What the Model TOR Offers

The TOR for undertaking investigative city water assessments provides an approach and methodology for

• surveying all classes of water consumers and all types of water providers
• analyzing the survey results
• undertaking stakeholder consultations based on the survey findings
• formulating responsive city government policy and ordinances
• organizing civil society (consumer groups) to monitor policy implementation

With this knowledge and an improved policy setting underway, a successful project can be prepared with influential and well-meaning city and utility leaders.

Contents

• Abstract
• Background
• Objectives
• Scope
• Methodology of Surveys
• The Questionnaires
• Analysis of Results
• Stakeholder Consultation
• Implementation Schedule
• Human Resource Inputs
• Financial Resources
• Reports
• Appendixes
• Diagnostic City Water Assessments: Notes for ADB Staff Preparing Water Supply Projects