Draft:Rural Water Supply Network

The Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) is a global, multi-stakeholder network focused on on achieving universal access to safe, affordable drinking water for all rural people worldwide. Established in 1992 as the Handpump Technology Network (HTN), the organization originally concentrated on the development and maintenance of handpump technologies. Over time, it expanded its scope to address broader rural water supply issues, and in 2004, it was rebranded as RWSN. The network has no legal structure and instead is a loose collaboration. It has over 13,000 members in 168 countries (as of 2021) from diverse sectors, including government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research institutions, and private companies. An independent evaluation of RWSN in 2017 found that: "the RWSN has been described to be the prime network that supports scale up of rural water supply for practitioners". RWSN is not a campaigning or lobbying organisation.

RWSN's operates on the principles of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and capacity building. It facilitates the exchange of expertise and experiences among its members. The network is organized into various thematic groups, each focusing on specific aspects of rural water supply, such as sustainable groundwater development, self-supply, and the professionalization of community water management. The activities of RWSN are designed for knowledge sharing and networking. For example, RWNS runs webinars, facilitates online discussion communities and publishes peer-reviewed guidelines and case studies. It also hosts the public domain standards for various hand pumps, including the Afridev and India Mark II.

RWSN's governance structure includes an Executive Steering Committee, which provide strategic direction and oversight. The network's secretariat is hosted by the Skat Foundation in Switzerland, which coordinates day-to-day operations and supports the activities of the thematic groups. Funding for RWSN comes from a combination of membership fees, grants from international donors, and contributions from partner organizations. The RWSN secretariat had income for the period 2018-2020 from 15 sources of partner contributions and project funding. The largest single contribution (30%) was from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The secretariat complements its core funds with project based work.

By fostering a global community dedicated to rural water supply, RWSN plays an important role in advancing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which aims to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Aim and rationale
The aim of RWSN is "to improve the quality of rural water services and their management". The mission of the network is worded as follows: "RWSN is a convening space for individual professionals and organisations to collaborate, develop guidelines and standards, curate knowledge, and promote lifelong learning in the rural water sector."

Through its work, RWSN aims to address the challenges faced by rural communities, such as inadequate infrastructure and limited financial resources. More recently, RWSN is also explicitly working on aspects that are related to the impacts of climate change, such as climate resilient water services in rural areas.

A network such as RWSN is needed because millions of people in rural areas of developing countries have no access to safe drinking water. For example, an estimate in 2016 put the figure at 300 million people without safe drinking water in rural Africa.

The Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF said in 2022 that 411 million people in Africa (3 out of 5 people) still lacked basic drinking water services in 2020. The situation is worse for rural areas in Africa where only 22% had access to basic drinking water services in 2020 compared to urban areas with 59%.

The report also stated that "Achieving the 2030 SDG targets will require a 12x increase in current rates of progress on safely managed drinking water," Target 6.1 of Sustainable Development Goal 6 is: "By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all".

Knowledge sharing and networking
Key activities of RWSN include the development of technical guidelines and standards, the dissemination of research findings, and the promotion of innovative technologies and approaches. The network also engages in advocacy efforts to influence policy and practice at local, national, and international levels. RWSN regularly runs activities around knowledge sharing and networking. For example, RWSN runs e-mail based online discussion communities with Dgroups. It also organises regular webinars in English, French and Spanish on topics relating to rural water supply and WASH (water supply, sanitation and hygiene). For example, the World Bank and RWSN ran their first joint webinar series in 2012. WHO and RWSN had a joint "Launch webinar for WHO guidelines and tools to enhance small water supplies" in February 2024.

RWSN provides a platform for raising awareness around chronic failures in water supply systems. The platform also supports activities around research and drilling professionalisation and new service delivery models.

RWSN also has a program for mentoring of young professionals.

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, one of the funders of RWSN, provided a snapshot of the work of RWSN as follows: "It is a trusted source of technical and strategic guidance with over 25,000 document downloads per year. From 2015 to 2017, RWSN hosted 68 webinars, in English, French and Spanish, with 2,437 participants and 169 different speakers from across all global regions."

Creating and hosting publications
RWSN participates in the creation of peer-reviewed guidelines and case studies. It often collaborates on joint publications with large organisations such as the World Bank. For example, in 2019 there was a World Bank–Skat Foundation collaboration for the RWSN on the topic of "Innovations in rural water supply sustainability". Another example is the collaboration of RWSN with the 2022 UN World Water Development Report "Groundwater: Making the invisible visible" where RWSN was a chapter lead agency for Chapter 4 on "Groundwater for human settlements".

The RWSN library also hosts the public domain standards for various hand pumps, including the Afridev and India Mark II.

In total, the RWSN library hosts nearly 1000 publications as of 2024.

Connections with research programs
RWSN acts as a knowledge broker between researchers and policy and practice, for example for the research programme "Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor" (UpGro). This was a "7-year research programme funded by the United Kingdom that aimed to improve the evidence and understanding of groundwater across Sub-Saharan Africa to help tackle poverty". There are opportunities and risks of using groundwater across Africa to benefit the continent's poorest people.

Organising global conferences
Every five years since 1992, RWSN has organised the only global conference dedicated to rural water supply, called the RWSN Forum. So far, there have been seven RWSN Forums. All of them, except for one in India, took place in Sub-Saharan Africa:


 * The first one, called The International Handpump Workshop, was in Kenya in 1992.
 * The 2nd HTN Workshop was in Malawi in 1997.
 * The 3rd International HTN Forum was in India in 2000.
 * The 4th Forum was in South Africa in 2003 (called 4th International HTN Forum).
 * The 5th RWSN Forum was in Ghana in 2006.
 * The 6th RWSN Forum took place in Uganda in 2011.
 * The most recent conference was the 7th RWSN Forum in Abidjan, co-hosted by the Government of Cote d'Ivoire, in 2016.  It was opened by the then Prime Minister Kablan Duncan. One of the main sponsors of the event was the African Development Bank through its Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative (RWSSI).
 * The 8th RWSN Forum in 2021 was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been no announcements of upcoming RWSN Forums since then.

Secretariat
The secretariat is currently (as of 2024) hosted by Skat Foundation in St. Gallen, Switzerland. It coordinates and runs the network activities, in partnership with theme leaders and under the supervision and guidance of the executive steering committee. The hosting is reviewed every three years. So far, the secretariat has always been hosted by Skat Foundation.

Themes and theme leaders
There are currently six themes, each with one or several team leaders from various organisations. Theme leaders are either volunteers or are paid by their employers to carry out RWSN networking, training and knowledge exchange activities. Theme leaders are very important to RWSN’s activities. As of 2024, the themes of RWSN include:


 * 1) Leave no-one behind (realisation of human rights to water and sanitation for the most marginalised people)
 * 2) Data for Action
 * 3) Multiple use water services (MUS) (most rural people in low- and middle income countries are also farmers and need water for their livelihoods as well as their household health and wellbeing)
 * 4) Self-supply of water and sanitation
 * 5) Sustainable groundwater development
 * 6) Sustainable services (rural water supply services need to be adequately financed, meet country service delivery standards, are managed and supported by capacitated service providers and service authorities)

Executive steering committee
The network is governed by an executive steering committee. This committee consists of organisations that are "significant global actors in supporting rural water supply and that have demonstrated their commitment to RWSN activities". The organisations that make up the steering committee have been changing over time and currently (in 2023) consist of the following nine organisations: African Development Bank, BGR (Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources), Global Water Center, One for All Alliance (IRC, Water for Good, Water for People), Skat Foundation, UNICEF, WaterAid, Welthungerhilfe, World Bank.

In the year before (2022), the executive steering committee had consisted of seven organisations: African Development Bank, IRC, SDC, Skat Foundation, UNICEF, WaterAid, World Bank.

A statement by World Bank in 2012 explained how World Bank is related to RWSN: "The World Bank and WSP are executive partner organizations of RWSN" along with others. There is ongoing cooperation between World Bank and RWSN.

The current chair is Tommy Ka Kit Ngai from WaterAid. Previous chairs included Louisa Gosling (WaterAid), Kelly Ann Naylor (UNICEF), Ton Schouten (IRC WASH), Richard Carter (WaterAid, later independent).

Members
Membership for individuals and organisations is free and not time-limited. RWSN has over 13,000 members in 168 countries (as of 2021). Membership fees are not mandatory but donations are encouraged.

Affiliations and partnerships
RWSN has been a UN-Water Partner since 2020. Furthermore, RWSN is a strategic network of the SDC Global Programme Water.

RWSN is a strategic partner of UNICEF on providing guidance for water supply, sanitation and hygiene programmes on practical implementation of topics like Leave No-one Behind and water well drilling professionalization.

In 2021, RWSN became one of the implementing partners in the programme "Rural Evidence and Learning for Water (REAL-Water)" which is funded by USAID and led by Aquaya.

Since 2022 RWSN is in a new partnership with Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The aim is "to support networking and knowledge sharing within Latin America and South-South exchange with Africa and Asia". This is part of a project called "Sustainable and Innovative Rural Water, Sanitation and Hygiene" (SIRWASH).

Funding sources
For many years, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) was providing core funding to RWSN. As of 2023 this is no longer the case and their support to RWSN is now only indirect and project based. SDC provided core funding during four phases: The first phase was 2012 to 2014 followed by Phase 2 from 2015 to 2017, Phase 3 from 2018-2020, and Phase 4 from 2021 to 2022.

During the period 2018-2020, the RWSN secretariat had income from 15 sources of partner contributions and project funding. The largest single contribution (30%) during that time was from the SDC. The second biggest source of funding (25%) was from the UPGro programme ("Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor"), followed by 14% from the ZH2O Drink and Donate program.

Member organisations make "substantial annual financial contribution to the backbone functions of the network". In 2020, financial and in-kind support to RWSN came for example from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), UNICEF, The United Kingdom DFID, NERC and ESRC through the UPGro programme and the REACH programme (with Oxford University), Skat Consulting Ltd and about a dozen others.

In general, there is significant in-kind support of the network through its governance structures, such as the executive steering committee. Many of the executive committee organisations also provide cash support. The secretariat complements its core funds with project based work. One sellable service is that of being a knowledge broker.

Impacts
A statement from IRC (IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre) from 2016 highlighted some of the impacts that the activities of RWSN can have: "RWSN [...] shows the power of peer-to-peer learning and can support further thinking on hot topics that emerged during these days: decentralisation, professionalisation and technical support, tariff setting, monitoring systems, PPPs, adaptation to climate change, [...]. RWSN can move the agenda forward on these issues." One of the achievements of RWSN is that it strengthens the skills of professionals in the rural water sector.

A similar statement on impacts was published in an independent evaluation in 2017 which said that RWSN is not expected to achieve impact in itself directly, but "it can indirectly contribute to impacts, by enhancing the skills and knowledge of the key actors in the sector, so that they can improve sector performance."

RWSN coined the term "Self-supply" to raise awareness of scale of household investments in rural water supply, such as through rainwater harvesting and private boreholes. RWSN continues to disseminate information on self-supply in African countries.

An independent evaluation of RWSN in 2017 found that: "The RWSN is a highly competent, advanced community-building network which connects people who would likely not have been connected before and disseminates valuable knowledge to its members, which can be applied to practice." It also stated that "the RWSN has been described to be the prime network that supports scale up of rural water supply for practitioners".

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, one of the funders of RWSN, praised the work of RWSN in 2021 by saying: "The Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) is the only global network to offer powerful, effective mechanisms to share expertise and collaborate with local and global partners to trial and scale up innovation and to raise the quality and professionalism in rural water supplies."

Challenges
An independent evaluation in 2017 highlighted challenges with funding the network in the future (a common challenge for many networks) : "RWSN should continue looking to diversify its funding from a diverse range of sources, including donor, public and private funds and potentially in the future, from upgraded services". Specific and direct criticisms of the RWSN are not documented in the public domain. However, like many organizations involved in international development, RWSN has faced challenges that are often discussed within the context of the broader rural water supply sector. Research articles often critique the broader sector in which RWSN operates. These critiques can indirectly reflect on RWSN's approaches and effectiveness. For example, the sustainability of handpump technologies or of community-led water supply initiatives is a continuous challenge for any organisation working on rural water supply in developing countries.

An Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) of the AfDB in 2016 summed up the challenges in the rural water supply sector as follows: "The main challenges and constraints facing rural water supply services include inadequate policy and institutional frameworks, inadequate investments, inefficient management, inadequate capacity, poor cost recovery, and financial sustainability," These challenges were discussed at the 7th RWSN Forum in Abidjan.

History
The network was founded as the Handpump Technology Network (HTN) after The International Handpump Workshop in Kakamega, Kenya in 1992. It was initially a working group for hand pump technology. HTN was renamed the Rural Water Supply Network in 2004.

At the Fourth RWSN Forum in Durban in 2003 a decision was made that RWSN would focus its work on three key areas: self-supply, cost-effective boreholes and sustainable handpumps.