Understanding the Urban Poor's Vulnerabilities in Water Supply and Sanitation

This paper was prepared for an international symposium hosted by the Rockerfeller Fundation which aimed to understand how services can better be delivered to poor urban communities around the world. One section of the symposium dealt specifically with water and sanitation services in low-income cities of the global south. This paper, one of four prepared for this section to the meeting, looked in detail at the constraints which face poor urban people as they attempt to gain access to basic services such as water and sanitation. the paper looks both at the physical constraints and the socio-political and financial constraints both directly experienced by poor and disenfranchised communities and by the agents who are mandated to serve them (local government, utility providers and civil society).