The Last 100 metres: Safeguarding potable water provisioning to urban informal settlements

Safeguarding the last 100 metres of potable water supply by improving the quality of the local environment (space around people’s homes and neighbourhoods) and raising public understanding is thus a vital vehicle for SDGs’ achievement.

The L100M project will explore this policy-relevant hypothesis through five objectives:
* Examining the extent to which ‘neglect of sewage removal from unplanned settlements’ limits achievement of SDG targets 6.1 and 6.2
* Exploring why neither market-based nor state-civic interventions have succeeded in reducing contamination in ‘the last 100 metres’
* Identifying the practices that have emerged to counter the market-state-civic society failure and assessing the constraints and opportunities they offer
* Distinguishing contamination that originates from within settlements from what comes from their surrounds - to ensure community ownership of problems and achievements
* Experimenting with delivery of programmes through NGO partners and community participation, that ensure potable water remains safe

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists, advisors, NGO practitioners, business leaders and community members are involved in collecting and analysing this data, ‘authentic dialogues’ to interpret findings, and to develop research-led WASH interventions which reduce faecal contamination of drinking water in the L100M.

The team includes: three UK institutions (Lancaster University, The University of Manchester and British Water); four Bangladeshi organisations (BRAC University, University of Dhaka, Dushtha Shasthya Kendra [DSK] and WaterAid Bangladesh); one Indian organisation (Centre for Science and Environment [CSE]); and two Tanzanian organisations (Ardhi University and BRAC Tanzania). Principal Investigator was Dr Manoj Roy.