science

Self-supply of water and sanitation

Self-supply of water and sanitation is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Self-supply of water and sanitation rather than just read about it. In short: Self-supply refers to the ability of a buyer of goods and services to create their own supply rather than purchase from a supplier. The term has a particular history and application in relation to water and sanitation, where it refers to an approach of incremental improvements to water and sanitation services, which are mainly financed by the user.

Key takeaways

Self-supply of water and sanitation belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Self-supply of water and sanitation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Self-supply of water and sanitation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Self-supply refers to the ability of a buyer of goods and services to create their own supply rather than purchase from a supplier. The term has a particular history and application in relation to water and sanitation, where it refers to an approach of incremental improvements to water and sanitation services, which are mainly financed by the user. In this context, self-supply is also called household-led water supply or individual supply. People around the world have been using this approach over centuries to incrementally upgrade their water and sanitation services. The approach does not refer to a specific technology or type of water source or sanitation service although it does have to be feasible to use and construct at a low cost and mostly using tools locally available. The approach is rather about an incremental improvement of these services. It is a market-based approach and commonly does not involve product subsidies. "Self-supply" is different from "supported self-supply". The former term refers to situations where people improve their water and sanitation services on their own, while the latter term refers to a deliberately guided process, usually by a government agency or a non-governmental organization. Many examples of self-supply taking off in a short time come from situations where government-led service provision has broken down, e.g. in countries of the former Soviet Union. The approach can also be deliberately used by government agencies or external support agencies to complement other types of service provision, such as community-managed water supply. Self-supply is an important strategy, adopted in combination with other approaches such as community-managed services, to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, particularly for Goal 6: "Ensure access to water and sanitation for all". The term is commonly used in the water sector in the development cooperation context, but less commonly in the sanitation sector. Certain approaches such as community-led total sanitation or container-based sanitation systems have many similar aspects to self-supply. Some organizations use other terms referring to approaches which are led by individual households. For example, the World Health Organization uses the term "individual supply". In the context of developed countries, a related concept is called living "off the grid".

Definition The short definition of self-supply is: "People improving water and sanitation services by themselves". The basic idea of self-supply is that people are providing water for themselves through their own means without direct government support. Humans have been improving their own access to water and sanitation without government aid for millennia. As an approach to improving access it is a user-centered approach that involves incrementally improving current service levels, most of the time mainly financed by the end users. Generally this means that the improvements to water supply and sanitation are achieved either through labor by the end-users or by the end-users paying a technician or a company to complete the work. The incentives and benefits for the end users to improve their own water and sanitation services privately may include: convenience, proximity to home, larger volume of water, faster services than municipal water systems, cheaper than municipal water systems, lack of municipal water systems, privacy, security, and reliability. There is no specific technology that is advocated with self-supply. Self-supply is rather an approach of how to improve access to water and sanitation services, commonly referred to as "moving up the water and sanitation ladders". At the bottom of the "water ladder" are unprotected sources of water. The users "climb the water ladder" by adding protection to their water source or additional technology for convenience. For example, a user with an unlined hand dug well with a rope and bucket as a lifting device would be at the bottom of the water ladder. A user with a lined hand dug well would be higher on the water ladder since the water source has a lower risk of contamination due to the lining. A user with a hand pump would have the benefit of being able to get a larger volume of water more quickly than with a bucket, and contamination of the source is reduced. Finally, a user with a motorized pump would have the convenience of not having to expend any manual energy on pumping water. Even sources on the lowest rungs of the ladder would provide service all day, every day, all year round. In applying self-supply in sanitation, one approach used is that of sanitation marketing. Modularization is a part of the sanitation marketing approach. The sanitation product to be marketed is designed so that upgrades can be made gradually over time, towards an improved sanitation facility, as budget allows.

Background In 2015, 663 million people worldwide lacked access to improved water sources and 158 million people used surface water as their main source of drinking water (i.e. an "unimproved" water source). 8 out of 10 people without improved drinking water sources live in rural areas. Likewise, 1 in 8 people worldwide practise open defecation (946 million people). These numbers show that there is a continued need to keep improving these services for millions of people. Self-supply is not formally part of the water strategy to increase access to improved water sources in most developing countries and is not commonly counted in inventories of access to improved water sources. This is partly related to the fact that self-supply does not refer to a specific technology or service level. However, even in countries where significant initiatives of self-supply have been observed, these usually are not taken into consideration in official numbers of service coverage. Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are exceptions to this rule.

Costs Studies in Zambia and Zimbabwe showed that by using a strategy combining community-managed water supply and self-supply, the life-cycle costs to the government would be 50% lower, compared to a strategy only using community-managed water supply.

Approaches for water supply

Manually drilled wells

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Self-supply of water and sanitation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Self-supply of water and sanitation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Self-supply of water and sanitation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Self-supply of water and sanitation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Self-supply of water and sanitation

In research: Self-supply of water and sanitation appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Self-supply of water and sanitation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Self-supply of water and sanitation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Sanitation, Water supply, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Self-supply of water and sanitation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Self-supply of water and sanitation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Self-supply of water and sanitation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Self-supply of water and sanitation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Self-supply of water and sanitation in simple terms?

Why does Self-supply of water and sanitation matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Self-supply of water and sanitation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Self-supply of water and sanitation.