Dr Sonia Ferdous Hoque shared her perspective on the challenges of clean drinking water scarcity in coastal Bangladesh in a blog for the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.
She touched on the tube well revolution and its controversies, the role of international donor institutions, lack of ownership and management in relation to water infrastructure, informality within the region's water supply system, as well as lack of regulation and irregularity of water quality monitoring. Dr Sonia Hoque suggested the solution to the challenge - installing piped water schemes - whose maintenance requires beyond technical approaches.
"The challenge now is to move beyond piecemeal solutions and develop a coordinated approach to water management that addresses the root causes of the crisis: an outdated institutional structure with uncoordinated infrastructure installation by multiple actors, ultimately relying on users for operation and maintenance, without systematic data and regulation for abstracting, selling or monitoring quality monitoring."
You can access the full blog here.
Dr Sonia Hoque is joining the Oxford Water Network as its Co-chair. It is an honour to have her on board to help drive OWN's strategic vision.
