Challenges to Clean Water Systems in Rural Regions

¶ … Obtaining Clean Water in Rural and Developing Regions

In rural areas and in the developing world, supplying clean drinking water is a challenge that institutions and researchers alike face. As The Water Project notes, in developing nations like Africa, "surface water sources are often highly polluted, and infrastructure to pipe water from fresh, clean sources to arid areas is too costly of an endeavor" (Lewis). Thus, adequate funding and proper technological infrastructure combine with naturally arid environments and water pollution to create the four main obstacles to rural/developing areas obtaining clean water.

As Moe et al. of the Institute of Medicine in Washington, DC, indicate, the problems facing the obtainment of clean water in the developing world and in rural areas are due primarily to a balkanization effect, in which all the variables needed to come together to effect a strategy and sufficient infrastructural environment for delivery are broken apart. Elements are missing, financing comes up short, stability within regions (both economic and political) is lacking, private sector investment drives up, and pollution is rampant. There is not enough collaboration or integration among private sector investors, institutions, governmental offices, businesses that leave a footprint on the environment, and communities. The aims of various charitable organizations and health organizations at achieving the Millennium Development Goal "of reducing by half the proportion of he population that lacks access to improved water and sanitation" remains a major challenge as a result of the balkanization of the factors that should be more intimately united and more closely working together to effect the outcomes of the positive strategy associated with the goal (Moe et al.).

Massoud, Al-Abady, Jurdi and Nuwayhid conducted a 2010 study of water issues in southern Lebanon to identify the challenges of obtaining safe and clean drinking water in the rural parts of the region. They found that the main obstacles were that "contamination of the source, absence of any disinfection method or insufficient dose, poor maintenance operations, and aging of the networks" were the largest contributors to the challenging nature of the problem (Massoud et al. 24). Overall, contamination of the water supply during the storage and delivery processes was the largest factor, which shows that every region is unique and has its own basic problems associated with the issue. However, while one region (such as Africa) may suffer primarily from a lack of adequate funding to build and sustain an infrastructure, regions like Lebanon in the Middle East suffer from contamination issues.