"AQUA tu penses?" is a research travel about water and urban poverty. The aim is to focus on the large urban centers of developing countries, and to study some specific cases of water supply in underpriviledged areas.

As water "non-experts", our objective is to promote a transversal approach of the issues linking water to urban poverty and sustainable development. Such a transversal approach can be implemented by using quantitative and qualitative tools coming from different fields, such as economy, social sciences, finance, ... Even if we consider that the water economy demands very specific skills, we also believe that overall approaches may stimulate the creativity of beginners like us.

We work in an independent way, and our sponsors let us completely free to define both our methodology and the countries and sites we planned to visit. Locally, we are helped and guided by different organizations, such as NGOs, universities, private companies, institutions, etc. Again, our goal is to remain as objective as possible, both in our work and in the suggestions we shall make.

Thus, our world water tour aims at identifying the key factors that link the social reality of a poor urban area, to the development of a viable water service in this area. Even if the sanitation issues are also extremely important, we have decided to focus on the water supply.

Our itinerary has been defined to allow us to compare the situations on three continents (South America, Asia and Africa).

The AQUA project is based on three underlying assumptions :

• Beyond its social and cultural value, which is reckoned and accepted by everyone, there is an economic cost of producing, distributing and collecting water, i.e. water becomes an economic good as soon as it is associated to a specific service.
• It would be a misunderstanding to consider marketing only as a pool of commercial techniques earmarked for consumer goods. It is neither irrelevant nor shocking to consider that a marketing of "rare goods" (such as water) might be important, especially in the case of poor urban populations.
• When trying to understand the financial structure of a water distribution network, the critical issue is not to know how to make the users pay their bill, but rather how to break even by using all the financial resources available (locally and internationaly).

Thus, our ambition is to develop a new way of understanding the social, cultural and financial drivers of the access to water in poor urban areas. As these areas were not - until recently - included in international public offers made by governments and institutions for new water infrastructures, they remain badly known. Their inhabitants have often developed a specific relation to water, which has to be better understood. Then, public actors, private companies and development specialists will work on new integrated supply solutions.

It is definitely tricky to think about the future of a project which is still so young, and it is even more complex to make pledges about what it will become! We left as a four-people group, and the first great ambition is to come back as a four-people group... We are looking forward to considering every opportunity, but we also want to remain pragmatic.

However, three lines of action will guide the evolutions of the AQUA project :

• After the first phase of our research travel, due to end mid October, we will consider with our main sponsor (Vivendi Water) the possibility to launch a second phase, aimed at going further in our work by focusing on some of our former suggestions and recommendations. It is already planned that such a second phase would focus on Africa (Tchad and Niger).
• Through publications, case studies and/or seminars, we wish to share our experience with the public opinion in general, and especially with students.
• By participating to the Third World Water Forum (due to take place in Kyoto, Japan, in March 2003), we would like to give an international value to our project, and share our views with the world water experts community.

And because we are the legal owners of all our materials, tools and conclusions, the future of AQUA tu penses? can already be seen under the sign of independence...

International travel guide