What is the evidence on top-down and bottom-up approaches in improving access to water, sanitation and electricity services?

Abstract

The systematic review was ambitious in its aims to differentiate across a number of variables and generated a number of interesting findings. Rather than merely assessing simplified metrics for improved water supply, sanitation and electricity, such as ‘megawatts achieved’, the study ambitiously looks at a range of issues such as connectivity, affordability, adequacy, effort and time, durability and sustainability, against the two delivery approaches. This goes beyond merely assessing effective ways of urban service delivery and looks at the impact in terms of poverty reduction, which a more basic analysis would not go in to. Other variables measured include type of slum, type of facility and process. This created a number of factors to compare the top-down and bottom-up approaches against. Furthermore, the review includes numerical analysis, metadata analysis and textual narrative, comparing results across these methods of comparing studies. There is a final report and protocol for this systematic review